BREATHTAKING: An aerial view of Southampton.

Picture copyright of The Millennium Mapping Company and the Geoinformation Group

IT'S being billed as the Domesday Book for the millennium - a photographic snapshot of the British Isles in 1999.

But the Millennium Map which was launched yesterday doesn't just offer a chance to take an aerial flight over a city or town at the touch of a computer mouse. In the hands of professionals, it opens up details on every house and street, complete with details of occupants, any complaints they've made and crime incidents.

Southampton City Council is one of the first organisations in the country to buy the new map on CD to use in town planning as well as a fraud and crime-busting tool.

Produced by a Hampshire business, the Millennium Mapping Company, it has been produced as the 21st century pictorial rival to the Domesday Book, offering a comprehensive, digitally enhanced bird's eye view of the UK.

Chartered engineer Tristram Carey from Millennium Mapping took 56,000 individual photographs of the English landscape. The photographs were then digitally re-worked by another company and put on a CD.

Mr Carey told the Echo: "This year we completed over 500 flying hours, that's the equivalent of flying round the world one-and-a-half times and with this we completed 83 per cent of England. Next year we will start to map Wales and Scotland."

It cost the City Council £3,000 to buy digital pictures on CD of the 85,000 square kilometres which fall within Southampton's boundary.

Business analyst Nick Adnitt has spearheaded the acquisition of the photographic map, which has been overlayed with co-ordinates from Ordnance Survey, plus details of the council's own crime audit, those homes claiming benefit, noise pollution complaints, the electoral roll, rat sightings and baitings.

He said: "This will really help us concentrate resources. We can look at crime hotspots, and try to see why they are hotspots - perhaps there is poor lighting in the area and we can rectify that.

"It will help planners when they are looking at development applications."

The system can also help the council come down hard on fraud.

"We have marked on it the homes that are claiming housing benefit and we can cross-check that with the electoral roll to stamp down on fraud. "Or we can even examine people's back gardens to see if there are unauthorised developments which should have planning permission."

Next year, residents will also be able to access the map via the Internet - leaving it open for use by schools as an educational tool.

Surfers can log onto the company's website at www.millennium-map.com. First edition copies of the aerial maps, detailing individual homes and streets, can also be ordered online.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.