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Administrative county

First-level administrative division

Summary

First-level administrative division

Field	Value
name	Administrative county
category	County
territory	England and Wales and Ireland
start_date	England and Wales 1889
start_date2	Ireland 1899
legislation_begin	Local Government Act 1888
legislation_begin2	Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
legislation_end	Local Government (Boundaries) Act (Northern Ireland) 1971
legislation_end1	Local Government Act 1972
legislation_end3	Local Government Act 2001
end_date	Northern Ireland 1973
end_date1	England and Wales 1974
end_date3	Republic of Ireland 2002
government	County council
subdivision	Rural district
subdivision1	Urban district
subdivision2	Municipal borough

An administrative county was a first-level administrative division in England and Wales from 1888 to 1974, from 1899 until 1973 in Northern Ireland, and from 1899 to 2002 in the Republic of Ireland. They are now abolished, although most Northern Ireland lieutenancy areas and Republic of Ireland counties have the same boundaries as former administrative countries.

History

England and Wales

The term was introduced for England and Wales by the Local Government Act 1888, which created county councils for various areas, and called them administrative counties to distinguish them from the continuing statutory counties.

In England and Wales the legislation was repealed in 1974, and entities called 'metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties' in England and 'counties' in Wales were introduced in their place. Though strictly inaccurate, these are often called 'administrative counties' to distinguish them from both the historic counties, and the ceremonial counties.

Scotland

For local government purposes Scottish counties were replaced in 1975 with a system of regions and island council areas.

Ireland

The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 created administrative counties in Ireland on the same model that had been used in England and Wales.

In Northern Ireland the administrative counties were replaced by a system of 26 districts on 1 October 1973. Section 131 of the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972 stated that "every county and every county borough shall cease to be an administrative area for local government purposes". The areas of the former administrative counties (and county boroughs) remain in use for Lieutenancy purposes, being defined as the areas used "for local government purposes immediately before 1 October 1973, subject to any subsequent definition of their boundaries …".

In the Republic of Ireland the legislation that created them remained in force until 1 January 2002, when they were renamed as counties under the Local Government Act 2001. The term administrative county is retained by the Placenames Database of Ireland to distinguish the modern counties in Dublin of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin from the traditional counties, which include County Dublin.

New entities

The administrative counties that did not share the names of previous counties:

England

County		Administrative counties
Cambridgeshire
Hampshire
Lincolnshire
London
Northamptonshire
Suffolk
Sussex
Yorkshire

Scotland

Ross-shire and Cromartyshire (Ross and Cromarty)

Republic of Ireland

Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin (County Dublin). Created in 1994.

References

Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972, (1972 C.9)
The Northern Ireland (Lieutenancy) Order 1975 (S.I. 1975 No.156)
{{cite Irish legislation. (2001)
{{cite Irish legislation. (2003). (30 October 2003)
"Fine Gall/Fingall". [[Government of Ireland]].

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

local-government-in-the-united-kingdom administrative-counties defunct-types-of-subdivision-in-the-united-kingdom

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