The town of Hartlepool was an
ancient borough, having been granted a charter by
King John in 1200. It was reformed to become a
municipal borough in 1850. This borough covered the relatively small area now known as the
Headland, where the original town was located. The new town of
West Hartlepool was laid out from the 1840s on land outside Hartlepool's historic borough boundaries, in the neighbouring parish of
Stranton. A body of
improvement commissioners was established to administer the new town in 1854. The commissioners' district was enlarged in 1883 to include
Seaton Carew. The commissioners were superseded in 1887, when West Hartlepool was incorporated as a separate borough. In 1902 West Hartlepool was elevated to become a
county borough, making it independent from
Durham County Council. After several unification efforts starting in 1902, the two boroughs of Hartlepool and West Hartlepool merged into a single county borough called Hartlepool in 1967, also absorbing at the same time the neighbouring parish of
Seaton (being the residual rural part of the old parish of Seaton Carew) to provide coastal land for industrial development. The borough was reformed and enlarged on 1 April 1974, by the merger of the previous county borough of Hartlepool, along with the parishes of
Brierton,
Claxton,
Dalton Piercy,
Elwick, Elwick Hall,
Greatham,
Hart and
Newton Bewley, from the Stockton Rural District, all of which had been part of the
administrative county of
Durham. The enlarged borough was transferred at the same time from County Durham to the new non-metropolitan county of
Cleveland. Cleveland was abolished in 1996 following the
Banham Review, which gave unitary authority status to its four districts, including Hartlepool. The way this change was implemented was to create a new
non-metropolitan county of Hartlepool covering the same area as the existing borough, but with no separate county council; instead the existing borough council took on county functions, making it a unitary authority. The borough was restored to County Durham for
ceremonial purposes at the same time, but as a unitary authority it is independent from Durham County Council. Hartlepool continues to share certain local services with the other former Cleveland boroughs, including the
Cleveland Police and
Cleveland Fire Brigade. ==Governance==