Ceremonial counties of England

Counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies
Also known as: Ceremonial county Lieutenancy area
Category	Lieutenancy areas
Location	England
Number	48 (as of 2009)
Populations	8,000–8,167,000
Areas	3–8,611 km²
Densities	62–4,806/km²

The ceremonial counties, also referred to as the lieutenancy areas of England, are areas of England to which a Lord Lieutenant is appointed. Legally the areas in England, as well as in Wales and Scotland, are defined by the Lieutenancies Act 1997 as counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies in Great Britain, in contrast to the areas used for local government. They are also informally known as geographic counties, as often representing more permanent features of English geography, and to distinguish them from counties of England which have a present-day administrative function.

The distinction between a county for purposes of the Lieutenancy and a county for administrative purposes is not a new one: in some cases a county corporate that was part of a county was appointed its own Lieutenant (although the Lieutenant of the containing county would often be appointed to this position as well), and the three Ridings of Yorkshire had been treated as three counties for Lieutenancy purposes since the 17th century.

The Local Government Act 1888 established county councils to assume the administrative functions of Quarter Sessions in the counties. It created new entities called "administrative counties". An administrative county comprised all of the county apart from the county boroughs: also some traditional subdivisions of counties were constituted administrative counties, for instance the Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire and the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire. The Act further stipulated that areas that were part of an administrative county would be part of the county for all purposes. The greatest change was the creation of the County of London, which was made both an administrative county and a "county"; it included parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey. Other differences were small and resulted from the constraint that urban sanitary districts (and later urban districts and municipal boroughs) were not permitted to straddle county boundaries.

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