England County Boundaries: Vector Data for 2015 and 2016

England's county boundaries are provided as digital vector data for two reference dates: 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2016. The dataset includes multiple boundary resolutions, from full detail to highly generalised versions, with options clipped to the coastline or extending to the realm's extent. It contains intellectual property from both the Ordnance Survey and the Office for National Statistics.

Use Cases

• Regional mapping and cartography based on the multiple generalised boundary resolutions.
• Administrative boundary analysis for policy or service planning using the official county definitions.
• Coastal zone analysis by comparing boundaries clipped to the Mean High Water mark with the full extent of the realm.
• Creating simplified visualisations for dashboards or reports using the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries.

Strengths

• Provides boundaries for two distinct reference years (2015 and 2016), allowing for temporal comparison.
• Offers five specific resolution options, from full detail (7-10 MB files) to ultra generalised (73 KB files), catering to different use cases.
• Contains official intellectual property from authoritative sources: Ordnance Survey and the Office for National Statistics.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as column names, row counts, and specific file sizes are missing from the provided platform entries.
• The 'last updated' metadata field (2026-07-08) appears to be a future date, which conflicts with the dataset's 2015/2016 reference period and suggests a potential platform error.
• Descriptions are repeated across entries, indicating sparse, non-detailed metadata beyond the core boundary information.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Ordnance Survey

Collection Method

Official digital vector boundary creation for administrative geography.

Time Range

2015-12-31 to 2016-12-31

Freshness

2026-07-08 13:32:21.143416

Geography

England