County Boundaries for England as of December 2016 in Super Generalised Format

Digital vector boundaries for Counties in England, as at 31 December 2016. The dataset contains five versions of the boundaries, including full resolution and multiple generalised (20m, 200m, 500m) 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 thematic maps of England based on county-level administrative boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins or analysis using the super generalised (200m) boundaries for computational efficiency.
• Integrate county boundaries into a Geographic Information System (GIS) for regional planning.
• Visualize the extent of county jurisdictions relative to the coastline using the clipped versions.

Strengths

• Provides boundaries as of a specific date (31 December 2016), offering a consistent historical snapshot.
• Includes five distinct boundary versions, from full resolution (7-10 MB) to ultra generalised (73 KB), catering to different use cases.
• Contains intellectual property from authoritative sources (Ordnance Survey and Office for National Statistics).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to uk_data, focusing solely on England.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Likely derived from official cartographic and administrative sources.

Time Range

As at 31 December 2016.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:16.603348; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England