Southampton based Ordnance Survey to cut costs by £20m

Workers were told about the cuts yesterday via a video briefing by director general Vanessa Lawrence followed by one-to-one meetings with managers.

The money saved will allow OS to give away mapping information to charities and community groups like the Scouts for use on their websites and to reduce charges for businesses to use the service.

Plans for new OS HQ revealed

Ms Lawrence, who last year earned £185,000, moved to quash rumours a planned move to new £45m headquarters on the edge of the city had been abandoned.

Fears the agency was moving to end paper map production were also denied, although there are question marks over the future location of its printing division, which is not part of its new home alongside the M271 at Nursling.

Last night Ms Lawrence was adamant the cuts – equivalent to just under £5m a year for between three and five years – would be good news for the agency and its 1,300-strong workforce.

She said it was down to staff to suggest how the money could be saved but added “50 per cent of our costs are staff so job cuts are not being ruled out.”

With a turnover of £118m and currently self funding, OS has long been the subject of a variety of proposals for its future shape, from being sold off to again being taxpayer funded. It is currently the subject of a major review, due to culminate in a budget announcement next March.

Offering a glimpse of the business model set to be unveiled by Chancellor Alistair Darling, Ms Lawrence said cutting prices to business and helping charities and other groups get better access to their world famous maps meant “everybody got something”.

Employment at the Romsey Road site has fallen from 2,000 staff nine years ago to 1,000 today, mainly due to £180m investment in technology. A further 300 staff work at different locations around the UK.

Fresh from being named Director of the Year by the Institute of Directors and being appointed as a Companion of The Most Honourable Order of the Bath (CB), Ms Lawrence was at pains to emphasise the cost-cutting was important for the agency’s future.

“We need to respond to the changing needs of the consumer,” she said. “If you’ve got data in your mobile phone you need it cheaper now than you did three years ago “We are going to do two things that take money out of the business. We are going to open up the data for more use by everybody and we are also cutting the price of the largest scale OS Master Map for business use.

“What I have asked the staff to sign up to today is a five per cent real cost reduction.

We want to continue with high quality, high value, well-maintained data to underpin the things we do. I believe it is possible to take five per cent out for the first three years but maybe for five years.

“We will be looking at the whole of our business at everything we do, asking is that the right thing on the right timescale in the right way?

“It is obvious from the staff that I have spoken to that they think it is very achievable.”