Cleveland

Cleveland was a non-metropolitan county located in North East England which existed between 1974 and 1996. Cleveland was a two-tier county and had four boroughs: Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbrough and Langbaurgh-on-Tees. The county town was Middlesbrough, where Cleveland County Council met. The county was named after the historic area of Cleveland, Yorkshire. Its area is now split between the counties of North Yorkshire and County Durham. The county was abolished in 1996, with its constituent boroughs becoming unitary authorities. Hartlepool and the part of Stockton-on-Tees north of the River Tees became part of the County Durham, and the remainder became part of North Yorkshire. Some public bodies continue to cover the area of the former county, such as Cleveland Police and Cleveland Fire Brigade. Cleveland bordered County Durham to the north and North Yorkshire to the south, with a coastline on the North Sea to the east. It had a total area of . Formation A Bill as originally presented in November 1971 that intended the administrative county to have been an extended form of the then present county borough of Teesside, an independent district in the North Riding from 1968 to 1974. On 1 April 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, most of the then Cleveland constituency and Hartlepool were incorporated as the Cleveland non-metropolitan county. Proposed abolition Local government reorganisation, recommended by the Banham Review and accepted by the government, meant that each district borough be re-organised into separate unitary authorities with the Tees be re-established as a ceremonial border between North Yorkshire and County Durham. The county district boroughs of Cleveland were re-organised into Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland. The reorganisation meant that Stockton-on-Tees became the only local authority in England to be split between two counties.