England and Wales County and Unitary Authority Boundaries as of December 2015

Digital vector boundaries for counties, metropolitan districts, London boroughs, and unitary authorities in England and Wales. The dataset contains five boundary versions at different resolutions, from full resolution to ultra generalised (500m), with file sizes ranging from 160 KB to 22 MB. It is provided by the Office for National Statistics and contains Ordnance Survey and ONS intellectual property rights.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps for demographic or economic analysis based on the provided administrative boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins to aggregate point data (e.g., population counts) to county or unitary authority level.
• Generate simplified boundary files for web mapping applications using the generalised (20m, 200m, 500m) versions.
• Analyze coastal administrative extents using the boundaries clipped to the Mean High Water mark.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary resolutions, including ultra generalised files as small as 160 KB for lightweight applications.
• Includes both full extent and coastline-clipped versions, offering flexibility for different mapping needs.
• File sizes are explicitly listed, with the full resolution clipped version being 22 MB and the generalised (20m) version being 3 MB.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The data represents a snapshot from December 2015; administrative boundaries may have changed since then.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale statistical analysis.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics (UK), Ordnance Survey

Collection Method

Official digital vector boundaries from national mapping and statistics agencies.

Time Range

December 2015

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:21.332269; freshness should be verified as the underlying boundary data is from 2015.

Geography

England and Wales