County and Unitary Authority Boundaries for England and Wales, December 2016

Five vector boundary resolutions, from full to ultra-generalized, for Counties and Unitary Authorities in England and Wales. This dataset, created by the Office for National Statistics, represents administrative boundaries as they were in December 2016. It contains Ordnance Survey and ONS intellectual property rights and is available via multiple download services.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps based on the full-resolution boundaries clipped to the coastline.
• Perform spatial joins using the generalised (20m) boundaries for faster processing.
• Develop web mapping applications with the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries for lightweight display.
• Analyze the extent of administrative realms using the full-resolution boundaries that include offshore islands.

Strengths

• Provides five specific boundary resolutions, including full, 20m, 200m, and 500m generalisations.
• File sizes are explicitly listed, ranging from 168 KB for ultra-generalised to 22 MB for full-resolution clipped data.
• Contains boundaries for both England and Wales as of a specific date (December 2016).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is from December 2016; freshness should be verified for applications requiring current boundaries.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Digital vector boundaries from Ordnance Survey and ONS.

Time Range

December 2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:32:13.961128; temporal coverage is December 2016.

Geography

England and Wales