Local government in the area presently covered by Lancashire County Council, Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen is heading for its biggest reorganisation in half a century.
On 16 July 2026, the Government decided, subject to Parliamentary approval, to replace the existing 15 councils with four new unitary councils. Elections are planned for May 2027 and the new authorities are intended to take over local services on 1 April 2028. The changes will not be legally complete until the necessary Structural Change Order has been approved.
The debate has inevitably turned to what those new councils should be called. In doing so, it has exposed a much older source of confusion: the tendency to treat a council, a lieutenancy area and the geographic county of Lancashire as though they were the same thing.
They are not.
One argument sometimes heard is that new councils need to retain the name Lancashire because otherwise Lancashire itself will somehow disappear.
That is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what Lancashire is.
Lancashire existed for more than seven centuries before Lancashire County Council did. A council can be created, renamed, reorganised or abolished. The county does not depend upon that council for its existence.
What has the Government actually decided?
The Government selected the four-unitary proposal submitted by Chorley, Lancaster, Preston, Ribble Valley, South Ribble and West Lancashire councils.
The four new council areas will comprise:
| New council area | Existing council areas |
|---|---|
| North | Lancaster, Preston and Ribble Valley |
| South | Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire |
| East | Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale |
| West | Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre |
In the successful proposal these were called North Lancashire, South Lancashire, Pennine Lancashire and Fylde Coast respectively. The Government’s decision letter uses those proposal names.
Since the announcement, several councils have instead been using the simple working descriptions North, East, South and West Lancashire. Lancaster City Council has explicitly stated that the final names have not yet been decided and that those compass-point names are being used for the time being.
This produces an oddity which illustrates the problem rather well: the working area called West Lancashire would contain Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre, while the existing West Lancashire Borough Council area would actually form part of the new South authority.
These are administrative labels. They are not definitions of Lancashire’s geography.
County, council area and lieutenancy area: three different things
Much of the confusion disappears once three separate geographical layers are kept apart.
A geographic county is the enduring territorial county: in this case Lancashire.
A council area is territory assigned to a local authority for the delivery of services. Parliament can create, combine, divide and abolish these areas as administrative requirements change.
A lieutenancy area is the separate territory used for the appointment of a lord-lieutenant and associated ceremonial functions.
The boundaries of those three layers do not have to coincide.
The Lieutenancies Act 1997 itself demonstrates that lieutenancy geography is a separate statutory arrangement. Its Schedule 1 identifies areas specifically for lieutenancy purposes, in many cases by assembling existing local-government areas.
The fact that legislation sometimes calls such an area a “county” for the purposes of that Act does not make it the geographic county. It means that the word has been given a particular statutory meaning for the lieutenancy legislation.
Lancashire did not begin with Lancashire County Council
Lancashire is first recorded as a separate shire in 1182.
Lancashire County Council did not begin operating until 1889, following the Local Government Act 1888.
That is a gap of more than 700 years. Lancashire therefore plainly cannot owe either its existence or its identity to Lancashire County Council.
Indeed, Parliament was already legislating for the Ordnance Survey to ascertain and mark the reputed boundaries of the counties in 1841 — almost half a century before elected county councils existed. The Ordnance Survey Act did not create those counties; it instructed surveyors to ascertain boundaries which already existed.
The Local Government Act 1888 then created a new administrative structure. It provided that a council should be established for each “administrative county”, with responsibility for administrative and financial business transferred to it.
That was the beginning of elected county councils. It was not the beginning of Lancashire.
The area being reorganised is not the geographic county called Lancashire
This point is particularly important in the present debate.
The LGR exercise covers the current Lancashire County Council area together with Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen. That footprint is often casually described simply as “Lancashire”.
Geographically, however, it is not Lancashire.
Our boundary analysis of the Government’s selected four-unitary model shows the difference particularly clearly.
| Proposed area | Lancashire | Yorkshire |
| North | 73.91% | 26.07% |
| South | 99.99% | — |
| Pennine / East | 92.36% | 7.64% |
| Fylde Coast / West | 99.95% | trace only |
The North area contains about 337 sq km of Yorkshire, amounting to just over 26% of its entire territory. The Pennine/East area contains a further 48 sq km of Yorkshire.
Across the whole LGR footprint, roughly one-eighth of the land is geographically in Yorkshire, not Lancashire.
At the same time, enormous parts of geographic Lancashire are outside the reorganisation altogether.
Lancashire extends south to the Mersey and includes Liverpool, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Wigan and much of Manchester. Across Morecambe Bay, Furness is also a substantial northern part of Lancashire. Those places are today placed within other council and lieutenancy arrangements, but those later arrangements did not move them geographically out of Lancashire.
So it is simply inaccurate to describe the present exercise as dividing the geographic county of Lancashire into four.
It divides a particular local-government footprint into four new council areas.
The “North Lancashire” problem
The proposed northern authority makes the naming issue especially obvious.
Its area would combine Lancaster, Preston and Ribble Valley. According to our geographic analysis, only 73.91% of that territory is in Lancashire. More than a quarter is in Yorkshire, principally through the substantial Yorkshire territory now administered within Ribble Valley.
Calling the whole authority “North Lancashire” would therefore give a Lancashire identity to hundreds of square kilometres of Yorkshire.
It also creates the opposite problem. Furness is a major northern part of geographic Lancashire, yet it would be nowhere near this council: it is currently administered by Westmorland and Furness Council and placed within the Cumbria lieutenancy.
A council called “North Lancashire” would consequently include a large area which is not Lancashire, while excluding a substantial northern area which is Lancashire.
That does not mean the proposed council boundaries themselves are necessarily unsuitable for local administration. Administrative areas can cross historic county boundaries where there is a practical case for doing so.
