However, the Shires were not comparable with later Earldoms, and were not held in the Ealdorman's own right; the position was appointive, rather than a hereditary title of nobility.

The shire was divided into an unlimited number of hundreds (or wapentakes in the Danelaw counties of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Lincolnshire).

London, by far the largest settlement in England during the medieval period, had been marked out for special status as early as the reign of Alfred the Great.

William the Conqueror granted London a royal charter in 1075, confirming some of the autonomy and privileges that the city had accumulated during the Saxon period.

The charter gave London self-governing status, paying taxes directly to the king in return for remaining outside the feudal system.

This system would remain essentially unchanged (despite massive increases in population in some non-borough areas, and the decreased importance of some boroughs) until the Reform Act 1832.

Those cities (or towns) were therefore awarded complete effective independence from the county including their own sheriffs, quarter sessions and other officials, and were sometimes given governing rights over a swath of surrounding countryside.

By the 19th century the county magistrates exercised powers over the licensing of alehouses, the construction of bridges, prisons and asylums, superintendence of main roads, public buildings and charitable institutions, and the regulation of weights and measures.

The impetus for this act was provided by corrupt practices in the House of Commons, and by the massive increase in population occurring during the Industrial Revolution.

Theoretically, the honour of electing members of Parliament belonged to the wealthiest and most flourishing towns in the kingdom, thus, boroughs that ceased to be successful could be disenfranchised by the Crown.

The royal prerogative of enfranchising and disfranchising boroughs fell into disuse after the reign of Charles II; as a result, these historical anomalies became set in stone.

[14] By 1888 it was clear that the piecemeal system that had developed over the previous century in response to the vastly increased need for local administration could no longer cope.

By this time many towns possessed liberties and franchises from royal charters and grants that were anomalous, obsolete or otherwise irrelevant, but nevertheless often cherished by the townspeople.

Due to a decline in the heavy industries of the town, by 1932 more than half the male population was unemployed, resulting in very high municipal rates in order to make public assistance payments.

[17] A royal commission was appointed in May 1935 to "investigate whether the existing status of Merthyr Tydfil as a county borough should be continued, and if not, what other arrangements should be made".

[18] The commission reported the following November, and recommended that Merthyr should revert to the status of a non-county borough, and that public assistance should be taken over by central government.

In the event county borough status was retained by the town, with the chairman of the Welsh Board of Health appointed as administrative adviser in 1936.

[20] After the Second World War the creation of new county boroughs in England and Wales was effectively suspended, pending a local government review.

[21] The Local Government Boundary Commission was appointed on 26 October 1945, under the chairmanship of Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve,[22] delivering its report in 1947.

The recommendations of the Commission extended to a review of the division of functions between different tiers of local government, and thus fell outside its terms of reference, and its report was not acted upon.

The commission did succeed in merging two pairs of small administrative counties to form Huntingdon and Peterborough and Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely.

Much of the country remains unparished, since the parish councils are not a necessary part of local government, but exist to give civic identity to smaller settlements.

This firmly separated all local authority areas (whether unitary or two-tier), from the geographical concept of a county as high level spatial unit.

The abolition of regional development agencies and the creation of local enterprise partnerships were announced as part of the June 2010 United Kingdom budget.

[32] Many of the regional development agencies were transferred to the unelected Local authority leaders' boards following abolition in March 2010, but funding was also cut for them by the Government in July 2010.

[35] The abolition of metropolitan county councils and regional development agencies meant that there were no local government bodies with strategic authority over the major urban areas England.

Following the unsuccessful English mayoral referendums in 2012 combined authorities have been used as an alternative means to receive additional powers and funding as part of 'city deals' to metropolitan areas.

The Labour Party returned to power following the 2024 general election, and in her Autumn budget statement, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves outlined that a forthcoming English Devolution Bill would include plans for "working with councils to move to simpler structures that make sense for their local areas", suggesting that a new round of local government reorganisation could be likely.

For a variety of reasons, including a singular relationship with the Crown, the City of London has remained an archaic oddity within the English system of local government.

As discussed above, the City of London was administered separately from the reign of Alfred the Great onwards, and was very quickly granted self-governance after the Norman conquest.