Counties

Someone was asking about getting the boundaries of UK counties (and by that, I believe they meant the ceremonial counties for displaying a summary map). However, this is more confusing than at first glance – not everything you would call a county has a county council, which was quickly noticed, and even some of those county councils will have gaps due to bits of them having become unitary authorities.

So here’s how I would do it for Great Britain (we don’t hold any boundaries for Northern Ireland, sadly).

England

Scotland

Depending on how detailed you want to be, either use the 32 unitary authorities (UTA) in Scotland directly, or group them into the 12 old regions as follows:

Borders Scottish Borders
Central Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, Stirling
Dumfries and Galloway Dumfries and Galloway
Fife Fife
Grampian Aberdeenshire (Banff and Buchan, Gordon, Kincardine and Deeside), Aberdeen, Moray
Highland Highland
Lothian West Lothian, Edinburgh, Midlothian, East Lothian
Orkney Islands Orkney Islands
Strathclyde Argyll and Bute, North Ayrshire, East Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, Inverclyde, Renfrewshire, West Dunbartonshire, East Dunbartonshire, Glasgow, East Renfrewshire, North Lanarkshire
Shetland Islands Shetland Islands
Tayside Angus, Dundee, Perth and Kinross
Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles) Comhairle nan Eilean Siar

Wales

Again, depending on the detail needed, you could either use the 22 unitary authorities (UTA) in Wales directly, or group them into the eight regions as follows:

Gwent Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen, Monmouthshire, Newport
South Glamorgan Cardiff, Vale of Glamorgan
Mid Glamorgan Merthry Tydfil, Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf
West Glamorgan Neath Port Talbot, Swansea
Dyfed Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire
Powys Powys
Gwynedd Gwynedd, Isle of Anglesey
Clwyd Wrexham, Flintshire, Denbighshire, Conwy