Talk:Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties of England

Current metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties
This article is a mess! It starts off with a sections called "current" metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties which has a map showing all the unitary authorities. These are not counties and their inclusion in the extended ceremonial counties (based on the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties of the same name) proves this. Yorkshire Phoenix 12:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Also: one of the lists at the bottom claims to to show "all counties" ranked by area, but instead of being at the top of the list Yorkshire is completely absent. "All counties" should be rephrased accordingly. Yorkshire Phoenix 12:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * No. This article is current and correct. With reference to the LGA1972, unitary authorities are legislated as ceasing to form part of their original non-metropolitan county and forming a new non-metropolitan county of a single district with the exception of the districts of Berkshire which are not non-metropolitan counties, and this is reflected in this article. MRSC 22:49, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * But the "current counties" map suggests there are hundreds of counties, which are mostly just towns? Didn't the former Cleveland districts "return" to North Yorkshire and Co Durham?  (I say "return" because prior to 1974 they were part of North Riding County Council, not North Yorkshire.)  Yorkshire Phoenix 08:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That would be so if the article were called "Counties of England", but it isn't. MRSC 10:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I think I understand. Unitary Authorities are "county level" administrative units and thus fall under the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties umbrella despite being part of larger ceremonial counties? Please review my suggestion on Template_talk:Infobox_England_place regarding county types. Yorkshire Phoenix 10:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes. Under legislation the unitary authorities are non-metropolitan counties as defined by the LGA1972. Unfortunately it is not that simple and they also have the status of non-metropolitan districts. So you could include them in an infobox as county or district or both. In practice they are physically more like a district than a county (having no sub divisions) so I'd be inclined to put them at district level. MRSC 11:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course: otherwise we'd have the same entry in District and County with both types as Unitary Authority! What do you think of my suggestion of having a CountyType value with the options of Metropolitan county or Non-metropolitan county then? Given that County already has an IF argument because it is optional, would my suggestion be possible to implement? Yorkshire Phoenix 11:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Unitary Authorities in ex-Avon
Can I suggest that the following is slightly reworded for clarity? "On April 1, 1996, the unpopular counties of Avon, Humberside and Cleveland were abolished and their districts turned into unitary authorities." Avon's six districts became only four unitary auhtorities (two mergers of two). SP-KP 00:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Tyne and Wear
I thought Tyne and Wear had been abolished? Why is it still on the map as though it exists? doktorb wordsdeeds 14:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Metropolitan county councils were abolished in 1986 but not the metropolitan counties themselves. In Yorkshire and Merseyside the names seem to have stuck after the councils were abolished, but perhaps due to the awkwardness of the name Tyne and Wear people seem to say Tyneside instead (much like the way Teesside was often used in lieu of the official county name, Cleveland).  North of the river I expect some have reverted to using Northumberland but I've never heard anyone from Gateshead, Sunderland, South Shields, Washington, etc say they are from Co Durham, and was surprised myself that that was the historic county there.  Yorkshire Phoenix (talk • contribs) 08:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah right. A little context here - I work for a contractor doing streetworks on behalf of BT. We deal with the councils in "Tyne and Wear" - Newcastle, Gateshead etc... and we're always looking for decent maps to show the council areas. This would have been perfect but for the Tyne and Wear reference. Does Wiki have a council area map showing Newcastle, Gateshead, South Tyneside etc? doktorb wordsdeeds 10:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That's funny: most maps I've seen show metropolitan boroughs and unitary authorities as though they were counties. Most articles for districts and boroughs do show the boundaries, but they do so on a very plain pink map showing only the boundaries of entities at the same level.  I expect this is no use to you as you would need maps showing roads, rivers, etc and the local authority boundaries (so you can see where they are on the ground, not just as a vague area of the UK).  Have you tried multimap?  At certain zoom levels it uses 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 OS maps, which I believe will show local council boundaries.  Yorkshire Phoenix (talk • contribs) 11:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Subdivisions of England may have the map you want. Morwen - Talk 11:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Wicked - now, all I need is [[Image:EnglandSubdivisions.png]] with the names and numbers and we're sorted =D doktorb wordsdeeds 15:15, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This PDF may help: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/downloads/uk_laduacty.pdf MRSC 22:33, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

