Local Authority District Boundaries in Great Britain, December 2009

December 2009 digital vector boundaries for Local Authority Districts in Great Britain. The dataset contains five boundary versions, from full resolution to ultra generalised (500m), all clipped to the coastline. It is provided by the Office for National Statistics and contains Ordnance Survey and ONS intellectual property.

Use Cases

• Create historical maps of UK local government areas based on the 2009 boundaries.
• Perform spatial joins with other 2009-era data using the provided vector boundaries.
• Develop simplified basemaps for web applications using the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries.
• Analyze coastal administrative extents using the full resolution boundaries clipped to the Mean High Water mark.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary resolutions, with file sizes ranging from 367 KB to 49 MB.
• Includes both full extent and coastline-clipped versions for different analytical needs.
• Boundaries are explicitly dated to December 2009, providing a specific historical snapshot.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is from 2009 and may not reflect current administrative boundaries.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale joins.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Digital vector boundaries derived from Ordnance Survey data.

Time Range

December 2009

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:19.378470; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Great Britain