Regions of England 1

Regions of England

Regions of EnglandEnglish Regions

Category Regions

Location England

Created 1994

Abolished 2011 (as administrative areas)

Number 9 (as of 2010)

Possible types leaders' board (8)elected assembly (1)

Additionalstatus European Parliament constituency

Populations 2.58 million

Areas 1,00023,000 km

Government Leaders' BoardGreater London Authority

Subdivisions Metropolitan countyNon-metropolitan countyCity and London borough

England

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Regions of England 2

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In England, the region is the highest tier of sub-national division used by the central government. Between 1994 and2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within UK Government. While they no longer fulfil this role,they continue to be used for some administrative purposes. They define areas (constituencies) for the purposes ofelections to the European Parliament. Eurostat also uses them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of TerritorialUnits for Statistics (NUTS) regions ("NUTS 1 regions") within the European Union. The regions generally followedthe boundaries of "standard regions" established in the 1940s.The London region is coterminous with the administrative area of Greater London, which has a directly electedMayor and Assembly. The other eight regions have local authority leaders' boards, which have limited powers andfunctions delegated by Central Government departments, with members appointed by local government bodies.These boards replaced indirectly elected regional chambers, which were established in 1998 and undertook a rangeof co-ordinating, lobbying, scrutiny and strategic planning functions until their abolition in 2010.Each region also had a Government Office with some responsibility for coordinating policy, and, from 2007 to 2010,each also had its own part-time regional minister within the Government. In 2009 the House of Commonsestablished regional Select Committees for each of the regions outside of London. These committees ceased to existupon the dissolution of Parliament on 12 April 2010 and were not re-established by the newly elected House.Regional ministers were not reappointed by the incoming Coalition Government, and the Government Offices wereabolished in 2011.

HistorySee also: Historical and alternative regions of EnglandAfter about 500 AD, England comprised seven Anglo-Saxon territories - Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex,Kent, Sussex and Wessex - often referred to as the heptarchy. The boundaries of some of these, which later unifiedas the Kingdom of England, roughly coincide with those of modern regions. During Oliver Cromwell's Protectoratein the 1650s, the rule of the Major-Generals created regions of similar size to modern regions.Wikipedia:CitationneededProposals for administrative regions within England were mooted by the British government prior to the First WorldWar. In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill was passing through parliament. The Bill was expected to introduce adevolved parliament for Ireland, and as a consequence calls were made for similar structures to be introduced inGreat Britain or "Home Rule All Round". On 12 September the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, gavea speech in which he proposed 10 or 12 regional parliaments for the United Kingdom. Within England, he suggestedthat London, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands would make natural regions.[2] While the creation of regionalparliaments never became official policy, it was for a while widely anticipated and various schemes for dividingEngland devised.[3][4] By the 1930s, several competing systems of regions were adopted by central government forsuch purposes as census of population, agriculture, electricity supply, civil defence and the regulation of road traffic.In 1946 nine "standard regions" were set up, in which central government bodies, statutory undertakings and regionalbodies were expected to cooperate.[5] However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s.[6]

Creation of some form of provinces or regions for England was an intermittent theme of post-Second World War British governments. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed the creation of eight provinces in England, which would see power devolved from central government. Edward Heath's administration in the 1970s did not create a regional structure in the Local Government Act 1972, waiting for the Royal Commission on the Constitution, after which government efforts were concentrated on a constitutional settlement in Scotland and Wales for the rest of the decade. In England, the majority of the Commission "suggested regional coordinating and advisory councils for England,

Regions of England 3

consisting largely of indirectly elected representatives of local authorities and operating along the lines of the Welshadvisory council". One-fifth of the advisory councils would be nominees from central government. The boundariessuggested were the "eight now [in 1973] existing for economic planning purposes, modified to make boundaries toconform with the new county structure".[7][8] A minority report by Lord Crowther-Hunt and Alan T. Peacocksuggested instead seven regional assemblies and governments within Great Britain (five within England), whichwould take over substantial amounts of the central government.[9]

