The UK’s Geospatial Commission has awarded a three-year, £15 million contract to Bluesky International to be the sole supplier of aerial photography to public sector organisations across Great Britain.

The contract, to be known as Aerial Photography for Great Britain (APGB), includes an option to extend for a further two years.

The data, which will be updated on a two-year cyclic basis, and which will provided be free at point of use, will be accessible by more than 4,500 local authorities as well as emergency services, environmental bodies and central government departments.

This is the first time that the UK has awarded such a nationwide imagery contract to a single supplier.

The imagery will be supplied at 12.5cm resolution for all of England, Wales and Scotland, with urban areas captured at 5cm resolution.

Bluesky will also provide access to derived datasets, including digital surface models at 2m, digital terrain models at 5m and colour infrared at 50cm.

APGB members will also have free-at-point-of-use access to all of the company’s archived imagery dating back to the year 2000.

“The award of this contract is a great achievement and is testament to the high standards of work we produce and the professionalism of our team,” said Bluesky’s CEO, Rachel Tidmarsh.

“The APGB contract offers significant benefits to the public sector. We are seeing public organisations use our data to unlock an increasing number of applications.

“This is particularly important as these government organisations strive to meet legislative requirements around biodiversity, climate change and planning.”