Government ensures free access to some Ordnance Survey maps

Government to ensure some Ordnance Survey maps are made freely available to ensure transparency and to encourage data sharing

Birmingham is ‘best performing city’

According to the Cushman & Wakefield European Cities Monitor 2009, Birmingham is the ‘best performing city’ in the country in terms of improvement on last year’s ranking.
The influential survey of 500 of Europe’s largest companies shows Birmingham rising seven places from 21st to 14th as the best European city for business, overtaking Manchester in the [...]

Inward investment: record high for West Midlands

In the period 2008 to 2009 the West Midlands region received 117 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, a record high since records began in 1991 (shown by the blue line in the graph below).

Plot data on world maps with new OECD tools

Two new online tools from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) now allow you to plot a huge array of social and economic data onto world maps and track them through time creating an animated chart as you follow your chosen geographic area against other areas. It’s easy to use and, more importantly, easy on [...]

Britain’s got (hidden) talent

New reseach has shown that two-thirds of UK workers with specialist skills are not using them in their professional careers.
The Western European Location Skills Audit undertaken by Oxford Intelligence covered eight ‘hard-to-find’ skill sets in ten countries.
The research showed that the UK ranks first in the Location Skills Index and either first or second in Technical [...]