Flintshire

Flintshire (Sir y Fflint) is a county in north-east Wales. It borders Denbighshire, Wrexham and the English county of Cheshire. It is named after the historic county of Flintshire, which had notably different borders. The county is governed by Flintshire County Council.

History
The current administrative area of Flintshire (a unitary authority) came into existence in 1996, when the former administrative county of Clwyd was split into three smaller areas. The principal area was formed by the merger of the Alyn and Deeside and Delyn districts. In terms of pre-1974 divisions, the area comprises


 * the former borough of Flint
 * the urban districts of Buckley, Connah's Quay, Holywell, Mold
 * the rural district of Holywell Rural District
 * all of Hawarden Rural District except the parish of Marford and Hosley

The district of Rhuddlan, which was also formed entirely from the administrative county of Flintshire was included in the new Denbighshire instead. Other parts of the pre-1974 administrative Flintshire to be excluded from the principal area are the Maelor Rural District and the parish of Marford and Hoseley, which became part of the Wrexham Maelor district in 1974 and are now part of Wrexham County Borough.

Geography

 * See List of places in Flintshire for a list of towns and villages.

Flintshire borders Wrexham, Denbighshire, and the English counties of Merseyside (across the River Dee) and Cheshire.

Industry
Parts of Flintshire have major manufacturing industries. Amongst these are a Toyota plant that manufactures engines, a Corus Group steelworks and Shotton Paper, and Airbus, making the wings for the A330 and the A380 at Broughton.

There are daily flights of the Airbus Beluga transport aircraft of Airbus wings from Broughton for the smaller aircraft. The wings for the A380, which are too large to be transported by air use a multi-modal transport using Flintshire's roads, the River Dee and the port of Mostyn, also in Flintshire.

Flintshire is also known for its internet companies, the largest and most well known being Moneysupermarket.com based in Ewloe.

Fairtrade
On November 19, 2004, Flintshire was granted Fairtrade County status.

Education
Flintshire Local Education Authority manages 75 primary schools, 3 special schools and 12 high schools.