Update: Buying maps from the Planning Portal
Earlier this month, we decided to withdraw our mapping service from the Planning Portal.
You can read more about this decision in my 9 July post.
We are now planning to close the service in August 2010. While this decision means we will be withdrawing our own Buy-a-map service you will still be able to buy a map from one of our accredited partners, in fact we urge you to do so.
All our suppliers will continue to provide OS licensed maps of a high quality that meet your requirements and ease the processing of applications.
Maps can be bought through the online application service as normal, or from our Buy-a-map page.
If you previously bought a map from the Portal, this change means you will no longer be able to access your purchased maps from your site plan account.
However, if you used the map to support an online planning application, the map will still be linked to the application.
To access your map, simply identify the application and it will be available in the supporting documents section.
If you have any queries regarding these changes, please contact Portal Support.
Planning Portal Blog 
This is a surprising decision considering everyone’s increasingly desperate attempts to look for new revenue streams. Does this mean that you weren’t making any money from this service, or is it that you were taking business from other suppliers?
The service wasn’t without faults more integration with the portal would have been better. Are there plans to allow other suppliers to ‘plug-in’ to the portal. So that site plans can be easily attached to applications without having to download and upload?
i cannot see why formal “approved” maps are needed any longer.
This is the age of GPS, SatNav, Google, Streetmap, and Post Codes. Anyone can locate anywhere in a matter of seconds, without recourse to specifically scaled (and expensive) maps.
Hi Christopher, I totally agree with your comment, the other thing is why do councils charge £150 for each planning application, the only reason why the planners need these O.S. maps is because, the planners need to find the houses anyway, so they want us to do the work for them.