I've just got a reply back from a freedom of information request I made to my local council regarding their spending on mapping.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/spendature_on_maps

There's a little under half a million people in the area covered by Bradford City Council, which works out at around 27 pence per person on mapping fees. There are 180,000 households in the area which works out as 77 pence per household - which seems higher than other councils in the UK.

They have also failed to explain where the money comes from, giving the usual "we don't keep track of what income goes where" but do state that council tax only covers a small amount of their total expenditure which might in itself be worth another look.

Meanwhile I'm rendering tiles for my uk rail map. I don't have a decent spare machine to do the rendering on, so the resulting slippy map is unlikely to be updated very often. However, the static map I occasionally generate is online at http://kaerast.blogbound.com/ukrailmap.png.