In 2023, almost nine million people lived in Greater London, making it the most populated ceremonial county in England. The West Midlands Metropolitan County, which contains the large city of Birmingham, was the second-largest county at 2.98 million inhabitants, followed by Greater Manchester and then West Yorkshire with populations of 2.95 million and 2.4 million, respectively. Kent, Essex, and Hampshire were the three next-largest counties in terms of population, each with around 1.89 million people. A patchwork of regions England is just one of the four countries that compose the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with England, Scotland and Wales making up Great Britain. England is therefore not to be confused with Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole. Within England, the next subdivisions are the nine regions of England, containing various smaller units such as unitary authorities, metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan districts. The counties in this statistic, however, are based on the ceremonial counties of England as defined by the Lieutenancies Act of 1997. Regions of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland Like England, the other countries of the United Kingdom have their own regional subdivisions, although with some different terminology. Scotland’s subdivisions are council areas, while Wales has unitary authorities, and Northern Ireland has local government districts. As of 2022, the most-populated Scottish council area was Glasgow City, with over 622,000 inhabitants. In Wales, Cardiff had the largest population among its unitary authorities, and in Northern Ireland, Belfast was the local government area with the most people living there.

The current counties of England are defined by the ceremonial counties, a collective name for the county areas to which are appointed a Lord Lieutenant. The office of Lord Lieutenant was created in the reign of Henry VIII. The Lord Lieutenant is the chief officer of the county and representative of the Crown. Whenever the Queen visits an area she will be accompanied by the Lord Lieutenant of that area. Legally the ceremonial counties are defined by the Lieutenancies Act 1997 as ‘Counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies in Great Britain’ with reference to the areas used for local government.

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https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/boundary-line#technical

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Source:

https://osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/BoundaryLine

Licence:

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

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Counties were formerly administrative units across the whole of the UK. Due to various administrative restructurings, however, the only administrative areas still referred to as 'counties' are the Non-Metropolitan Districts of England. The English Metropolitan Districts, although no longer administrative units, are also used for statistical purposes.

The Counties area list contains 35 areas of the following constituent English geographies:

• 27 Shire counties
• 6 Metropolitan counties
• Inner London and Outer London

Please visit ONS Beginner's Guide to UK Geography for more info.

The boundaries are available as either extent of the realm (usually this is the Mean Low Water mark but in some cases boundaries extend beyond this to include off shore islands) or

clipped to the coastline (Mean High Water mark).

In the years 1166 to 1168, a total of 6,446.15 British pounds was spent on the hiring of knights' services. The counties with the highest amount of money spent on knights' fees were Yorkshire (which is also the largest county in England), Gloucestershire and Devon. The county where the lowest amount of money was spent on hiring knights' services was Surrey, where just four pounds was spent in 1166 to 1168.

A PDF map that shows the counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom as at 1 April 2023. (File Size - 583 KB)

National and subnational mid-year population estimates for the UK and its constituent countries by administrative area, age and sex (including components of population change, median age and population density).

Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates including measures of uncertainty of the number of households by household size, for England, Scotland and Wales, as well as the regions of England.

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for the historical admin counties without associated county boroughs in England and Wales as at Census Day 1921.

The boundaries available are: (BGC) Generalised resolution - clipped to the coastline (Mean High Water mark).

Contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

This dataset is part of the Geographical repository maintained by Opendatasoft. This dataset contains data for counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom.In 1974 a two-tier administrative structure of (shire and metropolitan) counties and non-metropolitan districts was set up across England and Wales, except for the Isles of Scilly and Greater London. Council functions were divided according to the level at which they could be practised most efficiently. As a consequence, counties took on functions including education, transport, strategic planning, fire services, consumer protection, refuse disposal, smallholdings, social services and libraries, whereas each LAD had responsibility for local planning, housing, local highways, building, environmental health, refuse collection and cemeteries. Responsibility for recreation and cultural matters was divided between the two tiers. Following the Local Government Reorganisation in the 1990s, major changes were implemented to create administrations most appropriate to the needs of the area concerned. The key feature of this change was the introduction of unitary authorities: single-tier administrations with responsibility for all areas of local government. Between 1995 and 1998 these were established in a number of areas across the country, especially in medium-sized urban areas, whilst other areas retained a two-tier structure. Further local government reorganisation occurred in 2009 and there are currently 57 unitary authorities (UA) in England, and 25 shire counties split into 188 (non-metropolitan) districts. Note that due to the changes in Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly are considered a UA for coding purposes.Processors and tools are using this data.EnhancementsAdd ISO 3166-3 codes.Simplify geometries to provide better performance across the services.Add administrative hierarchy.

The population of the United Kingdom in 2023 was estimated to be approximately 68.3 million in 2023, with almost 9.48 million people living in South East England. London had the next highest population, at over 8.9 million people, followed by the North West England at 7.6 million. With the UK's population generally concentrated in England, most English regions have larger populations than the constituent countries of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which had populations of 5.5 million, 3.16 million, and 1.92 million respectively. English counties and cities The United Kingdom is a patchwork of various regional units, within England the largest of these are the regions shown here, which show how London, along with the rest of South East England had around 18 million people living there in this year. The next significant regional units in England are the 47 metropolitan and ceremonial counties. After London, the metropolitan counties of the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire were the biggest of these counties, due to covering the large urban areas of Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds respectively. Regional divisions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland The smaller countries that comprise the United Kingdom each have different local subdivisions. Within Scotland these are called council areas whereas in Wales the main regional units are called unitary authorities. Scotland's largest Council Area by population is that of Glasgow City at over 622,000, while in Wales, it was the Cardiff Unitary Authority at around 372,000. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has eleven local government districts, the largest of which is Belfast with a population of around 348,000.

This is a lookup file between local authority districts and counties, metropolitan counties and Greater London in England as at 31st December 2022. (File Size - 48KB)Field Names - LAD22CD, LAD22NM, CTY22CD, CTY22NMField Types - Text, Text, Text, Text, Field Lengths - 9, 28, 9, 18

1) County, Unitary Authority Area, Metropolitan and District ploygons from OS Opendata 2) merged into Counties and Districts polygons 3) in order to merge UK data keyed by County. OS_Counties_meta.pdf contains Ordnance Survey Data (c) Crown copyright and database right 2010. This dataset was first accessioned in the EDINA ShareGeo Open repository on 2013-04-01 and migrated to Edinburgh DataShare on 2017-02-22.

This file contains names and codes for Counties in England as at 31st December 2024. (File Size - 16 KB)Field Names - CTY24CD, CTY24NMField Types - Text, TextField Lengths - 9, 16

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Counties, in England, as at December 2023.

This file contains names and codes for Counties in England as at 31st December 2018. (File Size - 16 KB)Field Names - CTY18CD, CTY18NMField Types - text, textField Lengths - 9, 16REST URL of Feature Access Service – https://services1.arcgis.com/ESMARspQHYMw9BZ9/arcgis/rest/services/Counties_Dec_2018_Names_and_Codes_in_England_2022/FeatureServer

This is a best fit lookup between 2011 Output Areas (OA) and counties/unitary authorities as at 31 December 2018 in England. (File Size - 18 MB)Field Names - OA11CD, CTYUA18CD, CTYUA18NMField Types - Text, Text, TextField Lengths - 9, 9, 28REST URL of Feature Access Service – https://services1.arcgis.com/ESMARspQHYMw9BZ9/arcgis/rest/services/OA11_CTYUA18_EN_LU_58828e4c97234e60b45f92bb75af1ddb/FeatureServer

For more information and an overview of best-fitting follow this link - https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/f0aac7ccbfd04cda9eb03e353c613faa/about

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Counties, in England, as at December 2023.

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Counties, in England, as at December 2024.

This file contains the names and codes for counties in England and Wales as at Census day 1991 (21 April). (File Size 2KB).Field Names – CTY91CDC, CTY91CDO, CTY91CD, CTY91NM

Field Types – Text, Text, Text, Text

Field Lengths – 2, 2, 2, 28REST URL of Feature Access Service – https://services1.arcgis.com/ESMARspQHYMw9BZ9/arcgis/rest/services/Counties_21_April_1991_Names_and_Codes_in_England_and_Wales_2022/FeatureServer

As of 2023, the population density in London was by far the highest number of people per square km in the UK, at 5,690. Of the other regions and countries which constitute the United Kingdom, North West England was the next most densely populated area at 533 people per square kilometer. Scotland, by contrast, is the most sparsely populated country or region in the United Kingdom, with only 70 people per square kilometer. UK population over 67 million According to the official mid-year population estimate, the population of the United Kingdom was just almost 67.6 million in 2022. Most of the population lived in England, where an estimated 57.1 million people resided, followed by Scotland at 5.44 million, Wales at 3.13 million and finally Northern Ireland at just over 1.9 million. Within England, the South East was the region with the highest population at almost 9.38 million, followed by the London region at around 8.8 million. In terms of urban areas, Greater London is the largest city in the United Kingdom, followed by Greater Manchester and Birmingham in the North West and West Midlands regions of England. London calling London's huge size in relation to other UK cities is also reflected by its economic performance. In 2021, London's GDP was approximately 494 billion British pounds, almost a quarter of UK GDP overall. In terms of GDP per capita, Londoners had a GDP per head of 56,431 pounds, compared with an average of 33,224 for the country as a whole. Productivity, expressed as by output per hour worked, was also far higher in London than the rest of the country. In 2021, London was around 33.2 percent more productive than the rest of the country, with South East England the only other region where productivity was higher than the national average.