The counties of the United Kingdom are subnational divisions of the United Kingdom , used for the purposes of administrative, geographical and political demarcation. The older term, shire is historically equivalent to county . By the Middle Ages , county had become established as the unit of local government, at least in England . By the early 17th century, all of England, Wales , Scotland , and Ireland had been separated into counties. In Scotland shire was the only term used until after the Act of Union 1707 .
38-604: Since the early 19th century, counties have been adapted to meet new administrative and political requirements, and the word county (often with a qualifier) has been used in different senses for different purposes. In some areas of England and Wales, counties still perform the functions of modern local government. In other parts of the United Kingdom, especially within large metropolitan areas, they have been replaced with alternative unitary authorities , which are considered 'county level' authorities. Today, these have largely replaced
76-413: A Lord-Lieutenant are called lieutenancy areas . The thirteen historic counties of Wales were fixed by statute in 1535 (although counties such as Pembrokeshire date from 1138). The Administrative Counties of Wales created in 1889 were based on these. In 1974 a new system was created using significantly different entities. These were changed in 1996 and since then Wales has been entirely divided into
114-417: A county or combined authority . In Canada, each province creates its own system of local government, so terminology varies substantially. In certain provinces (e.g. Alberta , Nova Scotia ) there is only one level of local government in that province, so no special term is used to describe the situation. British Columbia has only one such municipality, Northern Rockies Regional Municipality , which
152-600: A contiguous area and adjusted boundaries where civil parishes straddled county boundaries, or had fragments in more than one county. The counties of Ross and Cromarty were merged to form Ross and Cromarty . One region and various districts, created in 1975, had areas similar to those of earlier counties, and various council areas, created in 1996, are also similar. Two of the three islands areas— Orkney and Shetland —have boundaries identical to those of earlier counties. Scotland has also registration counties , which are in current use. The areas of Scotland that are appointed
190-636: A recognisably modern form emerged during the late 19th century. Administrative counties and county boroughs were first established in Wales in 1889. Urban and rural districts were formed in 1894. These were replaced in 1974 by a two-tier authority system across the country comprising eight counties and, within them, thirty-seven districts. This system was itself replaced by the introduction of 22 single-tier authorities in 1996. From 1889 to 1974, counties made up of administrative counties and county boroughs were used for local government purposes. The counties were created by
228-681: A single tier of local government with some functions shared between groups of adjacent authorities. A single-tier system has existed in Northern Ireland since 1973. For many years the description of the number of tiers in UK local government arrangements has routinely ignored any current or previous bodies at the lowest level of authorities elected by the voters within their area such as parish (in England and Wales) or community councils; such bodies do not exist or have not existed in all areas. Northern Ireland
266-749: A system of unitary authorities (also known as principal areas ). Eleven of the 22 unitary authorities are legally "counties", and eleven are county boroughs , although informally all are referred to as "counties". The areas of Wales that appoint a Lord-Lieutenant are the preserved counties of Wales which are, for the most part, combinations of principal areas chosen to approximate to the counties constituted in 1974. There are six counties in Northern Ireland. In order of landmass these are; Tyrone , Antrim , Down , Londonderry , Fermanagh and Armagh . The six historic counties of Northern Ireland are no longer in use for administrative purposes. Combined with
304-404: Is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national government. Typically unitary authorities cover towns or cities which are large enough to function independently of a council or other authority. An authority can be a unit of
342-559: Is a territorial collectivity, with legal personality and fiscal autonomy. In New Zealand , a unitary authority is a territorial authority (district, city or metropolitan area) that also performs the functions of a regional council (first-level division). There are five unitary authorities, they are (with the year they were constituted): Gisborne District Council (1989), Tasman District Council (1992), Nelson City Council (1992), Marlborough District Council (1992), and Auckland Council (2010). The Chatham Islands , located east of
380-544: Is divided into eleven districts for local government purposes. In Northern Ireland local councils have no responsibility for education, road building or housing (though they do nominate members to the advisory Northern Ireland Housing Council ). Their functions include waste and recycling services , leisure and community services, building control and local economic and cultural development. Since their reorganisation in 2015 councils in Northern Ireland have also taken on responsibility for planning functions. The collection of rates
418-534: Is handled by the Land and Property Services agency. Local authorities in Scotland are unitary in nature but not in name. The Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 created a single tier of local government throughout Scotland. On 1 April 1996, 32 local government areas, each with a council , replaced the previous two-tier structure , which had regional, islands and district councils. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (formerly
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#1732858812356456-651: Is not subdivided into cantons , but its 20 districts are considered equivalent. The department councils of the two departments of Corsica and of the region merged into a unitary authority, officially a collectivité territoriale . Its area of competence covers the whole administrative region and the two administrative departments (which were kept at state level with their two prefectures and their respective subprefectures for state-managed services). The overseas departements and regions were all proposed to merge their single departmental council ( conseil départemental ) coexisting with their regional council ( conseil régional ) on
494-733: Is the equivalent term for a city with the competences of both the Gemeinde (municipality) and the Kreis (district, literally circle ) administrative level. The directly elected chief executive officer of a kreisfreie Stadt is called Oberbürgermeister (literally Superior Burgomaster , in English "Chief Mayor" or "Lord Mayor"). The British counties have no directly corresponding counterpart in Germany. This German system corresponds to statutory cities in Austria and in
532-440: Is the result of incremental reform; from 1974 to 1996 the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties corresponded directly with the ceremonial counties. From 1889 to 1974 areas with county councils were known as administrative counties (which excluded larger towns and cities that had independent county boroughs ), and ceremonial counties were defined separately. In Scotland, there were 33 local government counties, created under
