England County Boundaries as of December 2016 in Multiple Resolutions

Digital vector boundaries for Counties in England, as at 31 December 2016. The dataset contains five boundary versions, including full resolution and several generalised versions clipped to the coastline. It is provided by the Office for National Statistics and contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

Use Cases

• Create detailed maps of English counties based on the full-resolution boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins or analysis using the generalised (20m) boundaries for computational efficiency.
• Visualize county-level data on web maps using the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries for faster loading.
• Analyze coastal administrative extents using the boundaries clipped to the Mean High Water mark.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary versions, including full resolution and four generalised/clipped options.
• Specific file sizes are listed for each version, ranging from 73 KB to 10 MB.
• Boundaries are temporally specific, representing the administrative state as of 31 December 2016.

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 13:31:42.729128; freshness should be verified.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics (UK), incorporating Ordnance Survey data.

Collection Method

Official digital vector boundaries from UK national mapping and statistics agencies.

Time Range

Snapshot as of 31 December 2016.

Freshness

Data represents a snapshot from 31 December 2016. Metadata was last updated on 2026-07-08.

Geography

Counties in England.