Reference material

The easy way

With our FREE Path Checker app you can easily report a fault and its Ordnance Survey grid reference directly to us. Please choose a button to visit the site where you can download it to your device.
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How to provide a grid reference

OS grid references can be written in a number of ways. For our purposes we prefer two letters and eight digits (numbers), e.g., SJ97646956 (or SJ 9764 6956). Incidentally, that's the summit of Shutlingsloe, near Macclesfield.

Find a grid reference on a map

You might find it useful to look at the Ordnance Survey's guide on their website here (opens a new window).

Convert a grid reference

At times you may have a grid reference which doesn't have letters at the beginning and consists only of numbers. Depending on the format of the grid reference you've got, please see the following method. Numeric-only grid references have two sets of up to six numbers each with a comma between the sets, e.g., 397642,369567. The method is the same regardless of the number of digits. What you need to do is:

1. Separate out the first digit of each set of numbers and the comma. So from 397642,369567 you get 3,3 and 9764269567
2. Use the first digits to look up the corresponding two letters in this list: 3,2=SO | 3,3=SJ | 3,4=SD | 4,2=SP | 4,3=SK | 4,4=SE
3. Then put those two letters in front of the other digits to give, in this case, SJ9764269567.
A ten-digit reference like this is a 1 metre grid reference and we prefer a 10m reference. To get a 10m reference, simply delete the fifth and tenth digit. So SJ9764269567 becomes SJ97646956.

If you've read these instructions for the first time and think they're complicated, we promise you that after a little practice it soon becomes easy.

Latitude and longitude

Occasionally you might come across a location specified in degrees of latitude and longitude. You can easily convert it to a grid reference using the Ordnance Survey's Coordinate transformation tool in their website here (opens a new window).