The Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England, was formed on 1 April 1974 by the amalgamation of the county boroughs of Bootle and Southport, the municipal borough of Crosby, the urban districts of Formby and Litherland, and part of West Lancashire Rural District within the new county of Merseyside. The borough consists of a coastal strip of land on the Irish Sea which extends from Southport in the north to Bootle in the south, and an inland part to Maghull in the south-east. The district is bounded by the city of Liverpool to the south, the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley to the south-east, and West Lancashire to the east.
It is named after the village and parish of Sefton, near Maghull. When the borough was created in the Local Government Act 1972, a name was sought that would not unduly identify the borough with any of its constituent parts, particularly the former county boroughs of Bootle and Southport. The locality had strong links with both the Earl of Sefton and the Earl of Derby, resident of Knowsley Hall, and given the fact that the immediately adjacent borough was subsequently named Knowsley it seems equally likely that the choice of name was derived from the names of the local nobility. A Sefton Rural District covering some of the villages in the district existed from 1894 to 1932.
