England and Wales County and Unitary Authority Boundaries, December 2016

Five versions of digital vector boundaries for Counties and Unitary Authorities in England and Wales, as at December 2016, ranging from full resolution to ultra generalised. The data contains both Ordnance Survey and Office for National Statistics intellectual property rights. File sizes for the ultra generalised version are 168 KB, while the full resolution version is 22 MB.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps based on administrative boundaries mentioned in the description.
• Perform spatial joins with other datasets using the ultra generalised boundaries for faster processing.
• Visualize administrative geography for England and Wales in web mapping applications using the coastline-clipped versions.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary resolutions, with file sizes ranging from 168 KB to 22 MB.
• Contains intellectual property rights from both Ordnance Survey and the Office for National Statistics.
• Boundaries are available clipped to the coastline (Mean High Water mark) for cartographic consistency.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to uk_data, covering only England and Wales.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Time Range

December 2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:31:43.273694; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England and Wales