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North Lincolnshire/South Humberside

Not sure if this is the right place so sorry.

Basically I live in North Lincolnshire which is obviously in Lincolnshire but when whenever I receive mail outside of Lincolnshire it's South Humberside. Also when I look at maps which show counties North Lincolnshire is rarely included with Lincolnshire always Yorkshire or the North East, All I need in till 1st April 1996 (Funny enough the day I was born) Lincolnshire was South Humberside, West Lindsey etc. But even know it's all ways Yorkshire and Humberside does anyone know why we aren't include with Lincolnshire when we are in the county of Lincolnshire.

Edit- On Wikipedia it states this, (I know wikipedia is exactly a trusted place but it's all I could find)

North Lincolnshire is a unitary authority area in the region of Yorkshire and the Humber in England. For ceremonial purposes it is part of Lincolnshire

Can anyone explain this to me?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 1

Psyk

Original post by Darren96

Can anyone explain this to me?

These days counties don't necessarily serve any practical purpose.

The way it used to work (and still does in some places) is that there was a county council, then a district council for a particular town or area within a county. The county council had authority over the district council.

But now many places are unitary authorities. Meaning that their local council is independent from the county council and doesn't answer to them.

However the concept of a ceremonial county still exists, but in some cases they don't serve a practical purpose. Berkshire is a prime example because there is no county council at all, Berkshire is really just a geographical region containing several unitary authorities.

In Lincolnshire's case, there is a county council for most of it, but North Lincolnshire isn't covered by it and has a unitary authority instead.

England also has "regions" which are used for statistical purposes and for EU elections. For some reason they decided to put North Lincolnshire into a different region from the rest of Lincolnshire. Probably just because of how the population is distributed.

Reply 2

nulli tertius

Original post by Darren96

In 1974 the northern part of Lincolnshire and most of the East Riding of Yorkshire was put together as a new county called Humberside. There was a perception that the people on opposite banks of river estuaries had more in common with other than with the rest of the counties of which they were part and so the same was done with Tyne & Wear, Cleveland (the Tees), Merseyside and Avon. In reality, this was nonsense. The towns on opposite banks of estuaries had usually been rivals for centuries and this was particularly true for Hull and Grimsby.

When local government was reformed in 1974, the government was very keen to have a uniform system (actually two systems, one for metropolitan counties and one for non-metropolitan counties) throughout England and Wales and a very similar one in Scotland.. The only exception in England was the Isles of Scilly. Even the Isle of Wight had a county council and two district councils, South Wight and Medina.

South Humberside considered they had a particularly raw deal. The population was lower and they considered that money was spent on the north bank.

Later on it was realised that there was no need for local government to be the same throughout England. It never had been previously and different places needed different solutions.

In 1996 Humberside was abolished. For ceremonial purposes South Humberside was put back into Lincolnshire and effectively the old East Riding was re-created.

For local government purposes, each of the old district councils was turned into a unitary authority under a new name. Hull and Grimsby had been county boroughs and thus unitary authorities before 1974. For the rest, this was novel. One oddity is that one of the unitary authorities adopted the name East Riding of Yorkshire Council, which means that there is a ceremonial East Yorkshire which includes Hull and an administrative East Yorkshire, that doesn't.

Humberside had been put in a region called Yorkshire and the Humber and the South Humberside unitary authorities (North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire) were not moved to the East Midlands. Likewise, there was no attempt to break up the Humberside Police and Fire Brigade.

In reality the minimum was done to disband an unloved local authority.