It means only that the council’s name should not be allowed to rewrite the geography.
East or Pennine Lancashire has the same issue on a smaller scale
The proposed eastern authority — Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale — is overwhelmingly in Lancashire, but not entirely.
Around 7.64% of its territory is geographically in Yorkshire. This includes the West Craven area within the present Pendle council area.
Again, there is no objection in principle to a council providing services on both sides of a historic county boundary. Councils are administrative bodies.
The problem comes when the administrative body’s name suggests that every place it administers belongs geographically to one county.
A council boundary does not determine county identity.
South Lancashire and the Fylde Coast
The proposed southern and western authorities present far less difficulty in terms of their actual territory. Both are almost wholly within geographic Lancashire.
But even here the distinction remains important.
A council called “South Lancashire” would not define the southern part of the geographic county. Much of southern Lancashire lies considerably farther south, including Liverpool and the great urban belt around Manchester and Salford.
Similarly, whatever name is eventually selected for Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre, that authority will be a council responsible for a defined service area. It will not become a new territorial division of the county.
Administrative names should describe administrative bodies, not be mistaken for redefining historic geography.
Would Lancashire disappear without a Lancashire council?
No.
Lancashire existed before Lancashire County Council and would continue to exist after its abolition.
The abolition of a body called Lancashire County Council would mean exactly what it says: that council would cease to exist.
It would not abolish Lancashire.
There is an obvious contemporary comparison. Berkshire County Council was abolished in 1998 and its functions passed to unitary councils. Berkshire did not consequently vanish from the map of England, and a Berkshire lieutenancy continues.
Nor does a county need a council bearing its name in order to sustain its identity. Geographic counties remain in everyday use in sport, culture, genealogy, mapping, heritage, businesses and voluntary organisations. The Office for National Statistics now includes historic counties in its Index of Place Names and recommends them as a stable, unchanging geography for users who want a historic, traditional or cultural territorial framework.
Government itself has repeatedly encouraged recognition of historic county identity “irrespective of the local administrative areas”.
Lancashire is therefore not an administrative brand which must be attached to a council for safekeeping.
It is a county.
Nor does Lancashire County Council define the current lieutenancy
Another source of confusion is the present Lancashire lieutenancy.
Its footprint is closely associated with today’s local-government arrangements, rather than with the geographic county. It excludes great areas of Lancashire which are now placed in the Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cumbria lieutenancies, while including territory geographically in Yorkshire.
This is why a lord-lieutenant’s jurisdiction should not be used to answer the question “Which county is this place in?”
Lieutenancy is a later function laid over county geography. The office of lord-lieutenant originated centuries after Lancashire itself.
The lieutenancy can be reorganised without altering Lancashire, just as local government can.
LGR does not require four new lieutenancies
There is also no reason to assume that creating four unitary councils means that the present Lancashire lieutenancy must automatically be divided into four matching areas.
Council areas and lieutenancy areas are separate legal structures.
A single lieutenancy can encompass several unitary councils. Conversely, changing council boundaries does not itself settle what the future lieutenancy geography should be.
This distinction creates an opportunity.
Rather than perpetuating the confusing habit of making lieutenancy boundaries follow successive rounds of local-government reorganisation, the Government could define lieutenancies independently and align them once again with the enduring geographic counties.
For Lancashire, that would mean a Lancashire lieutenancy based on geographic Lancashire rather than whichever collection of council areas happens to exist at the time. Yorkshire territory currently included within the Lancashire lieutenancy could be recognised within Yorkshire, while Lancashire territory now placed within other lieutenancies could once again be recognised within Lancashire.
None of this would interfere with the new unitary councils or the services they provide.
It would simply place two different functions on two appropriate geographical bases:
councils for changing administrative needs; counties for enduring geographic and civic identity.
What should the new councils be called?
The Historic Counties Institute does not seek to dictate the structure of local government, nor do we oppose local-government reform.
Our concern is that whatever councils Parliament creates should be described accurately.
There is no requirement for every authority within the present LGR area to have “Lancashire” in its name in order to preserve Lancashire. Nor should a historic county name be used merely as an administrative branding device where the authority’s territory does not correspond with that county.
Where a new council crosses a historic county boundary, there are many possible approaches: a neutral regional name, a geographical description which does not claim county status, a compound name recognising more than one identity, or another locally appropriate title.
The precise choice is a matter for those establishing the council.
The important principle is simpler: the name of a new administrative body should not mislead people about the county geography beneath it.
What LGR really changes
If the Government’s proposal receives Parliamentary approval, Lancashire County Council, the existing district councils, Blackpool Council and Blackburn with Darwen Council will be replaced by four new unitary authorities.
Mapping: ‘North Lancashire’ = blue; ‘Pennine Lancashire’ = green; ‘Fylde Coast’ = red; ‘South Lancashire’ = orange. Dark line = boundary of geographic Lancashire.
Local services will be reorganised.
Council boundaries will change.
Council names will change.
The geographic counties will not.
Yorkshire will remain Yorkshire on the Yorkshire side of the county boundary. Lancashire will remain Lancashire on the Lancashire side. Liverpool, Manchester, Furness, Lancaster, Preston and Blackpool will not gain or lose their Lancashire geography because a local authority is created or abolished elsewhere.
That distinction is precisely why stable geographic counties remain useful. Council structures change because the requirements of local administration change. Counties provide continuity through those changes.
Lancashire survived for more than 700 years before a county council bearing its name was created.
It does not need one in order to survive the next reorganisation.
More information and a detailed interactive map showing the legal boundaries of the geographic counties, with tools to compare council areas and lieutenancies – and the Local Government Reform proposals, are available at RealCounties.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment.