User:Owain/Sandbox/Worcestershire (administrative)

**Worcestershire non-metropolitan county**
	Geography
Created	1 April 1998
Origin	Historic
Region	West Midlands
Area; - Total	1,741 km²; Ranked 29th
Admin HQ	Worcester
ISO 3166-2	GB-WOR
ONS code	47
NUTS	UKG12
	Demographics
Population; - Total (2005 est); - Density	Ranked 22nd; 555, 900; 319 / km²
Ethnicity	97.5% White; 1.1% S.Asian

This article is about the Worcestershire in an administrative sense. For other uses, see Worcestershire

Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county located in the West Midlands region of central England. It was created on 1 April 1998^[1] and is governed by Worcestershire County Council.

Administrative history

An administrative county of Worcester was created by the Local Government Act 1888^[2]. This was based on the ancient county, but with minor border differences. Additionally, the city of Worcester and municipal borough of Dudley were formed as county boroughs, outside of the administrative county.

From 1974 to 1998, the middle and southern part of county was combined with Herefordshire and Worcester county borough to form a single non-metropolitan county of Hereford and Worcester; the county boroughs of Dudley and Warley along with Stourbridge and Halesowen were incorporated into the West Midlands Metropolitan county. The West Midlands County Council was only in existence for a short period before abolition in 1986. In the 1990s UK local government reform the decision was taking to abolish Hereford and Worcester, with the new non-metropolitan county of Worcestershire having the historic border with Herefordshire, but still excluding areas in the north in West Midlands.

Worcestershire is divided into six local government districts:

Subdivisions created by the Local Government Act 1972 and 1992