570-487: Is to maintain the stability of the geographic area for scientific studies, and thus ignore changes in political demarcations. England is divided into 48 ceremonial counties , which are also known as geographic counties. Many of these counties have their basis in the 39 historic counties whose origins lie in antiquity, although some were established as recently as 1974. England is also divided into 84 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties (outside Greater London and
608-601: The Council of the Isles of Scilly or any other single-tier authority formed under the older legislation and not since given the status of a unitary authority. This is distinct from the two-tier system of local government which still exists in most of England, where local government functions are divided between county councils (the upper tier) and district or borough councils. Until 1996 two-tier systems existed in Scotland and Wales , but these have now been replaced by systems based on
646-471: The Isles of Scilly ). These correspond to areas used for the purposes of local government and may consist of a single district or be divided into several. As of April 2023, 28 such counties are divided into districts, and 21 of those have a county council . Most ceremonial counties correspond to a metropolitan or non-metropolitan county that has the same name but often has reduced boundaries. The current arrangement
684-610: The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 . They were abolished in 1975 under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 , in favour of regions and districts and islands council areas . The regions and districts were themselves abolished in 1996, under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 , in favour of unitary Scottish council areas . (The islands areas had been created as unitary council areas, and their boundaries were unaffected.) The 1889 legislation created county councils , turned each civil county (with one exception) into
722-453: The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 as " principal councils ", and their areas as principal areas . Various other legislation (e.g. s.91(1) Environment Act 1995 ) includes the counties and county boroughs of Wales within their individual interpretations of the phrase "unitary authority" as an interpretive not a definitive description. In s.2 of the Act each council formed for a county is allocated
760-561: The Local Government Act 1888 ( 51 & 52 Vict. c. 41), which applied without distinction across Wales and England, and in Wales the administrative counties were based on the historic counties of Wales , but they were not entirely identical. The 1888 act did not create elected district councils, but anticipated their later creation, which came with the Local Government Act 1894 ( 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73). The 1894 act created 'urban districts' and 'rural districts'. The table shows
798-751: The South Island , have a council with its own special legislation, constituted (1995) with powers similar to those of a regional authority. In Poland , a miasto na prawach powiatu , or shortly powiat grodzki ( city with powiat rights , or urban county in short) is a, typically big, city which is also responsible for district (poviat) administrative level, being part of no other powiat (e.g. Kraków , Łódź , Wrocław , Poznań ). In total, 65 cities in Poland have this status. Most cities in Taiwan , in contrast to counties , have only one tier of local government. Unlike
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#1732858812356836-698: The Czech Republic . Until 1 January 2007, the municipalities of Copenhagen , Frederiksberg and Bornholm were not a part of a Danish county . The city of Paris works like a department council and a municipal council. Administratively at state level, it is both a department with a single departmental arrondissement (not to be confused with the 20 city districts of Paris, or arrondissements municipaux , which are local subdivisions existing in very populated municipalities, including Paris, Lyon and Marseille, with their own arrondissement councils and arrondissement mayors also elected during municipal elections), however
874-970: The United States are also independent of any county government : Baltimore, Maryland , St. Louis, Missouri , and Carson City, Nevada . There are also several consolidated cities where the county government and municipal government are unified. San Francisco and Philadelphia are two examples, wherein the city and county are coterminous and have one singular governing body. The District of Columbia has had no lower tiers of government since 1871. Arlington County and Alexandria, Virginia , were returned to Virginia in 1847. The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 abolished all local governments including single remaining county and its two municipalities, Washington and Georgetown . History of local government in Wales#Administrative Counties The history of local government in Wales in
912-746: The Western Isles Council) uses the alternative Gaelic designation Comhairle . While the phrase "unitary authority" is not used in Scottish legislation (whether from the Scottish Parliament or the UK Parliament), the term can be encountered (used either descriptively or erroneously) in a few official publications and in (usually erroneous) use by United Kingdom government departments. Local authorities in Wales are unitary in nature but are described by
950-540: The administrative department (which is still subdivided into two subprefectures, one of which includes the métropole). So the metropole is not a unitary authority, and no longer an EPCI (like other French metropoles), but it has a specific status, considered equivalent to a department council, except that its seats are elected during the municipal French elections (at the same time as its municipal councils in each member commune ), and that (like departments and regions, but unlike other French EPCI's including other metropoles) it
988-606: The area and population of administrative counties in Wales as recorded at the censuses of 1891 and 1961. Renamed from Carnarvonshire, 1 July 1926 There were also a number of administratively independent county boroughs : In 1974, the existing administrative counties and county boroughs were abolished and replaced by eight new two-tier authorities, instead called 'counties' by the Local Government Act 1972 (1972 c. 70). These counties were sub-divided into lower-tier districts. The counties were all given names in Welsh only, apart from
1026-464: The boroughs of Belfast and Derry , the counties do serve for organisational purposes within government, and often with private businesses and sporting clubs. The counties of Northern Ireland are all within the historic province of Ulster , which includes an additional three other counties in the Republic of Ireland : Donegal , Cavan and Monaghan . Unitary authority A unitary authority
1064-698: The collective term 'unitary administration' to describe all local government areas which operate as unitary authorities. In England , "unitary authorities" are those local authorities set up in accordance with the Local Government Changes for England Regulations 1994 made under powers conferred by the Local Government Act 1992 to form a single tier of local government in specified areas and which are responsible for almost all local government functions within such areas. While outwardly appearing to be similar, single-tier authorities formed using older legislation are not unitary authorities thus excluding e.g.
