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2025-09-17-0838
GeoJSON files containing the public rights of way of Suffolk
The council of Suffolk have provided me with both a zip file that has MapInfo files and a zip file that has an ESRI shape file. Both zip files have details of their public rights of way. The zip files were created on 14th January 2020. As well as the data, the council also has a useful readme file describing the data and a spreadsheet that a key to the list of parishes.
This data contains public sector information from Suffolk County Council. An authority's Definitive Map is the authoritative source of their rights of way. The details of the public rights of way network contained in an authority's data are for information only, and are an interpretation of the Definitive Map, not the Definitive Map itself, and should not be relied on for determining the position or alignment of any public right of way. For legal purposes, an authority's data does not replace their Definitive Map. And changes may have been made to the Definitive Map that are not included in their data. The authority's data contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Attempting to view this data with more detail than 1:10000 may produce an inaccurate rendering of the route of a public right of way.
This web page says the zip files are made available by the council of Suffolk under the Open Government Licence. So it's possible for you to use this data provided you give an attribution.
The Council has also provided a spreadsheet that has the Council's Definitive Statement. I've had an e-mail saying that this Definitive Statement is also released with the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Elsewhere on this web site, there is a web page about how this web site provides the public rights of way of Suffolk in KML format. That web page explains how I've augmented the basic KML with additional information.
I've converted this augmented KML into GeoJSON.
Besides giving the longitudes and latitudes of the route of a public right of way,
each entry in the GeoJSON also has a name and a description.
The name will be something like:
SK|W-570|004\/0
There are three parts to the name:
"SK" (meaning "Suffolk"),
the id of the
parish/community/area
and the id of the path within the
parish/community/area.
The description will be something like:
Fo|SK:1962|0.43|none|0.39802|52.10362|0.40108|52.10779|564334,247744|564528,248215
This gives other information about the public right of way.
First, there is a two letter code giving its type
which is one of
Fo (meaning Footpath),
Br (meaning Bridleway),
Re (meaning Restricted byway)
and
BO (meaning Byway open to all traffic).
Following this code, there are
a unique name,
the length in miles, any additional information obtained from the data supplied by the authority (or none),
the longitude of its first point,
the latitude of its first point,
the longitude of its last point,
the latitude of its last point,
the eastings and northings of its first point
and
the eastings and northings of its last point.
The following GeoJSON files are available:
GeoJSON file for footpaths in Suffolk;
GeoJSON file for bridleways in Suffolk;
GeoJSON file for restricted byways in Suffolk;
GeoJSON file for byways open to all traffic in Suffolk.
Because some of these GeoJSON files are large,
the GeoJSON is also available in a large number of smaller files.
Each smaller file has information about public rights of way that are in a
square that is 0.1 degrees longitude wide
and 0.1 degrees latitude high.
For example, the file 03E521Fo.json
contains details about the Footpaths that are partly/wholly in the
square that is east and north of 0.3 degrees longitude
and 52.1 degrees latitude.
Here is a link to a
zip file containing all the smaller GeoJSON files for Suffolk.
The latitude values for Suffolk range from 51.95 to 52.54. And the longitude values range from 0.34 to 1.76.