# Group a county map into countries or regions

Official GBMaps guide for the classic map maker. VectorMaps has a different interface.

Source: https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=county-regions
Updated: 2026-11-08

Ask the map assistant to group the UK county map into countries, English regions or an explicitly approximate custom arrangement. It checks all the available boundaries before applying the grouping.

## 1. Ask for the whole grouping

Open a UK Counties, Counties with Roads or Simple Counties map. Keep Use my map settings selected in the Map assistant. For example: Colour the UK county map into England’s nine regions, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each in their own colour. The assistant proposes one complete job. Apply to map carries it out; supported spoken instructions can run automatically. Undo this job restores the previous map.

[Open this step](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=county-regions#county-regions--ask)

## 2. Countries and English regions are different

The UK consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A countries grouping has four groups. A regions grouping uses the nine English regions plus Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, giving twelve UK groups. The artwork may use older county, borough and unitary boundaries; grouping it does not replace it with a new administrative boundary dataset.

[Open this step](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=county-regions#county-regions--countries)

## 3. Seven groups are an approximate custom arrangement

If you ask for roughly seven UK regions and let the assistant choose, it keeps Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland separate. It combines England into Northern England (North East, North West, Yorkshire and The Humber), Midlands (East and West Midlands), East and South East (East of England, London, South East), and South West. This is an approximate custom grouping, not seven official UK regions and not equal populations, areas or workloads. Other custom groupings are also labelled approximate.

[Open this step](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=county-regions#county-regions--seven)

## 4. UK or the entire displayed map

A UK grouping includes Northern Ireland. Any Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man and Channel Islands artwork outside the UK keeps its existing colouring. Ask for the whole displayed map to include those areas as separately named groups too. These are not UK regions; the entire displayed map may therefore need more than seven groups.

[Open this step](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=county-regions#county-regions--scope)

## 5. Check every boundary before changing the map

The assistant uses the complete list of boundaries on the current county map, including separate island pieces. Coverage checked shows how many boundaries the proposal covers. Expand it to see any areas outside the requested scope. A proposed whole-map grouping is not applied if it leaves boundaries unassigned, names unknown identifiers or puts a boundary in more than one group. Expand Coverage check to see the names needing attention; no Other counties catch-all is substituted. If the map has changed, ask again using the current map settings.

[Open this step](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=county-regions#county-regions--coverage)

## 6. Small edits stay simple

You can still ask to change one county, hide labels, adjust colours or rename a territory. Whole-map coverage checks are for complete grouping jobs. They do not require a second AI conversation or a search for each county.

[Open this step](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=county-regions#county-regions--simple)

## Related guides

- [START HERE: names, colours & territories](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=colouring)
- [How to create a postcode sales territory map](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=territory-recipe)
- [Edit names and heading directly on the legend](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=legend-editing)
- [Save, open & keep a separate copy](https://www.gbmaps.com/mcs/map-help.php?topic=save)