CAMPAIGNERS and officials preparing for this spring's elections will find major improvements to Ordnance Survey's dedicated election website. The upgraded site already shows the newly-revised electoral ward boundaries that will underpin the local government elections on May 1.

Election officials, candidates and party workers can locate precise electoral boundaries anywhere in Great Britain simply by keying in the appropriate local authority name.

Once the relevant area maps are displayed on screen, users can select from a complete range of up to ten different layers of electoral and administrative boundary overlays, right down to parish level.

A couple of mouse clicks allow any combination of boundaries to be switched on and off at will. There's also a postcode search facility that instantly highlights any particular location on large-scale constituency maps.

These detailed maps, which even show many individual buildings, will help canvassers and leaflet distributors to home in on the precise areas that they need to visit.

As an additional benefit, users can print out as many A4-sized colour maps as they need for election purposes in each constituency or ward - completely free of charge.

This service is so popular that the site delivered more than 300,000 maps in the first two weeks after its launch for the 2001 General Election.

"The upgraded website shows Ordnance Survey's support for all levels of the democratic process," said Dave Lovell of the mapping agency's International and Government Relations Department. "Our mapping now fully recognises Great Britain's devolved assemblies, as well as all local authority and parliamentary elections.

"We're giving campaigners and officials free access to the most comprehensive boundary information to help them target their efforts effectively."

He added: "Ordnance Survey is committed to keeping the election website fully up to date. Electoral wards are revised in May each year, and we'll be making further enhancements to the site to support the European elections in 2004".