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

England and Wales digital vector boundaries for Counties and Unitary Authorities as of December 2016. The dataset contains five boundary versions at different resolutions, from full extent to ultra-generalized, with file sizes ranging from 168 KB to 22 MB. It is provided by the Office for National Statistics and contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

Use Cases

• Create detailed regional maps based on full-resolution boundaries extending to the Mean Low Water mark.
• Perform spatial analysis using coastline-clipped boundaries aligned to the Mean High Water mark.
• Develop web mapping applications using the ultra-generalized (500m) boundaries for faster rendering.
• Compare administrative extents using the different resolution versions (20m, 200m, 500m) provided.

Strengths

• Offers five distinct boundary versions for flexibility, from full resolution (17-22 MB) to ultra-generalized (168 KB).
• Explicitly documents the coastline clipping standard (Mean High Water mark) for the clipped versions.
• Provides direct REST service URLs for programmatic access and download via ArcGIS for INSPIRE.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is a snapshot from December 2016; administrative boundaries may have changed since.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale statistical joins.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Likely digitized and maintained by national mapping and statistical agencies.

Time Range

December 2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:23.927508; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England and Wales