1102-493: The historic county corporate entities granted self-governance with county government powers. Today, in addition to local government counties, every part of the United Kingdom lies within the historic counties which have formed geographic and cultural units since the Middle Ages. Additionally, there are vice-counties , which are geographic areas based on the historic counties, and used in scientific data gathering. Their purpose
1140-558: The municipalities (known as New England towns ) are the only governing tier below the state government, though the former counties still exist in the ceremonial sense. In some areas, the reverse is true; for example, Howard County, Maryland and Arlington County, Virginia , are examples of counties that, despite being densely developed, have no municipalities and are thus the only tier of general-purpose local government. In Virginia, all municipalities with city status are, by definition, independent from any county. Three other cities across
1178-421: The pre-1996 counties were retained with slight modifications for some ceremonial purposes such as Lieutenancy , and became known as the preserved counties of Wales , which were amended in 2003 by S.I. 2003/974 to ensure that each principal area is wholly within one preserved county. The counties were sub-divided into districts, these were: The redistribution of these districts into the current principal areas
Counties of the United Kingdom - Misplaced Pages Continue
1216-403: The prefecture of Paris is split between the prefecture of police of Paris (which covers the three other surrounding departments in the first ring) and the department prefecture (which is also the region prefecture, whose competence on police does not cover the four departments of Paris and the small ring). As the department of Paris has no department council elected during departmental elections, it
1254-505: The respective English and Welsh descriptions of " County Council " or " Cyngor Sir ", each council formed for a County Borough is allocated the respective descriptions of "County Borough Council" or " Cyngor Bwrdeistref Sirol "; in all cases the shorter alternative forms "Council" or "Cyngor" can be used. There are several types of single-tier governments in the United States. In the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and much of Massachusetts , county government has been abolished, and
1292-704: The same territory (at state level they are unified as DROM for their prefectures) into a collectivité unique . The proposal was rejected by local referendum in Guadeloupe and in Réunion , but this occurred in Martinique and French Guiana whose former departemental and regional councils were merged into a single unitary authority named assemblée , elected during departmental elections. Mayotte with its newer status of department chose to keep this designation for its unitary authority, named departmental council (no regional council
1330-456: The three county-administered cities ( Chiayi , Keelung , and Hsinchu ), they are independent of their surrounding county. Special municipalities , with the exception of a few mountain indigenous districts within them, are also unitary. Each of the four countries of the United Kingdom uses a different term to describe their unitary authorities. However, the Office for National Statistics uses
1368-470: The three in Glamorgan, which had English names as well as Welsh. The creation of these new administrative areas effectively separated the administrative function from the traditional counties, although in reality this had occurred in 1889. These two-tier counties were abolished in 1996 and replaced with principal areas , each of which is designated as either a county or county borough. The names and areas of
1406-470: Was established in 2009. In Ontario the term single-tier municipalities is used, for a similar concept. Their character varies, and while most function as cities with no upper level of government, some function as counties or regional municipalities with no lower municipal subdivisions below them. They exist as individual census divisions , as well as separated municipalities . In Germany, kreisfreie Stadt ( lit. ' circle-free city ' )
1444-405: Was ever created), but which also has the competence of a regional council (plus a few specific competences transferred from the state like other French overseas). The Métropole de Lyon was created as a metropole from an earlier EPCI ( public establishment of intercommunal cooperation ) but gained the competences of the departmental council. The departmental council of Rhône only covers the rest of
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