OS NGD Administrative and Statistical Units
Introduction to the theme
The OS National Geographic Database (NGD) Administrative and Statistical Units Theme provides a definitive dataset of administrative and electoral boundaries and their names for England, Wales and Scotland. Government Statistical Service (GSS) codes are contained within the data and are supplied by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the National Records of Scotland (NRS).
In comparison to existing OS data, the new OS NGD data for this theme has been enriched with additional attribution, including the following:
A Description attribute to provide a one-word or simple description of each feature.
Alternative name and language values (where appropriate).
Land area, tidal area and total area values in hectares.
isDetached values (where appropriate), which are applied to portions of local government and parliamentary constituency areas that are separated from the main area and are completely surrounded by other areas.
isCommon to Parishes values (where appropriate) to indicate where an area is common to more than one parish.
An isBorough attribute to identify boundaries which are also boroughs.
Boundary Parent reference values (where appropriate) to indicate the hierarchy of boundaries (for example, a district ward will reference the district).
Please note that the OS NGD Administrative and Statistical Units Theme is only available via OS Select+Build and is not available via the OS NGD API – Features.
Data structure
The OS NGD Administrative and Statistical Units Theme is made up of the Boundaries Collection, which in turn is comprised of 17 feature types.
Unique identifiers
At least one of the following three unique identifiers is provided with each feature within the OS NGD Administrative and Statistical Units Theme:
OSID (Ordnance Survey Identifier): The primary identifier and unique key for this theme.
TOID (Topographic Identifier): An additional secondary identifier which can aid further data linking. TOIDs are an optional attribute and therefore will not always be provided with every feature.
GSS (Government Statistical Service) codes: A system of referencing for administrative, electoral, and statistical geographies.
Please note that Boundary High Water Mark, Ceremonial County, Historic County, Historic European Region, and Polling District features do not have GSS codes or TOIDs allocated to them; however, they do have OSIDs allocated to them. Polling District features have an additional unique identifier of pollingdistrictid (Polling District Identifier).
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