By law, the council must maintain two official documents known as the Definitive Map and the Definitive Statement, which provide routes and descriptions for all the Public Rights of Way (Footpaths, Bridleways, Restricted Byways, and Byways Open to All Traffic) in the County. These documents are legally definitive, in that if a route is included, it is definitive evidence that it is a right of way. Any errors must be corrected by a legal order to change the Map and Statement.
In addition to these local documents, Suffolk County Council also maintain non-definitive working versions in more convenient electronic formats. They have a GIS data version of the map, and a database of the statements. While not legally definitive, these versions should be mostly accurate, and are more convenient to access and use.
This dataset, as of June 2017, was released by Suffolk County Council in response to an EIR request. Permission was granted to re-use the data under the Open Government Licence 3.0, with the following attribution/disclaimer:
This web page uses data that is public sector information from Suffolk County Council. The data is licensed on terms equivalent to the Ordnance Survey OpenData Licence. The date of this data is 22.06.17.
An authority's Definitive Map and Statement is the authoritative source of information about the public rights of way in that authority's area. The details of the public rights of way network contained in the data supplied on this page are for information only, and are an interpretation of the Definitive Map and Statement, 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, the data does not replace its Definitive Map and Statement and changes may have been made to the Definitive Map and Statement that are not included in this data. The data contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2017. Attempting to view this data at a scale greater than 1:10000 may produce an inaccurate rendering of the route of a public right of way.
This statement has been added to the OSM contributors page, so the data can be used in OpenStreetMap. Suggested OSM source tag: source:* = suffolk_county_council_prow_gis_data.
This dataset, as of June 2017, was released by Suffolk County Council in response to an EIR request. Permission was granted to re-use the data under the Open Government Licence 3.0, with the following attribution/disclaimer:
This web page uses data that is public sector information from Suffolk County Council. The data is licensed on terms equivalent to the Ordnance Survey OpenData Licence. The date of this data is 22.06.17.
An authority's Definitive Map and Statement is the authoritative source of information about the public rights of way in that authority's area. The details of the public rights of way network contained in the data supplied on this page are for information only, and are an interpretation of the Definitive Map and Statement, 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, the data does not replace its Definitive Map and Statement and changes may have been made to the Definitive Map and Statement that are not included in this data. The data contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2017. Attempting to view this data at a scale greater than 1:10000 may produce an inaccurate rendering of the route of a public right of way.
This statement has been added to the OSM contributors page, so the data can be used in OpenStreetMap. Suggested OSM source tag: source:* = suffolk_county_council_prow_descriptions.
Some definitive statements were provided previously by Suffolk County Council either as PDF files or hard copies. I only have the statements for a handful of parishes in the north-west of the county. The council seems to have accepted that they can be requested under Environmental Information Regulations, but it seems to require them some effort to do so (either photocopying or doing a database export. I've therefore only requested statements from local parishes that I know I will be able to make use of personally.
Suffolk County Council has given permission for their IP contained in their Definitive Statements to be re-used in OpenStreetMap under the terms of the Open Government License (v2.0), with the following attribution / disclaimer statement:
Contains public sector information © Suffolk County Council licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0. The information should not be presumed to be accurate.
This attribution now appears on the Contributors wiki page, which is linked from the OSM Copyright and License page.
Suggested OSM source tag: source:* = definitive_statement.
For tagging reference numbers, in the absence of a specific alternative scheme, I would suggest the the form "[Parish Name] [XX] [Num]", where [XX] is the two-letter right of way type (FP, BR, RB, or BY) and [Num] is its number (without leading zeros). To avoid clashes with other users of the ref key on roads and forest tracks, it would be preferable to use prow_ref as the key. So, for example:
Note that on-the-ground signage may well be incorrect — I know of several Restricted Byways that are sign-posted as Bridleways. The Definitive Statement is, well, "definitive", so what it says should be used in preference to any signs on the ground. However, it would probably be sensible to record any discrepancies in a note=* tag to help other mappers.