Ceremonial county

A ceremonial county is a term used to refer to an English county area that has its own Lord Lieutenant. Ceremonial counties are no longer important for local government purposes, but are a very convenient way of dividing up the map of England.

List of ceremonial counties

London

• City of London
• Greater London

Metropolitan counties

• Greater Manchester
• Merseyside
• South Yorkshire
• Tyne and Wear
• West Midlands
• West Yorkshire

Unitary counties

These are ceremonial counties containing a single unitary authority:

• City of Bristol
• Cornwall
• Herefordshire
• Isle of Wight
• Rutland

Counties with a unitary council of the same name covering only part of the ceremonial county

• Durham
• East Riding of Yorkshire
• Northumberland
• Shropshire
• Wiltshire

Counties with a county council and one or more districts

Some of these also have one or more unitary authorities within the ceremonial county.

• Buckinghamshire
• Cambridgeshire
• Cumbria
• Derbyshire
• Devon
• Dorset
• East Sussex
• Essex
• Gloucestershire
• Hampshire
• Hertfordshire
• Kent
• Lancashire
• Leicestershire
• Lincolnshire
• Norfolk
• North Yorkshire
• Northamptonshire
• Nottinghamshire
• Oxfordshire
• Somerset
• Staffordshire
• Suffolk
• Surrey
• Warwickshire
• West Sussex
• Worcestershire

Counties with no county council, containing two or more unitary authorities

• Bedfordshire
• Berkshire
• Cheshire