What is a lieutenancy area – and why is it not a county?

A lieutenancy area is the territory for which a lord-lieutenant acts as the Monarch’s local representative. It is a specific statutory area used for the purposes of the lieutenancy.

It is not the same thing as a geographic county.

That distinction matters because lieutenancy areas are very often described as “ceremonial counties”, and many borrow the names of historic counties. This has encouraged the widespread assumption that whichever area has a lord-lieutenant must be the present-day version of the county.

It is not.

The geographic counties are enduring territorial divisions with histories stretching back many centuries. The lieutenancy came much later and originally used the already-existing counties as its territorial framework. In modern times the lieutenancy has been reorganised onto different boundaries, often based upon local-government areas. Changing the area served by a lord-lieutenant does not change the geographic county beneath it.

What is a lord-lieutenant?

A lord-lieutenant is the Sovereign’s representative within a particular area.

The office has military origins. The Cabinet Office records that responsibilities for maintaining order and local defence in England and Wales date from the reign of Henry VIII, with deputy lieutenants appearing by 1569. Permanent lieutenancies were subsequently established across England, Wales and Scotland in 1794.

The role is very different today. Among other duties, lord-lieutenants arrange and accompany Royal visits, represent The King at presentations and ceremonies, support the honours system, maintain links with the armed forces and encourage voluntary and charitable activity. The office is voluntary and its holders are expected to remain politically neutral.

A lieutenancy area is therefore best understood simply as:

the geographical area within which a particular lieutenancy operates.

It tells us where the lord-lieutenant performs that role. It does not determine the underlying county geography.

The counties came first

This is the most important point.

The geographic counties were not created for the lieutenancy. In many cases they were already centuries old before anything resembling the modern office of lord-lieutenant appeared.

Over time, existing county territories were used as convenient frameworks for many different purposes: sheriffs, courts, taxation, militia, justice and eventually lieutenancy. Those functions were placed upon the county geography; they did not create it.

That distinction between territory and function is fundamental.

If a later function happens to use the boundary of a county, that does not mean the function defines the county. Equally, if that function is subsequently given a different boundary, the geographic county does not have to move with it.

For centuries, lieutenancy and county geography largely coincided because the existing counties provided an obvious territorial framework. The association became so familiar that it is easy to reverse the historical sequence and assume that the county is wherever the lord-lieutenant happens to serve.

History shows the opposite: the county existed first; the lieutenancy came later.

What changed in 1888?

The origins of much modern confusion can be traced to the creation of elected county councils.

The Local Government Act 1888 established councils in newly defined administrative counties in England and Wales. These were statutory areas created for local administration; they were distinct from the older geographic counties. Section 1 of the Act expressly established a council in each “administrative county”.

The Act then did something particularly important for lieutenancies.

Section 59(2) provided that a place forming part of an administrative county should also form part of that area for various other specified purposes, including the sheriff, lieutenant, justices, militia and coroner. In other words, Parliament reorganised a collection of public functions so that they increasingly followed the new administrative geography.
This did not mean that the new administrative county had somehow become the ancient geographic county.

Contemporary official mapping practice recognised the distinction. Ordnance Survey and the General Register Office subsequently distinguished the older “Ancient or Geographical Counties” from the newer administrative geography.

What had changed was the geography used for particular functions — including the lieutenancy.

That distinction remains essential today.

What happened in 1974?

The local-government reforms that took effect in England and Wales in 1974 created another set of areas for local administration.

Lieutenancy arrangements were again reorganised around that new structure. This is why names such as Greater Manchester, Merseyside, West Midlands, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Tyne and Wear became associated with lord-lieutenants.

But the creation of those lieutenancy arrangements did not turn those territories into geographic counties.

Indeed, the distinction became particularly obvious after the metropolitan county councils were abolished in 1986. The council bodies disappeared, yet same-named lieutenancy areas continued.

So in places such as Merseyside there are three different geographical or institutional ideas which must not be confused:

1. the enduring geographic counties;
2. the former metropolitan council area created for local administration in 1974; and
3. the present lieutenancy area.

For example, Merseyside is a lieutenancy area covering territory within the geographic counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. St Helens remains geographically in Lancashire even though it is within the Merseyside lieutenancy area. The lieutenancy arrangement does not alter either county.

This is precisely why treating a lieutenancy area as a county produces incorrect answers to questions such as “Which county is this town in?”

How are lieutenancy areas defined today?

For Great Britain, the principal legislation is the Lieutenancies Act 1997.

Its wording is revealing.

Schedule 1 is headed “Counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies in Great Britain”. It says that its provisions identify the relevant areas specifically “for the purposes of the lieutenancies”.

That qualification is crucial.

Parliament frequently defines words for the purposes of a particular Act. A statutory rule that an area is to be treated as a “county” for the purposes of that legislation does not make it the geographic county for every other purpose.

The Act itself demonstrates this purpose-specific approach differently in England, Wales and Scotland.

England

In England, Schedule 1 constructs lieutenancy areas partly by reference to local-government geography. It expressly provides that specified combinations of local-government areas are to be regarded as a single “county” for the purposes of the Act. Examples include combinations such as Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton, or Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes.

That is a statutory mechanism for defining where a lord-lieutenant serves. It is not a definition of the geographic counties.

Wales

In Wales, the lieutenancy framework uses the eight preserved counties. These preserve the geography of the local-government areas created in 1974 for purposes including the lieutenancy after those councils and their areas were replaced in 1996.

The Lieutenancies Act expressly uses those preserved areas for its own purposes.

They should therefore not be confused with the historic counties of Wales.

Scotland

The distinction is even clearer in Scotland.