Some elements of regional development and economic planning began to be established in England from themid-1960s onwards. In most of the standard regions, Economic Planning Councils and Boards were set up,comprising appointed members from local authorities, business, trade unions and universities, and in the early 1970sthese produced a number of regional and sub-regional planning studies. These institutions continued to operate untilthey were abolished by the incoming Conservative government in 1979. However, by the mid-1980s local authoritiesin most regions had jointly established standing conferences to consider regional planning issues. Regional initiativeswere bolstered by the 1986 Government Green Paper and 1989 White Paper on The Future of Development Plans,which proposed the introduction of strong regional guidance within the planning system, and by the Government'sissuing of Strategic Guidance at a regional level, from 1986 onwards.

Regions as areas of administrationIn April 1994 the John Major ministry created a set of ten Government Office Regions for England. Prior to 1994,although various central government departments had different regional offices, the regions they used tended to bedifferent and ad hoc. The stated purpose was as a way of co-ordinating the various regional offices more effectively:they initially involved the Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Employment, Department of Transportand the Department for the Environment.[10] Following the Labour Party's victory in the 1997 general election, thegovernment created regional development agencies. Around a decade later the Labour administration also foundedthe Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships (RIEPs) with 185m of devolved funding to enhancecouncils' capacity to improve and take the lead in their own improvement.The Maastricht Treaty encouraged the creation of regional boundaries for selection of members for the Committee ofthe Regions of the European Union: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland had each constituted a region, butEngland represents such a large proportion of the population of the United Kingdom that further division wasthought necessary. The English regions, which initially numbered ten, also replaced the Standard Statistical Regions.Merseyside originally constituted a region in itself, but in 1998 it was merged into the North West England region,creating the nine present-day regions.[11] Since 1999, the nine regions have also been used as England's EuropeanParliament constituencies[12] and as statistical NUTS level 1 regions. Since 1 July 2006, there have also been tenNHS Strategic Health Authorities, each of which corresponds to a region, except for South East England, which isdivided into western and eastern parts.

Regions of England 4

In 1998, regional chambers were created in the eight English regions outside London under the provisions of theRegional Development Agencies Act 1998. The powers of the assemblies were limited, and members wereappointed, largely by local authorities, rather than being directly elected. The functions of the English regions wereessentially devolved to them from Government departments or were taken over from pre-existing regional bodies,such as regional planning conferences and regional employers' organisations. Each assembly also made proposals forthe UK members of the Committee of the Regions, with members drawn from the elected councillors of the localauthorities in the region. The final nominations were made by central government.[13] Although they were publiclyfunded, one of the Regional Assemblies claimed not to be a public authority and therefore not subject to the Freedomof Information Act 2000.As power was to be devolved to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales without a counterweight in England, a seriesof referendums were planned to establish elected regional assemblies in some of the regions. The first was held inLondon in 1998 and was passed. The London Assembly and Mayor of London of the Greater London Authoritywere created in 2000. A referendum was held in North East England on 4 November 2004, but the proposal for anelected assembly was rejected. Plans to hold further referendums in other regions were first postponed and thencancelled. A campaign for the establishment of a Cornish assembly, including a petition to the UK government in2001, was largely ignored and no referendum was held.In 2007, a Treasury Review for new Prime Minister Gordon Brown recommended that greater powers should begiven to local authorities and that the Regional Chambers should be phased out of existence by 2010.[14] The sameyear, nine Regional Ministers were appointed by the incoming Gordon Brown government. Their primary goal wasstated as being to improve communication between central government and the regions of England.[15] Theassemblies were effectively replaced by smaller local authority leaders' boards between 2008 and 2010, and formallyabolished on 31 March 2010, as part of a "Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration". Mostof their functions transferred to the relevant regional development agency and to local authority leaders' boards.[16]

In June 2010, the incoming Coalition Government announced its intentions to abolish regional strategies and return spatial planning powers to local government. These plans include the withdrawal of funding to the existing eight Local Authority Leaders' Boards, with their statutory functions also being assumed by local councils. The boards in

