We are committed to making the information we hold available to the public, wherever possible. We are working on an Open Data Publication Plan, in line with the Scottish Government's Open Data Strategy.

Open Data is data that can be used and shared by anyone, for any purpose, without restriction and for free. Open Data is not commercially sensitive and contains no personal information which could be used to identify individuals. For published data to be truly "open" it should be available online, in a machine-readable format and easily discoverable through the use of relevant metadata.

This links to our obligations under the INSPIRE (Scotland) Regulations 2009 to publish spatial data (data that can be mapped). The Improvement Service, on behalf of Scottish local authorities, has launched the Spatial Hub, a single point of access to Scottish local authority spatial data. Spatial Hub takes datasets submitted by individual local authorities, standardises the format and publishes these as a national dataset.

The Spatial Hub launched in June 2016 with an initial 11 datasets. These are:

• Community Council Boundaries
• Contaminated Land
• Green Belt Areas
• Housing Land Supply
• Local Landscape Designation
• Local Nature Conservation Sites
• Local Nature Reserves
• Paths and Core Paths
• School Catchments
• Town Centres Air Quality Management Areas
• Vacant and Derelict Land

These datasets are also available to view or download on the Falkirk Council Open Data Portal.

More datasets will be added over time.