How much will I pay?

The digital data licence fee comprises three elements:

  • Licence administration charge (LAC)
  • Data preparation and delivery charge (DPC)
  • Data use charge (DUC)

These charges are applied in accordance with the following basic rules:

  • The LAC and DPC are based on the full economic costs incurred by the BGS in carrying out these tasks. The LAC is currently £150; the DPC is normally £150 but may be more if data preparation is unusually complex and time-consuming.
  • The LAC and DPC are charged once when the licence is first issued, and the LAC is charged upon renewal of the licence.
  • The DUC is an annual fee payable for each year covered by the licence. The DUC is unit-based, with the total amount payable dependent upon the number of units licensed. DUC discount schemes are applied to licensees requiring large numbers of units.
  • A 'banding' system operates for licensees that require multiseat use, in which the DUC is multiplied by the appropriate price band. (A seat is defined as an individual user of the data and the total number of seats equates to the number of copies loaded onto individual computers or, for internal network-served data, the total number of users that can potentially access the data simultaneously). The bands are set out below:
Band Number of seats
1 1
2 2-5
3 6-10
4 11-20
5 21-50
6 51-100

Example of charges (excluding VAT)

With effect from 1 April 2007, the data use charge for the BGS's DiGMapGB-10 (1:10,000 scale) and DiGMapGB-50 (1:50,000 scale) geological mapping datasets changed, as follows:

  1. DiGMapGB-10: from £3.75 per km² to £1.50 per km²
  2. DiGMapGB-50: from £0.15 per km² to £0.20 per km²

For a single seat licence for 1000 km² of DiGMapGB-50 data for 1 year the charges are:

Licence administration charge £150
Data preparation charge £150
Data usage charge for 1000 km² of DiGMapGB-50 (@ £0.20 per km²) £200
Total Cost £500

For a single seat licence for 75 km² of all 6 GeoSure layers (bundled)* for 1 year the charges are:

Licence administration charge £150
Data preparation charge £150
Data usage charge for 75 km² of six GeoSure layers (@ £0.80 per km²) £60
Total cost £360

*The annual unit charges for one seat (concurrent) use are:

Soluble rocks (dissolution): 15p per km²
Compressible ground: 20p per km²
Collapsible rocks: 05p per km²
Landslides: 30p per km²
Running sands: 20p per km²
Shrink-swell: 30p per km²
All six of the above (bundled): 80p per km²