England and Wales County and Unitary Authority Boundaries for 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 variants, including full-resolution and multiple generalized versions clipped to the coastline. It is provided by the Office for National Statistics and contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps of England and Wales based on the described administrative boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins with other UK datasets using the provided county and unitary authority geometries.
• Optimize map rendering performance by selecting the appropriate generalized boundary version (20m, 200m, 500m).
• Analyze coastal administrative units using the boundaries clipped to the Mean High Water mark.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary variants, including full-resolution and three generalized versions (20m, 200m, 500m).
• File sizes are explicitly listed, ranging from 160 KB for the ultra-generalized version to 22 MB for the full-resolution clipped version.
• Contains authoritative data from the Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey.

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.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Time Range

December 2015

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:22.324438; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England and Wales