Counties and Unitary Authorities: England and Wales Administrative Boundaries

April 2019 digital vector boundaries for Counties and Unitary Authorities in England and Wales. The dataset provides full-resolution boundaries clipped to the coastline and contains intellectual property rights from both Ordnance Survey and the Office for National Statistics. It is available via multiple geospatial web services, including ArcGIS REST and WFS endpoints.

Use Cases

• Mapping regional administrative units based on the BFC (Full resolution - clipped to the coastline) boundaries.
• Performing spatial joins for demographic or economic data using the county and unitary authority geometries.
• Creating base maps for local government reporting and public information services.
• Integrating boundary data into GIS software via the provided WFS or ArcGIS FeatureServer endpoints.

Strengths

• Provides full-resolution, coastline-clipped vector boundaries for precise mapping.
• Contains intellectual property from two authoritative sources: Ordnance Survey and the Office for National Statistics.
• Available through multiple standardized geospatial web services (WFS, ArcGIS REST API), facilitating access.

Limitations

• Metadata is incomplete; specific column names, row counts, and file sizes (beyond one 16 MB reference) are unknown.
• There is a conflict in the reported last updated dates between platforms (2026-07-08 vs. 2022-09-08), casting doubt on data maintenance.
• The spatial coverage is explicitly for England and Wales, not the entire United Kingdom as suggested by one platform's description.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey

Collection Method

Official digital vector boundary creation for administrative reporting.

Time Range

April 2019

Freshness

2026-07-08 13:30:53.315270

Geography

England and Wales