England and Wales County and Unitary Authority Boundaries, December 2015

Digital vector boundaries for counties, metropolitan districts, London boroughs, and unitary authorities in England and Wales as of December 2015. The dataset contains five boundary resolutions, including full resolution (17-22 MB) and super generalised (464 KB) versions clipped to the coastline. Contains both Ordnance Survey and Office for National Statistics intellectual property rights.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps based on administrative units mentioned in the description.
• Perform spatial joins to aggregate point data to county/unitary authority level based on the provided boundaries.
• Visualize regional patterns in England and Wales using the super generalised (200m) boundaries for faster rendering.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary resolutions, with file sizes ranging from 160 KB to 22 MB, allowing users to choose based on detail and performance needs.
• Contains boundaries for multiple administrative unit types: counties, metropolitan districts, London boroughs, and unitary authorities.
• Includes both full extent and coastline-clipped versions for different analytical purposes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is specific to 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

Collection Method

Likely digitized and maintained by national mapping and statistical agencies.

Time Range

December 2015

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:24.548363; freshness should be verified as the boundaries reflect a 2015 snapshot.

Geography

England and Wales