England County Boundaries as of December 2015 in Multiple Resolutions

England's 'shire' county digital vector boundaries as of 31 December 2015. The dataset contains boundaries at five resolutions, from full resolution to ultra generalised, with file sizes ranging from 72 KB to 10 MB. It is provided by the Office for National Statistics and contains Ordnance Survey and ONS intellectual property rights.

Use Cases

• Create detailed maps of English counties based on the full-resolution boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins with other UK datasets using the generalised boundary files for computational efficiency.
• Analyze coastal administrative extents using the boundaries clipped to the Mean High Water mark.
• Visualize county-level data on web maps using the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries for faster loading.

Strengths

• Provides boundaries at five specific resolutions: full, generalised (20m), super generalised (200m), and ultra generalised (500m).
• Includes specific file sizes for each resolution, such as 10 MB for full resolution clipped and 72 KB for ultra generalised.
• Contains a specific snapshot date of 31 December 2015 for the administrative boundaries.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:23.489163; freshness should be verified as the boundaries are from 2015.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics, Ordnance Survey

Collection Method

Official digital vector boundaries for administrative units.

Time Range

Snapshot as of 31 December 2015.

Freshness

The dataset metadata was last updated on 2026-07-08, but the data itself represents a snapshot from 31 December 2015.

Geography

England