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

The China Post provides postal service-related information, primarily offering Excel files for counties and towns in Chinese and English (Hanyu Pinyin, csv format).

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 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.

A PDF map that shows the local authority districts, counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom as at April 2023. The map has been created to show the United Kingdom from country level down to local authority district level. (File Size - 1,909 KB)

The 2020 TIGER/Line Shapefiles contain current geographic extent and boundaries of both legal and statistical entities (which have no governmental standing) for the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Island areas. This vintage includes boundaries of governmental units that match the data from the surveys that use 2020 geography (e.g., 2020 Population Estimates and the 2020 American Community Survey). In addition to geographic boundaries, the 2020 TIGER/Line Shapefiles also include geographic feature shapefiles and relationship files. Feature shapefiles represent the point, line and polygon features in the MTDB (e.g., roads and rivers). Relationship files contain additional attribute information users can join to the shapefiles. Both the feature shapefiles and relationship files reflect updates made in the database through September 2020. To see how the geographic entities, relate to one another, please see our geographic hierarchy diagrams here.Census Urbanized Areashttps://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2020/UACCensus Urban/Rural Census Block Shapefileshttps://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php2020 TIGER/Line and Redistricting shapefiles:https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.2020.htmlTechnical documentation:https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/data/tiger/tgrshp2020/TGRSHP2020_TechDoc.pdfTIGERweb REST Services:https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerwebmain/TIGERweb_restmapservice.htmlTIGERweb WMS Services:https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerwebmain/TIGERweb_wms.htmlThe legal entities included in these shapefiles are:American Indian Off-Reservation Trust LandsAmerican Indian Reservations – FederalAmerican Indian Reservations – StateAmerican Indian Tribal Subdivisions (within legal American Indian areas)Alaska Native Regional CorporationsCongressional Districts – 116th CongressConsolidated CitiesCounties and Equivalent Entities (except census areas in Alaska)Estates (US Virgin Islands only)Hawaiian Home LandsIncorporated PlacesMinor Civil DivisionsSchool Districts – ElementarySchool Districts – SecondarySchool Districts – UnifiedStates and Equivalent EntitiesState Legislative Districts – UpperState Legislative Districts – LowerSubminor Civil Divisions (Subbarrios in Puerto Rico)The statistical entities included in these shapefiles are:Alaska Native Village Statistical AreasAmerican Indian/Alaska Native Statistical AreasAmerican Indian Tribal Subdivisions (within Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Areas)Block Groups3-5Census AreasCensus BlocksCensus County Divisions (Census Subareas in Alaska)Unorganized Territories (statistical county subdivisions)Census Designated Places (CDPs)Census TractsCombined New England City and Town AreasCombined Statistical AreasMetropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and related statistical areasMetropolitan DivisionsNew England City and Town AreasNew England City and Town Area DivisionsOklahoma Tribal Statistical AreasPublic Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs)State Designated Tribal Statistical AreasTribal Designated Statistical AreasUrban AreasZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs)Shapefiles - Features:Address Range-FeatureAll Lines (called Edges)All RoadsArea HydrographyArea LandmarkCoastlineLinear HydrographyMilitary InstallationPoint LandmarkPrimary RoadsPrimary and Secondary RoadsTopological Faces (polygons with all geocodes)Relationship Files:Address Range-Feature NameAddress RangesFeature NamesTopological Faces – Area LandmarkTopological Faces – Area HydrographyTopological Faces – Military Installations

This archive contains aerial photography of UK boroughs (towns/cities) and counties. The scale of the photographs depends to some extent on the borough/county, but is predominantly 1:5000 for towns/cities and 1:10000 for complete counties.

These vertical aerial photographs are taken with a large camera mounted in the floor of an aeroplane flying in a series of pre-planned flight lines. The images overlap by 60% along the flight line to allow for stereoscopic (3D) viewing. There is a 25% overlap between flight lines.

In addition to their prime application in photogrammetric mapping (from updating and contouring existing maps to preparing large scale engineering plans), air photos are used for environmental studies, general planning, land use and land capability, soils, pollution, forestry, mining and quarrying, housing and leisure development, agriculture, geology, water, transport and civil engineering, boundary disputes, public enquiries, etc.

The data is stored mainly as colour photographic negatives and can be supplied as both digital and photographic products (positive or negative). To find out what imagery is available for a specific area, a cover search can be performed free of charge. Price lists and further information about cover searches are available, on request, from the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC).