2009 reforms
I tried to update the article so it would reflect the 2009 structural changes to local government in England (but the map should ideally be changed to split Cheshire and Bedfordshire). I also changed the text to state that the non-metropolitan counties of Cheshire and Bedfordshire were split in two, before noticing that this had been changed before. I don't know if my wording is the least confusing one (it's confusing in general with non-metropolitan and ceremonial counties that don't coincide), but if the division of Cheshire and Bedfordshire into unitary authorities should be stated in terms of ceremonial counties, surely Cheshire is divided into four non-metropolitan counties now? //Essin (talk) 10:59, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

More on 2009 reforms
This article says that of the 49 unitary authorities which are also non-metropolitan counties, 48 have a district council and no county council, and the other (Isle of Wight) has a county council and no district council. From looking at the legislation enacting the recent reforms, it seems that Durham, Northumberland, Cornwall, Shropshire and Wiltshire also have a county council with no district council. Can anyone confirm this? Yamor2 (talk) 12:11, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Article needs updating
Changes on 1 April 2019 and again in 2020:

2019 structural changes to local government in England

Maps too. Sumorsǣte (talk) 08:36, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Merger proposal
We have three pages covering metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties: this one, and two covering metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties individually. On balance I think we could cover the topic adequately here, however I'm also open to retaining the two individual articles and blanking this one.

Pinging: @Morwen @MRSC @Chocolateediter @Dr Greg @Lozleader @Timrollpickering @ShakespeareFan00

A.D.Hope (talk) 14:20, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * No objections to a merge if all the content is combined in one place. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:46, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I don't see any problem with a single article, if it ends up with a much better one. Although the single article would be covering a lot of ground. MRSC (talk) 07:06, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Before we go ahead with this merger, we need to agree on whether and how the merged article should cover unitary authorities. Unitary authorities are all technically non-metropolitan counties, but unitary authority areas which were formerly administered by non-metropolitan districts are, as far as I know, not commonly referred to as counties, whereas unitary authority areas which were formerly administered by county councils are still commonly referred to as counties, and as far as I know never as districts. But we now have the non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire, which legally was and remains the County of North Yorkshire,, referred to in WP as a "district", with its own article, North Yorkshire (district), which is highly confusing for those of us who live in the county and have been told that the districts have been abolished.

The merged article would need quite a lot of rewriting. It will need to cover:
 * Non-metropolitan counties which have district councils
 * Non-metropolitan counties which have become unitary authority areas
 * Non-metropolitan counties which have been abolished
 * Berkshire - which seems to be the sole example of an existing non-metropolitan county whose council has been abolished

Plus a reference to
 * Unitary authority areas which became non-metropolitan counties on their formation, but are not commonly referred to as counties.

This article covers all the counties of England which are currently local government areas (or have been since 1974). So my suggestion would be to merge this article into Counties of England, but keep Metropolitan county and Non-metropolitan county.--Mhockey (talk) 15:27, 31 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Yeah, there's quite a lot to cover so keeping both articles is probably a good idea.
 * On unitary authorities, although the setup can seem quite complicated it basically boils down to 'all non-metropolitan counties contain at least one district, and the ones which contain only one district are unitary authorities (and Berkshire is odd)'. There's some complexity in that the unitary authority council can either be a county council or district council, the actual legislative stuff is fairly straightforward.
 * When a unitary authority and a ceremonial or historic county share a name it's become conventional on Wikipedia to disambiguate the unitary authority by adding (district), which isn't quite accurate but does the job. I have thought about opening a discussion about using (unitary authority) or similar instead, but I've been trying to gain consensus for other changes first and there's only so much you can expect other editors to engage with at once. A.D.Hope (talk) 12:05, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment I support Mhockey's proposal. 2001:8003:9100:2C01:BCA2:4DA0:DB84:5CA8 (talk) 05:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Doesn't Ceremonial counties of England deal with the standard counties (both metropolitan and non-metropolitan) so keeping the separate articles for metropolitan and non-metropolitan (such as Essex) as well as unitaries separate work better. I think Counties of England and Ceremonial counties of England covering the broader concepts makes sense so I wouldn't support merging Metropolitan county and Non-metropolitan county here but I would agree that merging this article to Counties of England makes sense.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 21:16, 2 February 2024 (UTC)