Liverpool is governed by one of five councils within the metropolitan county of Merseyside, and is one of England's core cities and its fifth most populous — 447,500 in 2006, with 816,000 in the Liverpool Urban Area, the conurbation around the city that includes other towns (such as St. Helens and Haydock) on the Liverpool side of the Mersey but not those on the Wirral Peninsula. The term Greater Merseyside is sometimes used to described a broader area, which also includes the borough of Halton.