The Definitive Map is a record of public rights of way in England and Wales. In law it is the definitive record of where a right of way is located. The highway authority (normally the county council, or unitary authority in areas with a one-tier system) has a statutory duty to maintain the Definitive Map, though in national parks the National Park Authority usually maintains the map. The Inner London boroughs are exempt from the statutory duty though they have the powers to maintain a map: currently none does so.
Each right of way also has a written description referred to as the Definitive Statement. Generally the Definitive Map takes legal precedence over the Definitive Statement.
Famous quotes containing the words definitive and/or map:
“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”
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—Bill Bryson (b. 1951)