Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the Rural Payments Agency is participating in the work of the Geospatial Commission; and whether there are plans to publish the Rural Land Register as part of the work of that Commission.

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has made initial contact with the Geospatial Commission (GC) and is looking to have a productive working relationship.

Outside of the work of the GC, Defra’s data sharing platform and data.gov already allow private sector organisations and the public access to many of Defra’s geospatial open datasets. The RPA is working alongside the Ordnance Survey, the Environment Agency, Digital Data and Technology Services and the agri-tech sector to develop the IT, control and licence protocols to enable more of the RPA’s land data to be more openly accessible using the data sharing platform.