INSPIRE
The EU INSPIRE Directive was introduced in 2007. Its principal aim is to improve environmental policy making in Europe. Under INSPIRE, Member States must make available in a consistent format spatial datasets within the scope of the Directive, and create services for accessing these datasets. This will enable datasets to be more easily shared and the expectation is that they can be combined to benefit the development and monitoring of environmental policy and practice in all Member States and across the European Union.
The INSPIRE Regulations came into effect on 31 December 2009. There are separate but essentially consistent regulations covering England, Northern Ireland and Wales;[SI 2009 No 3157] and Scotland [SSI 2009 No 440]. Together they implement the EC Directive 2007/2/EC.
Guide to the INSPIRE Regulations in England, Northern Ireland and Wales
An interest group for the implementation of INSPIRE within the UK Location Programme has also been set up as part of the INSPIRE Forum.
For anyone interested in seeing how the regulations have implemented the provisions of the Directive the Transposition Note is available.
The UK along with other Member States provided a response to the EC’s 2010-11 State of Play Questionnaire, on the status of transposition and implementation of the EU INSPIRE Directive. This is a response to the regular survey carried out by the University of Leuven which aims to describe, analyse and assess the status of INSPIRE and NSDI implementation in 32 countries in Europe: 27 Member States, 4 EFTA countries and 1 Candidate Country. Both the UK and EU-wide summary are available on the INSPIRE website.
The UK along with all EU Member States is required annually in May to submit to the EC a monitoring report.
Additionally, every 3 years, Member States provide the EC with a Member State Report which focuses on describing the structures in place to achieve implementation, and explains the UK’s plans and aims for delivery of successful outcomes. This year’s report, the first, explains that the programme is moving from the conceptual design and planning stage into detailed design and implementation.
The most recent annual EU INSPIRE Conference was held in Edinburgh from 27 June to 1 July 2011. The UK Location Programme team report will appear here shortly.
Useful links
Below are links to specific parts of the EC’s INSPIRE website are shown below
- INSPIRE Roadmap
- INSPIRE GeoPortal
- Implementing Rules
- Metadata
- Data Specifications
- Network Services
- Data and Service Sharing
- Monitoring and Reporting
- INSPIRE website - home page
Background
The regulations were preceded by a consultation on the policy principles which took place between March and May 2009. This consisted of a formal written consultation and outreach events in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. A summary of responses report on this consultation was published in July 2009 and is available at the following link: