Open Data Bristol: one licence stated, forty-four in the metadata
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
Bristol City Council publishes its open data on an Esri ArcGIS Hub site at opendata.bristol.gov.uk, created in October 2022 and run from the council's own ArcGIS organisation. Counted through the platform API on 25 August 2026, its single catalogue group held 210 items, of which 202 are data: 190 feature services, 10 links out to documents and 2 PDFs. The council's open data page states that its open data is released under the Open Government Licence 3.0. The portal's own terms of use hedge that: data may be reused as long as you follow the terms of its licence, and in most cases this is the Open Government Licence. The metadata bears out the hedge rather than the policy, because the licence is a free-text field rather than a controlled one, and no dataset in the catalogue carries a Creative Commons licence or a public-domain dedication.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →📊 Impact
Licence census of the 202 datasets, counted on 25 August 2026 by paging the ArcGIS sharing API across the site's catalogue group: 113 name the Open Government Licence in free text, and only 23 of those state which version; 40 carry no licence text at all; 38 carry an Ordnance Survey copyright line, and 35 of the 202 still contain an unfilled template placeholder where the year of supply should be; 7 point instead at the Ordnance Survey INSPIRE End User Licence, a public-sector re-use licence rather than an open one; one dataset, Bus Stops, reads 'Caveat : Non-commercial use only'; one, BMX facilities, carries 'All Rights Reserved'. In the portal's machine-readable DCAT feed, the form an aggregator reads, 70 of the 201 datasets present expose a licence a machine can resolve, 69 of them the Open Government Licence v3 URL and one an NHS terms page, while 39 expose an empty licence field. Currency is uneven and only partly measurable: of the 41 datasets hosted on Esri's cloud, which report a last-edit date, 13 were last edited in 2026 and two on the day of counting, while 16 have not been edited since November 2022, and Bristol Waste Monthly holds 11 rows ending 4 January 2020. The other 149 feature services sit on the council's own map server and expose no edit date at all.
🎓 Lesson
A licence named once on a policy page is not a licence granted on a dataset. The portal is more careful than the council's policy page, and 'in most cases' is exactly what the metadata shows, but the cost of the gap lands on the re-user, who has to read 44 distinct licence strings to learn what 202 datasets allow and finds nothing at all on 40 of them. The two hardest ones are those a catalogue-wide claim would have hidden: a bus stop layer marked non-commercial and a cycling layer marked all rights reserved, both inside a site called Open Data Bristol.
Sources
Show 4 more sourcesShow fewer
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 20 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 20 addressable claims, 9 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 20
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-f217d87130580d9c
quantitative
Bristol City Council publishes its open data on an Esri ArcGIS Hub site at opendata.bristol.gov.uk, created in October 2022
Sources carrying this claim
clm-d8df48308b2fb459
descriptive
run from the council's own ArcGIS organisation
Sources carrying this claim
clm-02259436cfabf7d1
quantitative
its single catalogue group held 210 items
Sources carrying this claim
clm-88ef008c7ce33644
quantitative
of which 202 are data: 190 feature services, 10 links out to documents and 2 PDFs
Sources carrying this claim
clm-a7d1799417c26332
quantitative
The council's open data page states that its open data is released under the Open Government Licence 3.0
Sources carrying this claim
clm-b3cea07b3cd8df7b
descriptive
data may be reused as long as you follow the terms of its licence, and in most cases this is the Open Government Licence
Sources carrying this claim
clm-b65af49ab34d8384
descriptive
the licence is a free-text field rather than a controlled one
Sources carrying this claim
clm-95c16a3ffd1ecd2d
descriptive
no dataset in the catalogue carries a Creative Commons licence or a public-domain dedication
Sources carrying this claim
clm-4881c94d3ab9d444
quantitative
113 name the Open Government Licence in free text, and only 23 of those state which version
Sources carrying this claim
clm-f45dfa367fd75c7f
quantitative
40 carry no licence text at all
Sources carrying this claim
clm-bfc61b0e30999407
quantitative
38 carry an Ordnance Survey copyright line, and 35 of the 202 still contain an unfilled template placeholder where the year of supply should be
Sources carrying this claim
clm-08b0b503a3c30f6a
quantitative
7 point instead at the Ordnance Survey INSPIRE End User Licence, a public-sector re-use licence rather than an open one
Sources carrying this claim
clm-354f5266ebc5c603
descriptive
one dataset, Bus Stops, reads 'Caveat : Non-commercial use only'
Sources carrying this claim
clm-40de7b01dc4384bd
descriptive
one, BMX facilities, carries 'All Rights Reserved'
Sources carrying this claim
clm-69904491722198cf
quantitative
70 of the 201 datasets present expose a licence a machine can resolve, 69 of them the Open Government Licence v3 URL and one an NHS terms page, while 39 expose an empty licence field
Sources carrying this claim
clm-8f95e7de17ddd017
quantitative
of the 41 datasets hosted on Esri's cloud, which report a last-edit date, 13 were last edited in 2026 and two on the day of counting, while 16 have not been edited since November 2022
Sources carrying this claim
clm-7daba49743b63ef2
quantitative
Bristol Waste Monthly holds 11 rows ending 4 January 2020
Sources carrying this claim
clm-8e4f2ef56376bdff
quantitative
The other 149 feature services sit on the council's own map server and expose no edit date at all
Sources carrying this claim
clm-05501d72d5938d17
quantitative
who has to read 44 distinct licence strings to learn what 202 datasets allow and finds nothing at all on 40 of them
Sources carrying this claim
clm-7252771799b08b1a
descriptive
a bus stop layer marked non-commercial and a cycling layer marked all rights reserved, both inside a site called Open Data Bristol
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:2736aea68e5257c6ec98d6fe3e0368eaa58270a13f50d94ac4bf419b198dc441
- 20
- of 20 claims mapped
- 9
- source dossiers
- 0
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- Bristol City Council
- Actor types
- city-government
- Funding model
- public
- Funding description
- Not recorded
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
9 source dossiers
Bristol City Council, Open data (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-0f19b4e947d1e972- Publisher
- Name not classified · bristol.gov.uk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The council's standing open-data page, and the blanket statement the catalogue does not keep. Verbatim: 'Our open data is released under the Open Government Licence 3.0 (OGL 3.0).' Also names the two places the council publishes ('data.gov.uk the central government website' and 'open data bristol our local data website'), and cites an ODI Open Data Certificate whose link returned an ODI server-error page when checked on 25 August 2026. The page states no date of its own. /council-and-mayor/data-protection-and-foi/open-data redirects here.
- Claims linked
Open Data Bristol, Terms of use (operator, page content via the ArcGIS item API)
- Stable source ID
src-353189ba3d19524a- Publisher
- Name not classified · arcgis.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The portal's own terms, verbatim: 'You can use data from Open Data Bristol as long as you follow the terms of its licence. In most cases this is the Open Government Licence.' The licence link points at OGL version 3. The reader-facing page is https://opendata.bristol.gov.uk/pages/terms-of-use, but it is a JavaScript shell whose raw HTML contains none of this text, so the sentence is cited from the Hub page item that supplies it.
- Claims linked
Open Data Bristol, site item record (operator API)
- Stable source ID
src-fb376d0a6f705ec4- Publisher
- Name not classified · arcgis.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The Hub site behind opendata.bristol.gov.uk. 'created':1666798721000 is 26 October 2022; 'url':'https://opendata.bristol.gov.uk'; 'orgId':'a4vR8lmmksFixzmB'; typeKeywords include 'hubSite' and 'OpenData'. The creation date belongs to this ArcGIS Hub site, not to Open Data Bristol as a service.
- Claims linked
ArcGIS organisation record for the portal's owner (operator API)
- Stable source ID
src-21f549a0d8c61918- Publisher
- Name not classified · arcgis.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Identifies the organisation that owns the site and every dataset in it: 'name':'Bristol City Council', 'urlKey':'bcc'. This is the scope test for the entry.
- Claims linked
ArcGIS sharing API, catalogue census over the site's group (operator API)
- Stable source ID
src-7af0f0c8f6bd931f- Publisher
- Name not classified · arcgis.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The site's catalogue is one group, c750a490d152430a9aefe9b1fba0ec14, taken from the site item's own catalog definition. Queried 25 August 2026: 'total':210. Paging all 210 records gives the type split (190 Feature Service, 10 Document Link, 4 Hub Page, 2 Web Experience, 2 PDF, 1 Dashboard, 1 Web Map) and the licenceInfo string of every item, from which the licence census in the impact field is computed. Ten sampled records were re-fetched from the per-item endpoint and their licenceInfo matched the search response exactly. The API's own countFields aggregation returns null here, so the census is a full page-through rather than a platform aggregate.
Open Data Bristol, DCAT-US feed (operator)
- Stable source ID
src-10658c12515e8989- Publisher
- Name not classified · opendata.bristol.gov.uk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The machine-readable feed, also served at /data.json. Retrieved 25 August 2026: 223 dataset rows covering 209 catalogue items, because multi-layer services expand per layer. Restricted to unique data items it covers 201 of the 202 (Street Improvements is absent). Of those 201, 70 carry a resolvable licence URL (69 the OGL v3 URL at nationalarchives.gov.uk, 1 an NHS developer terms page), 39 carry an empty licence field and 92 carry free text that is not a licence.
- Claims linked
ArcGIS item record, 'Bus Stops' (operator)
- Stable source ID
src-dd918a420e600ee9- Publisher
- Name not classified · arcgis.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The bus stop layer. Its entire licenceInfo reads 'Caveat : Non-commercial use only'. Owned by the council's Layer_Library account and public.
- Claims linked
ArcGIS item record, 'BMX facilities' (operator)
- Stable source ID
src-4d0618c91ed90f4e- Publisher
- Name not classified · arcgis.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The BMX facilities layer. Its licenceInfo opens '(c) betterbybike.info 2022. All Rights Reserved.' and continues with a third-party website disclaimer. Owned by the council's Layer_Library account and public.
- Claims linked
Bristol Waste Monthly feature service, statistics query (operator API)
- Stable source ID
src-b915026bf59d32ac- Publisher
- Name not classified · services2.arcgis.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-25
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-25
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Maximum value of the Date field in the Bristol Waste Monthly service: 1578096000000, i.e. 4 January 2020. A separate returnCountOnly query on the same layer gives 11 rows. The service's own editingInfo.lastEditDate is 25 November 2022. Cited as the clearest single instance of the currency spread; the same sweep over all 41 cloud-hosted services produced the 2026/2022 split in the impact field.
- Claims linked
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Open Data Bristol: one licence stated, forty-four in the metadata” — Bristol, United Kingdom. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/bristol-open-data/ (last verified 2026-08-25). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