Note: All photography is flown to RICS Specification for Aerial Photography Issue III, see references.

In 2016, it was estimated that Birmingham had the largest Muslim population of any local authority in England and Wales at approximately 280 thousand people. Newham and Tower Hamlets, both boroughs of London, had the second and third-largest Muslim populations at 135 and 128 thousand respectively.

London had the highest unemployment rate among regions of the United Kingdom in the first quarter of 2025 at ****percent, while for the UK as a whole, the unemployment rate was ****percent. Three other regions also had an unemployment rate higher than the national average, while Northern Ireland had the lowest unemployment rate in this time period, at ****percent. Labor market recovery after COVID-19 After reaching historically low levels of unemployment in 2019, there was a noticeable spike in the UK unemployment rate in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. After peaking at ****percent in late 2020, the unemployment rate declined throughout 2021 and 2022. High levels of job vacancies, resignations, and staff shortages in 2022, were all indicative of a very tight labor market that year, but all these measures have started to point in the direction of a slightly looser labor market. UK's regional economic divide While the North of England has some of the country’s largest cities, the sheer size and economic power of London is much larger than the UK's other urban agglomerations. Partly, due to the size of London, the United Kingdom is one of Europe’s most centralized counties, and there is a clear divide between the economic prospects of north and south England. In 2022, for example, the gross domestic product per head in London was ****** British pounds, far higher than the UK average of *******pounds, and significantly larger than North East England, the region with the lowest GDP per head at *******pounds.

In 2023, London had a gross domestic product of over 569 billion British pounds, by far the most of any region of the United Kingdom. The region of South East England which surrounds London had the second-highest GDP in this year, at over 360 billion pounds. North West England, which includes the major cities of Manchester and Liverpool, had the third-largest GDP among UK regions, at almost 250 billion pounds. Levelling Up the UK London’s economic dominance of the UK can clearly be seen when compared to the other regions of the country. In terms of GDP per capita, the gap between London and the rest of the country is striking, standing at over 63,600 pounds per person in the UK capital, compared with just over 37,100 pounds in the rest of the country. To address the economic imbalance, successive UK governments have tried to implement "levelling-up policies", which aim to boost investment and productivity in neglected areas of the country. The success of these programs going forward may depend on their scale, as it will likely take high levels of investment to reverse economic neglect regions have faced in the recent past. Overall UK GDP The gross domestic product for the whole of the United Kingdom amounted to 2.56 trillion British pounds in 2024. During this year, GDP grew by 0.9 percent, following a growth rate of 0.4 percent in 2023. Due to the overall population of the UK growing faster than the economy, however, GDP per capita in the UK fell in both 2023 and 2024. Nevertheless, the UK remains one of the world’s biggest economies, with just five countries (the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India) having larger economies. It is it likely that several other countries will overtake the UK economy in the coming years, with Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico all expected to have larger economies than Britain by 2050.

This is the ONS Postcode Directory (ONSPD) for the United Kingdom as at February 2023 in Comma Separated Variable (CSV) and ASCII text (TXT) formats. This file contains the multi CSVs so that postcode areas can be opened in MS Excel. To download the zip file click the Download button. The ONSPD relates both current and terminated postcodes in the United Kingdom to a range of current statutory administrative, electoral, health and other area geographies. It also links postcodes to pre-2002 health areas, 1991 Census enumeration districts for England and Wales, 2001 Census Output Areas (OA) and Super Output Areas (SOA) for England and Wales, 2001 Census OAs and SOAs for Northern Ireland and 2001 Census OAs and Data Zones (DZ) for Scotland. It now contains 2021 Census OAs and SOAs for England and Wales. It helps support the production of area based statistics from postcoded data. The ONSPD is produced by ONS Geography, who provide geographic support to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and geographic services used by other organisations. The ONSPD is issued quarterly. (File size - 234 MB)NOTE: The 2022 ONSPDs included an incorrect update of the ITL field with two LA changes in Northamptonshire. This error has been corrected from the February 2023 ONSPD.NOTE: There was an issue with the originally published file where some change orders yet to be included in OS Boundary-LineÔ (including The Cumbria (Structural Changes) Order 2022, The North Yorkshire (Structural Changes) Order 2022 and The Somerset (Structural Changes) Order 2022) were mistakenly implemented for terminated postcodes. Version 2 corrects this, so that ward codes E05014171–E05014393 are not yet included. Please note that this product contains Royal Mail, Gridlink, LPS (Northern Ireland), Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.