England and Wales County and Unitary Authority Boundaries, December 2016

Digital vector boundaries for Counties and Unitary Authorities in England and Wales as of December 2016. The dataset contains five boundary versions at different resolutions, from full resolution to ultra generalised (500m). 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 socio-economic indicators based on the provided administrative boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins to aggregate point data to county/unitary authority level based on the vector boundaries.
• Optimize map rendering performance for web applications by using the super generalised (200m) or ultra generalised (500m) boundary versions.
• Analyze coastal administrative extents using the boundaries clipped to the Mean High Water mark.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary versions, including file sizes ranging from 168 KB to 22 MB, allowing for use-case optimization.
• Contains boundaries as of a specific date (December 2016), providing a consistent snapshot.
• Includes both full extent and coastline-clipped versions, offering flexibility for different mapping needs.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Time Range

December 2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:32:57.035762; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England and Wales