Census Merged Local Authority District Boundaries for Great Britain, 2011

Digital vector boundaries for Census Merged Local Authority Districts in England and Wales as of 31 December 2011. The Office for National Statistics provides two generalised versions, clipped to the coastline at the Mean High Water mark. Data is available via ArcGIS REST services and contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS intellectual property rights.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps of census data based on the 2011 local authority district geography.
• Perform spatial joins to aggregate point-level data to the Census Merged Local Authority District level.
• Analyze coastal administrative boundaries using the clipped-to-coastline feature mentioned in the description.
• Compare boundary detail between the generalised (20m) and super generalised (200m) versions for different scale visualizations.

Strengths

• Provides two levels of boundary generalisation (20m and 200m) for different use cases.
• Boundaries are explicitly clipped to the coastline (Mean High Water mark), enhancing cartographic accuracy.
• Contains intellectual property from authoritative sources: Ordnance Survey and the Office for National Statistics.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data reflects a specific snapshot from 31 December 2011; boundaries may have changed since.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Likely digitized and generalized from official Ordnance Survey mapping.

Time Range

As at 31 December 2011

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:11.842857; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Great Britain (specifically England and Wales)