Present: Gareth, CJ, Steve, Stephen, Robert W
Chair: Gareth

Operations

Financial Report

Stephen circulated the financial update by email.

The reported balance was £29,328.08, comprising £25,167.47 from State of the Map Europe and £4,160.61 for OSM UK.

One conference bill remains outstanding. Stephen wants to complete a reconciliation with Gregory before determining how the surplus should be used.

Some funds are ring-fenced for a future State of the Map Europe or another large OpenStreetMap event in the region. There will be no State of the Map Europe in 2026.

The board discussed whether a European Panoramax instance would be a suitable use of the remaining surplus and agreed that it would fit OSM UK’s objectives, provided it sufficiently benefits the community. No commitment of funds was made.

Concerns were raised about the technical responsibilities involved in managing uploads and servers.

The board also discussed moving funds to an interest-bearing savings account but decided against doing so in the current circumstances.

End of Year

The board discussed the effect of the conference surplus on the following year’s budget and the potential tax implications of retaining funds or deferring expenditure.

Stephen will consult Louise, the accountant, about the proposed spending and tax position.

The board agreed that spending plans should be documented and details of the intended use of funds published.

Robert suggested a new print run of leaflets to offer to members.

Membership Renewals

In March there were six renewals and three new members. In February there were five renewals and three new members. In January there were three renewals and one new member.

Stephen reported ten payments received for March. The board discussed differences between CiviCRM contribution dates and the receipt dates shown in PayPal, which can follow several weeks later.

Early renewals can also produce discrepancies depending on the report used. The contribution date records when payment was received by CiviCRM.

Mappa Mercia

The replacement Mappa Mercia website is available on GitHub Pages but still needs to be reviewed by Gareth.

If the site is satisfactory, the DNS will be switched to the replacement site and the old server will be shut down and deleted.

New Tile Server Setup

DNS was switched back to AWS because of instability of the instance on the Mythic Beasts VPS. This is not thought to be hardware related.

The Mythic Beasts server will be used as a staging tile server while the problems are investigated. It is available as staging-tiles.

Steve investigated the memory problems before the meeting, using Claude to analyse thread allocation and deallocation in RenderD and its interaction with PostgreSQL. He had documented the findings and compiled and tested the code.

CJ may investigate further. Steve will fork the memory-leak analysis code to Git if CJ considers it worthwhile.

There was no update on LiDAR.

CiviCRM Scheduled Jobs

CiviCRM is logging errors from scheduled jobs which need investigation.

The board discussed updating CiviCRM from version 6.5 because of end-of-life and security concerns. Versions 6.10 and 6.13 were mentioned.

Steve will liaise with Mythic Beasts to arrange the CiviCRM update before the scheduled-job errors are investigated.

Co-operative Bank KYC

There has been no further communication from the Co-operative Bank concerning the Know Your Customer checks for the other directors.

Projects

2026 Q1 Quarterly Project: Food Hygiene Ratings

The project has concluded. There was some activity at the beginning, but discussion on the forum subsequently quietened down.

CJ would like a list of the most recent additions or surveys in the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme data. The board discussed whether gregrs could enhance the existing feed to provide this information, or whether another source could be used.

2026 Q2 Quarterly Project: Addresses

Robert will create the project wiki page.

CJ has identified numerous datasets and workflows and will share some of the simpler approaches.

Robert reported on his work with council tax address data in West Suffolk, using JOSM and a conflation plugin. He is considering an online event to demonstrate his workflow. CJ would like this to include discussion of approaches to make conflation faster.

The board discussed matching addresses to streets and handling cases such as unnamed streets and sub-localities.

Gareth asked about an updated count of addresses in OpenStreetMap. CJ suggested using Taginfo to examine house-name and house-number tags. Figures discussed showed approximately 4.5 million addresses, including around 107,000 with both tags.

The board noted a substantial increase in address additions around 2021. StreetComplete and building imports were suggested as possible contributors.

Robert proposed a proof-of-concept UK address-only export. Questions include what the export should contain, whether inferred information should be included, and whether addresses should be attached to buildings, entrances or separate nodes.

Robert will write an outline proposal for the export.

The board noted Owen Boswarva’s continuing blog updates about address datasets and their suitability for use in OpenStreetMap.

Quarterly Project Selection

OSM UK received an email asking whether members were involved in selecting quarterly project topics.

The selection process was explained and a new community forum discussion was created to collect proposals for the third and fourth quarterly projects of 2026.

The board noted limited engagement with requests for suggestions and discussed asking proposers to provide more detailed documentation.

Gareth will cross-post the discussion to Talk-GB.

Future Events

Loughborough University Guest Lecture

Following inquiry, Jez has offered to give a guest lecture at Loughborough University.

It needs to be checked whether the lecture has taken place.

AOB

Next Meeting

The next board meeting will take place on 5 May 2026.