County borough

County borough
Category	Borough
Location	England and Wales and Ireland
Found in	Counties
Created by	Local Government Act 1888 Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 Local Government (Wales) Act 1994
Created	England 1889 Wales 1889/1994 Ireland 1899
Abolished by	Local Government (Boundaries) Act (Northern Ireland) 1971 Local Government Act 1972 Local Government Act 2001
Abolished	Northern Ireland 1973 (local government) England and Wales 1974 Ireland 2002
Number	11 (as of 2008)
Possible types	Lieutenancy area (2) Principal area (9)

County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (excluding Scotland), to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control. They were abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 in England and Wales, but continue in use for lieutenancy and shrievalty in Northern Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland they remain in existence but have been renamed cities under the provisions of the Local Government Act 2001. The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 re-introduced the term for certain "principal areas" in Wales. Scotland did not have county boroughs but instead counties of cities. These were abolished on 16 May 1975. All four Scottish cities of the time — Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow — were included in this category. There was an additional category of large burgh in the Scottish system, which were responsible for all services apart from police, education and fire.

When county councils were first created in 1889, it was decided that to let them have authority over large towns or cities would be impractical, and so any large incorporated place would have the right to be a county borough, and thus independent from the administrative county it would otherwise come under. Some cities and towns were already independent counties corporate, and most were to become county boroughs. Originally ten county boroughs were proposed; Bristol, Hull, Newcastle upon Tyne and Nottingham, which were already counties, and Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield, which were not. The Local Government Act 1888 as eventually passed required a population of over 50,000 except in the case of existing counties corporate. This resulted in 61 county boroughs in England and two in Wales. Several exceptions were allowed, mainly for historic towns: Bath, Dudley and Oxford were all under the 50,000 limit in the 1901 census. Some of the smaller counties corporate—Berwick upon Tweed, Lichfield, Lincoln, Poole, Carmarthen and Haverfordwest—did not become county boroughs, although Canterbury, with a population under 25,000, did.

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