Okay, so the other day I found myself wondering, “what county is Edinburgh in?”. It seems like a simple question, right? I was looking at some old photos from a trip and got curious about the exact administrative region, like you have counties in England.
Figuring it Out
My first step was just a quick search online. I typed something like “Edinburgh county” into the search bar. Simple enough, I thought. But the results that came back weren’t quite as straightforward as I expected.
I saw mentions of “Midlothian,” which sounded like a county name. But then I also saw things about “City of Edinburgh council area.” It was a bit confusing at first. Is it a city? Is it in a county? Is it its own county?
So, I dug a little deeper. I started searching specifically about how Scotland is divided up administratively. Turns out, while Scotland used to have traditional counties, the system changed quite a while back, around 1996 I think. They now use something called council areas for local government.
This made more sense. It explained why just looking for a “county” was giving me mixed signals. Some sources might refer to the historical county, which for Edinburgh was often considered Midlothian (or the County of Edinburgh back in the day), but for all practical administrative purposes today, it’s different.
The Answer
After sorting that out, the answer became clear:
- Edinburgh isn’t in a county in the same way a town might be in England.
- Edinburgh is its own council area, officially called the City of Edinburgh.
So, the City of Edinburgh council is the local government body responsible for the city. It acts like its own county, administratively speaking. While it’s geographically within the boundaries of the historic county of Midlothian, that’s not its current official designation for local government.
It was interesting, actually. Just a simple question led me down a little rabbit hole of learning about Scottish administrative geography. It’s not quite the same as elsewhere in the UK. Good to know!
