| Revision as of 04:22, 1 September 2002 editAndre Engels (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers20,762 editsm disambiguate← Previous edit | Revision as of 11:56, 11 September 2002 edit undoRcingham (talk | contribs)332 edits part of Middlesex now in Surrey (alas)Next edit → | ||
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| :] -- now considered a ], not a county. | :] -- now considered a ], not a county. | ||
| :] -- now a unitary authority | :] -- now a unitary authority | ||
Revision as of 11:56, 11 September 2002
A county is one of the larger divisions of local government in England. Counties are usually divided into several districts, each with its own separate administration (districts may be called boroughs in some cases).
The county boundaries have varied considerably over the centuries. When the counties were originally defined, they often included large areas of land owned by the local abbeys, resulting in a number of counties having small detached parts entirely surrounded by some other county. After boundary changes from the 1880s to the 1960s, many of these anomalies were resolved and a number of parishes were incorporated in a more logical county. The last such anomalies were removed by the local government reorganisation in 1974.
In the 1974 reorganisation, six new metropolitan counties were created to administer the larger urban areas: the West Midlands metropolitan county (covering Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and the Black Country, and including former parts of Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire); Greater Manchester; Merseyside (Liverpool and neighbouring districts); West Yorkshire (Leeds, Bradford and nearby towns); South Yorkshire (Sheffield, Barnsley and Doncaster); and Tyne and Wear (Newcastle and Sunderland). Additional non-metropolitan counties were created for areas centred on a major city but divided by former county boundaries, in Avon (Bristol and surroundings), Humberside (Hull) and Cleveland (Middlesbrough/Teesside).
The metropolitan counties were abolished as administrative entities in 1986 along with the county of Greater London (created in 1965) and broken up into their constituent districts, though statistical data are still published for the 1974-86 county areas. Avon, Humberside and Cleveland were also scrapped in 1996, their districts becoming unitary authorities combining county and district functions, and 1999 saw the restoration of Rutland, formerly the smallest county in England, and Herefordshire as unitary authories, after they had been respectively merged with Leicestershire and Worcestershire 25 years earlier.
Existing counties - there are 34 counties that have separate district councils:
- Bedfordshire
- Buckinghamshire
- Cambridgeshire
- Cheshire
- Cornwall
- Cumbria
- Derbyshire
- Devon
- Dorset
- Durham
- East Sussex
- Essex
- Gloucestershire
- Hampshire
- Hertfordshire
- Kent
- Lancashire
- Leicestershire
- Lincolnshire
- Norfolk
- North Yorkshire
- Northamptonshire
- Northumberland
- Nottinghamshire
- Oxfordshire
- Shropshire
- Somerset
- Staffordshire
- Suffolk
- Surrey
- Warwickshire
- West Sussex
- Wiltshire
- Worcestershire
The Isle of Wight is nominally a county, but has no districts.
Former counties -- some still exist as a single unit, but which is no longer a county. Others no longer have a local government but may still appear on statistical tables and postal addresses.
- Avon -- now unitary authorities
- Berkshire -- now unitary authorities
- Herefordshire - now a unitary authority
- Huntingdonshire
- Middlesex -- part of Greater London, except for the south-west corner, which is now in Surrey
- Greater London -- now considered a region, not a county.
- Rutland -- now a unitary authority
- Sussex -- apparently divided into West Sussex, East Sussex
- The Wrekin -- now part of Telford and Wrekin unitary authority.
- Yorkshire
- West Midlands metropolitan county -- now metropolitan districts.
Traditional Counties
There is some debate about the validity of abolitions of or major boundary changes to counties, which would -- for example -- question the above citation of Berkshire as a "former county".
Advocates of the "traditional counties" (also known as the "geographic counties") maintain that the counties are entities too important for laws simply to redefine in this way, and furthermore that in 1974 at the time of the creation of the administrative counties -- which is what are described above -- the government specifically stated that the traditional counties are not abolished: "The new county boundaries are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of counties, nor is it intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change, despite the different names adopted by the new administrative counties".
To confuse matters, in 1974 the Post Office recommended using new "postal counties" in addresses, which coincided with neither the new administrative counties nor the traditional counties but drew on both. It seems that it was difficult for the general public to sustain multiple notions of what a county was, and since 1974 most maps and official usages such as road signs have followed the administrative counties exclusively.
More recently, especially since the 1996 and 1999 reorganizations, it is apparent that the traditional counties have -- through cultural means such as sports teams and classic literature, and simply thanks to their stability -- endured their supposed abolition, and the Post Office is much more flexible on how letters are addressed, often preferring the traditional form.
- Association of British Counties http://www.abcounties.co.uk/