The 1997 Act does not attempt to call the Scottish lieutenancy divisions counties at all. It calls them “areas in Scotland”. Four cities have their own arrangements, while the other lieutenancy areas are specified by Order in Council. The present framework derives principally from the Lord-Lieutenants (Scotland) Order 1996.

The same institution therefore operates through purpose-specific areas whose legal construction differs across Great Britain.

That alone should make clear why “the area of a lord-lieutenant” and “the geographic county” are not interchangeable concepts.

The Lieutenancies Act 1997 does not extend to Northern Ireland, where separate arrangements apply.

So what is a “ceremonial county”?

“Ceremonial county” is a widely used informal expression for an English lieutenancy area.

It is also an unfortunate one, because it encourages people to confuse the function with the geography.

Even official sources sometimes use the expression. Ordnance Survey metadata, for example, describes English lieutenancy areas as “ceremonial counties”, while referring to Scottish “lieutenancy areas” and Welsh “preserved counties”. Crucially, the same metadata acknowledges that their legal basis is the Lieutenancies Act 1997 and its areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies.

The Office for National Statistics likewise uses lieutenancy area as a distinct geography. Its Index of Place Names separately records historic-county information and modern administrative geography, reflecting the fact that these are different geographical layers rather than alternative versions of one thing.
RealCounties therefore prefers the precise expression lieutenancy area.

It says exactly what the area is without implying something it is not.

A county name does not make an area the county

Another major source of confusion is the reuse of historic county names.

A lieutenancy area called Lancashire, Hampshire, Devon or Gloucestershire may resemble the geographic county of the same name. But the fact that an administrative or ceremonial arrangement borrows a county name does not make its territory identical to that county.

The same principle applies to councils.

An organisation using the word “county” or the name of a county does not acquire the power to define that county geographically.

The correct question is always:

What geographical layer are we talking about?

• A geographic county is the enduring territorial county.
• A council area is an area within which a local authority delivers public services.
• A lieutenancy area is an area within which a lord-lieutenant performs the functions of the office.

Sometimes their boundaries coincide or nearly coincide. Sometimes they differ considerably.

Similarity does not make them the same thing.

Local-government reform proves the distinction

There is another useful test.

When local-government areas are reorganised, the legislation governing the lieutenancy sometimes has to be amended separately so that the desired lieutenancy geography continues.

For example, legislation accompanying local-government structural changes in 2019 amended the Lieutenancies Act, while the 2021 Northamptonshire reorganisation required further consequential amendments to it.

That would make little sense if councils, lieutenancy areas and geographic counties were all the same geographical object.

They are separate layers, and legislation deals with them separately.

A new council therefore does not automatically create a new geographic county. Nor does abolishing a council abolish one. Likewise, altering a lieutenancy does not transfer territory from one geographic county to another.

Does the lord-lieutenant determine which county a place is in?

No.

A lord-lieutenant’s area tells you which lieutenancy serves that place.

It does not determine its geographic county.

That is why statements such as these are entirely possible:

St Helens is in Lancashire and in the Merseyside lieutenancy area.

There is no contradiction. The two descriptions answer different questions.

One describes enduring geographic county identity; the other describes a present-day ceremonial arrangement.

The mistake is not in recognising both. The mistake is treating one as though it replaced the other.

Did the historic counties cease to exist when lieutenancies changed?

No.

The Government has repeatedly recognised the continuing existence and importance of the historic counties independently of changing administrative arrangements.

Most significantly for modern geographical use, the Office for National Statistics includes historic counties within its Index of Place Names and describes them as a stable geography distinct from later administrative structures.

In 2021 the Government also expressly recognised historic counties as important parts of local identity while discussing them separately from administrative boundaries.

Changing the territorial remit of a public office does not erase the older geography over which that office once operated.

Why does the distinction matter?

Calling lieutenancy areas “counties” has consequences beyond terminology.

It can cause:

• towns to be incorrectly described as having “changed county”;
• historic county identities to disappear from maps and databases;
• twentieth-century administrative names to be mistaken for geographic identities;
• genealogy and historical records to be interpreted incorrectly;
• council, lieutenancy and county boundaries to be treated as interchangeable; and
• future local-government reform to be wrongly presented as creating, abolishing or merging counties.

The solution is straightforward: name the geographical layer being discussed.

If the subject is the lord-lieutenant, say lieutenancy area.

If the subject is local government, say council area or local-government area.

If the subject is the enduring county geography, say county, historic county or geographic county.

Should lieutenancy areas follow the geographic counties?

That is a separate policy question from what the present law says.

The Historic Counties Institute believes that they should.

For centuries the lieutenancy generally used the existing counties because those counties provided a recognised and meaningful territorial framework. HCI therefore advocates realigning lieutenancies with the geographic counties, while keeping local government entirely separate.

This would not mean restoring some former system of county-based local government. HCI does not seek that.

Councils could continue to be organised according to whatever areas are considered appropriate for delivering services. The change would instead restore a clear distinction:

stable geographic counties for identity, geography and appropriate ceremonial purposes; flexible council areas for local administration.

The essential answer

A lieutenancy area is not another type of geographic county.

It is the area assigned to a lord-lieutenant.

The counties existed before the lieutenancy. The lieutenancy originally made use of their geography and was later reorganised onto different statutory areas. The Lieutenancies Act 1997 defines those present areas specifically for the purposes of the lieutenancy, often by reference to local-government geography.

So when a lieutenancy area and a geographic county have different boundaries, both can exist at the same time because they perform completely different roles.

The county tells you the enduring geographical identity of the place. The lieutenancy area tells you which lord-lieutenant serves it.

Confusing the two is one of the principal reasons that Britain’s county geography is so widely misunderstood.

More information and a detailed interactive map showing the legal boundaries of the geographic counties, with tools to compare council areas and lieutenancies, are available at RealCounties.com.