Shire county

A shire county or non-metropolitan county in England, is a county level entity which is not a metropolitan county. The names of most shire counties end in the suffix "-shire," though not all of them do; for example, Kent is a shire county.

The term is sometimes used in a restricted sense to refer only to the administrative counties that have a two-tier structure, of a county council and district councils. It therefore excludes the various unitary districts, including Herefordshire and Rutland. The Isle of Wight is a non-metropolitan county, but is also a unitary area, as its district councils have been abolished.

The term "shire county" is a tautology, the word county coming from French and shire from Saxon.

There are 35 counties with multiple districts:

Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Warwickshire, West Sussex, Wiltshire, Worcestershire

Of these, all apart from Berkshire have county councils. Sometimes 'shire county' is used to exclude Berkshire, because it has no county council (its districts are Unitary authorities but have no county status).

Formally, most unitary authorities in England are also non-metropolitan counties.

The term 'non-metropolitan county' is also sometimes used to refer to the eight Welsh counties created by the Local Government Act 1972. Although the Act does not use the term specifically when referring to Wales, neither does it in general parts of the act distinguish between the Welsh entities and the English non-metropolitan counties, referring to both as non-metropolitan counties. The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 amends the Local Government Act 1972 such that the new Welsh principal areas which have the status of counties are not implied to be non-metropolitan counties.

Lists of English counties
All counties;	By area	By population	By population density	By highest point
Ceremonial counties;	By area	By population	By population density
Non-metropolitan counties;	By area	By population	By population density

Current structure of subnational entities in England (2006)
Region level:	Region	Region	Region	Region
County level:	Metropolitan county	Shire county	Unitary authority	Greater London
District level:	Metropolitan district	Shire district	n/a	London borough
Parish level:	(Civil parish)	(Civil parish)	(Civil parish)	n/a