Progressively Enhancing Maps for UK Government Services

IntroductionIf there’s one component I distinctly remember frequently being asked about while working at Government Digital Service (GDS), it’s a maps component. You may wonder why that is, well, it’s related to Progressive Enhancement (PE). More specifically, GDS’s unwavering stance on the use of Progressive Enhancement, when building all UK government services. If you don’t know what PE is, then luckily for you, I've written about it before on a previous blog post Hack to the Future - Frontend. This is a huge post I wrote in August 2025 all about what Frontend Development used to look like before sane browser standards existed. Including all the weird and wonderful hacks and workarounds Frontend Developers had to use to make a web page look like a designer wanted. I specifically have a section in that post is all about Progressive Enhancement. So, if you are looking for some information on Progressive Enhancement, I highly recommend having a read of that section before proceeding…

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