NUTS Level 1 Boundaries for England and Wales, January 2015

England and Wales digital vector boundaries for Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) level 1 areas as of 1 January 2015. The dataset contains five boundary versions at different resolutions, from full extent to ultra generalised. Office for National Statistics provides this data under the OGL-UK-3.0 license.

Use Cases

• Create regional statistical maps based on the NUTS1 boundary definitions.
• Perform spatial joins with other datasets using the coastline-clipped boundary files.
• Optimize map rendering performance by selecting the appropriate generalised (20m, 200m, 500m) boundary version.
• Analyze territorial extent for planning or environmental studies using the full realm boundaries.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary versions, including full resolution (8-14 MB) and multiple generalised options (1 MB to 69 KB).
• Contains boundaries for a specific, documented date: 1 January 2015.
• Includes both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights, indicating authoritative sourcing.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is static for January 2015; freshness should be verified for current analyses.
• Row count and specific feature attributes are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Likely digitized from official cartographic sources.

Time Range

As of 1 January 2015

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:28.950223; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England and Wales