The Council & democracy

Manchester City Council is committed to making as much of the non-personal data that it holds as possible freely available to the public and other organisations.  The data that is available so far is listed below along with the format in which it is being supplied.  There is more information about file formats below.

Licences

Unless otherwise indicated the data below is released under the Open Government Licence.

Please note that although we will aim for stability, we reserve the right to change the format of the data that we supply.

How are you using our data?

We would be interested to hear about how our data is being used.  This will help us to improve the service and we may feature outstanding applications by linking to them from this website. As we reserve the right to change the format in which we make our data available, we will also be able to contact anyone that we know may be affected by such changes. Email us at webfeedback@manchester.gov.uk.

File formats

CSV Files
Comma (or Character) Separated Value files are compatible with all types of spreadsheet and data management software and can also be read and edited in a text editor. They are preferable to proprietory file formats such as Microsoft Word or Excel or Adobe PDF. The Government are recommending CSV as a suitable format for open data to be supplied by public bodies and are mandating it in some cases.

KML Files
KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files were developed as a proprietory format to describe features on a map. The format is now available for anyone to use and is compatible with most freely available web mapping systems, including Bing Maps (Microsoft Ltd) and Google Maps.

XML Files
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a standard format for exchanging information. It is particularly useful for information that will be used on a website.