County Boundaries for England, Ultra Generalised and Clipped to Coastline (December 2016)

England's county administrative boundaries as of 31 December 2016, provided by the Office for National Statistics. The dataset includes five vector boundary versions, ranging from full resolution to ultra generalised (500m), all clipped to the Mean High Water coastline mark. It contains Ordnance Survey and ONS intellectual property rights and is available in multiple formats including GeoJSON and KML.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps of England based on county-level administrative units.
• Perform spatial joins with other datasets using the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries for faster processing.
• Visualize regional patterns in England using coastline-clipped boundaries for accurate coastal representation.
• Integrate county boundaries into web mapping applications using the provided GeoJSON or KML formats.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary versions, including an ultra generalised (500m) file sized at 73 KB for lightweight applications.
• Boundaries are temporally specific, representing the state of counties as of 31 December 2016.
• Includes both full-resolution extent-of-the-realm and multiple coastline-clipped variants for different use cases.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and column definitions require manual inspection after download.
• Row count and specific column names are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for detailed analysis.
• Data reflects a specific snapshot from 2016; administrative boundaries may have changed since.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Digital vector boundaries derived from official administrative geography.

Time Range

As at 31 December 2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:32:27.415933; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England