ceremonial county boundaries creation process

This page identifies the creation process for the ceremonial county boundaries for England, Scotland and Wales.

Ceremonial Counties of England

The current counties of England are defined by the ceremonial counties, a collective name for the county areas to which are appointed a Lord Lieutenant. The office of Lord Lieutenant was created in the reign of Henry VIII. The Lord Lieutenant is the chief officer of the county and representative of the Crown. Whenever the Queen visits an area she will be accompanied by the Lord Lieutenant of that area. Legally the ceremonial counties are defined by the Lieutenancies Act 1997 as ‘Counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies in Great Britain’ with reference to the areas used for local government.

Definition of the areas

The Lieutenancies Act 1997 defines counties for the purposes of lieutenancies in terms of local government areas created by the Local Government Act 1972 as amended. Although the term is not used in the Act, those counties are sometimes known as ‘Ceremonial Counties’. Schedule 1, paragraphs 2–5 as amended (most recently in 2009) defines them as:

Preserved Counties of Wales

The preserved counties of Wales are the current areas used in Wales for the ceremonial purposes of Lieutenancy and Shrievalty (the office or jurisdiction of a sheriff). They are based on the counties created by the Local Government Act 1972 and used for local government and other purposes between 1974 and 1996.

Usage

The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 abolished the eight county authorities created by the Local Government Act 1972. However, it created the concept of preserved counties based on their areas, to be used for purposes such as Lieutenancy. This usage was consolidated by the Lieutenancies Act 1997.

Certain statutes already in force were amended to include reference to them — as of 16 February 2011, the only remaining provisions still extant are:

• The Sheriffs Act 1887 (c. 55) – the counties that High Sheriffs are appointed to are the preserved counties.

• The Defence Act 1842 (c. 94) – Lieutenants are those appointed to preserved counties.

• The Sea Fisheries (Shellfish) Act 1967 (c. 83) – relevant portions of the sea shore shall be deemed to be within preserved counties.

Boundary changes

The preserved counties were originally almost identical to the 1974–96 counties, but with a few minor changes in line with local government boundary changes: Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Llansilin and Llangedwyn were transferred from Clwyd to Powys, and Wick, St Brides Major, Ewenny and Pentyrch were transferred from Mid Glamorgan to South Glamorgan. There were however two local government areas, Caerphilly and Conwy and split between preserved counties.

The Local Government Boundary Commission for Wales was instructed by the National Assembly for Wales on 11 March 2002 to undertake a review of preserved county boundaries. In their final proposals the part of the local government area of Caerphilly, which had been in Mid Glamorgan was to be part of Gwent and the part of the local government area of Conwy, which had been in Gwynedd was to be part of Clwyd.

The boundary between Mid Glamorgan and South Glamorgan was also to be re-aligned to reflect small changes in local government boundaries. The Assembly accepted these proposals, such that from 2 April 2003 each preserved county now encompass between one and five whole local government areas. (See SI 2003 No974).

The boundary between Mid Glamorgan and Powys was further modified on 1 April 2010 to reflect the 2009 local government boundary changes in the Vaynor area. (See SI 2010 No 48).

Definition of the areas

Lieutenancy areas of Scotland

The lieutenancy areas of Scotland are the areas used for the ceremonial Lord Lieutenants, the monarch’s representatives, in Scotland. They are different from the local government council areas, the committee areas, the sheriffdoms, the registration counties, the former regions and districts, the former counties of Scotland, and the various other subdivisions of Scotland.

The Lord Provosts of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow also act ex officio as Lord Lieutenants. This is a unique right in the United Kingdom: all other Lord Lieutenants are appointed by the monarch, rather than being elected politicians.

Definition of the areas

The areas were defined by the Lord Lieutenants (Scotland) Order 1996 as follows:

Lord Lieutenancies in Scotland

These are defined in The Lord-Lieutenants (Scotland) Order 1996 (SI 1996/731), and in the Lieutenancies Act 1997 (for the 4 city lieutenancies). Alterations to lieutenancies can be made by Order under the Lieutenancies Act 1997, but no such Orders have been made at the time of writing.

The boundaries in this dataset have been derived from LGBCS datasets showing:

• the boundaries of Districts as they existed immediately before abolition in 1995;

• the boundaries of the unitary authorities introduced in 1994; and

• counties as they existed in 1973

The first two of these have been derived from Boundary-Line. The third of these, the LGBCS county dataset, is generally of Boundary-Line quality, but has a complicated lineage, explained elsewhere. It has been used in making this lieutenancy dataset to define the parts of the boundary between Moray, Banffshire, Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire lieutenancies which do not coincide with subsequent district or unitary authority boundaries.

There appears to be an error in the definitions of Dunbartonshire and Lanarkshire lieutenancies in SI 1996/731: the definition of Dunbartonshire lieutenancy includes all of Strathkelvin District; the definition of Lanarkshire lieutenancy includes Strathclyde electoral division 46, which was part of Strathkelvin District (resulting from LGBCS report 167 and SI 1993/2439).

We have assumed that the intention of SI 1996/731 is that the lieutenancy boundary should follow the boundary between East Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire in this area, since the wording broadly reflects the wording used in the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which established those unitary councils. That in turn would mean that the definition of Dunbartonshire lieutenancy in SI 1996/731 should read “The district of Dumbarton, the district of Clydebank, the district of Bearsden and Milngavie, the district of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth and the following electoral divisions of Strathclyde region, namely electoral division 43 (Kirkintilloch), electoral division 44 (Strathkelvin North), electoral division 45 (Bishopbriggs) and, in electoral division 46 (Chryston), the South Lenzie / Waterside district ward.” — Hugh Buchanan (SBC) December 2011