0820021

For the first 5 years of INTEGRALs operational life the scientific Core Programme included a key component that was regular scans of the Galactic Plane. These led to a wealth of discoveries of new sources and source types a large fraction of which were highly transient. These discoveries can certainly be considered one of the strongest results from and legacies of INTEGRAL. Since AO-5 these regular scans have been discontinued and this has resulted in a significant drop in the discovery rate of new systems in and around the plane of our Galaxy. We propose to reinstate the Galactic Plane Scans as a Key Programme throughout AO8 and AO9 to allow the regular monitoring of known systems and dramatically enhance the chances of discovering new systems. Such a programme will be of high value to a very large fraction of the high energy astronomy community stimulating science immediately and furthermore contributing greatly to the INTEGRAL legacy.To this aim a total of 2 Msec /year are necessary to cover the plane with regular scans every orbit excluding the central zone to be covered by the Galactic Bulge monitoring programme (should that programme be accepted). We also suggest that in order to maximise the engagement of the scientific community the observations should be made public immediately. The team will make the IBIS and JEM-X light curves in two energy bands per science window and per observation as well as the mosaic images publicly available through the web as soon as possible after the observations have been performed. Any interesting source behaviour that emerges from our observations will be announced promptly so that rapid follow-up by the community is possible. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]