Local Administrative Units Level 2 Boundaries for England and Wales, December 2015

Digital vector boundaries for local administrative units (LAU2) in England and Wales as of December 2015. The dataset contains four boundary variants, including full-resolution and generalised versions clipped to the coastline. It is published by the Office for National Statistics and contains Ordnance Survey intellectual property.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps of socio-economic indicators based on LAU2 boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins with other UK datasets using the generalised boundary files.
• Analyze regional administrative structures in England and Wales based on the December 2015 snapshot.

Strengths

• Provides four distinct boundary variants, including super generalised (200m) files for lightweight applications.
• Contains intellectual property from both Ordnance Survey and the Office for National Statistics.
• Specific file sizes are provided for each boundary variant, with the super generalised version being 2 MB.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Freshness should be verified; the data is a snapshot from December 2015, last updated in 2026.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale statistical analysis.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Time Range

December 2015

Freshness

Snapshot from December 2015; metadata last updated 2026-07-08.

Geography

England and Wales