Counties for the purposes of lieutenancy or counties for the purposes of lieutenancies are geographical areas of England to which a lord-lieutenant is appointed as the representative for the monarch. Despite having no local government function, for the most part, counties for the purposes of lieutenancy are either co-extensive with like-named council areas, or are collections of multiple council areas. The only council area to be in more than one county for the purposes of lieutenancy is the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees in the North East, where the parts north of the Tees are in Durham and the parts south are in North Yorkshire.
Contrary to popular opinion, counties for the purposes of lieutenancy do not replace English counties proper, although many have similar names to said counties. There are many organisations, especially the Campaign for Historic Counties, that aim to re-align the boundaries of the counties for the purposes of lieutenancy to match the true counties.[1]
Wikipedia mistakenly refers to these areas as 'ceremonial counties' and uses them as its main frame of geographic reference for England.