Regions of England 5

most cases continue to exist as voluntary associations of council leaders, funded by the local authorities themselves.No appointments as Regional Ministers were made by the incoming UK government in 2010.These changes did not affect the directly elected London Assembly, which was established by separate legislation aspart of the Greater London Authority. In 2011, Greater London remains administered by the Greater LondonAuthority, which consists of an elected London Assembly and a separately elected Mayor of London.Following the abolition of the Government Offices in 2011, it was announced that the former Government OfficeRegions (GOR) would henceforth be known, for the purposes of statistical analysis, simply as Regions.[17]

List of Regions1. North East[18]

2.2. North West3.3. Yorkshire and the Humber4.4. East Midlands5.5. West Midlands6.6. East of England7.7. London8.8. South East9.9. South West

NUTS 1 statistical regionsMain article: NUTS 1 statistical regions of EnglandThe Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is a geocode standard for referencing the subdivisionsof the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for statistical purposes. The NUTS code for the UK isUK and there are 12 first level regions within the state. Within the UK, there are 9 such regions in England, togetherwith Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The standard is developed and regulated by the European Union (EU).The NUTS standard is instrumental in delivering the EU's Structural Funds. A hierarchy of three levels is establishedby Eurostat. The sub-structure corresponds to administrative divisions within the country. Formerly, the furtherNUTS divisions (IV and V) existed; these have now been replaced by Local administrative unit (LAU-1 and LAU-2respectively).

City regionsMain article: City region (United Kingdom)In its later years the Labour government adopted the concept of city regions, regions consisting of a metropolitanarea and its hinterland or travel to work areas. Two such areas were considered for giving statutory powers: GreaterManchester City Region and Leeds City Region. However, this was later discontinued as a result of the May 2010general election, although the ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition government did agree to the creation of theGreater Manchester Combined Authority in 2011, with all other proposals and the regional development agenciesbeing subsumed into the local enterprise partnerships.

Regions of England 6

Subdivisions of EnglandMain article: Subdivisions of EnglandLocal government in England does not follow a uniform structure. Therefore each region is divided into a range offurther subdivisions. London is divided into London boroughs while the other regions are divided into metropolitancounties, shire counties and unitary authorities. Counties are further divided into districts and some areas are alsoparished. Regions are also divided into sub-regions, which usually group socio-economically linked local authoritiestogether. However, the sub-regions have no official status and are little used other than for strategic planningpurposes.

References[1] http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Template:Politics_of_England& action=edit[2] Local Parliaments For England. Mr. Churchill's Outline Of A Federal System, Ten Or Twelve Legislatures, The Times, 13 September 1912,

p.4[3] In 1917 the Royal Geographical Society debated a paper by C.B. Fawcett that detailed 12 provinces he considered to be the "natural divisions

of England". Detailed boundaries were proposed with regional capitals designated on the basis of the possession of universities or universitycolleges. C. B. Fawcett, Natural Divisions of England in The Geographical Journal, Vol. 49, No. 2. (Feb., 1917), pp. 124-135, accessed 28November 2007 (http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0016-7398(191702)49:22. 0. CO;2-T)

[4] In 1919 Fawcett expanded his paper into a book entitled the Provinces of England, and a similar system of regions was proposed by G.D.H.Cole in The Future of Local Government in 1921. In 1920 the Ministry of Health published its own proposals for 15 provinces, subdividedinto 59 regions [[E. W. Gilbert (http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0016-7398(193907)94:12. 0. CO;2-S)], PracticalRegionalism in England and Wales in The Geographical Journal, Vol. 94, No. 1. (Jul., 1939), pp. 29-44. Accessed 28 November 2007]

[5] Paul N. Balchin and Ludk Skora, Regional Policy and Planning in Europe, Routledge, 1999 (http:/ / books. google. co. uk/books?id=j14KIB-3wxYC& dq=regional+ planning+ wannop& source=gbs_navlinks_s), pp.89-100

[6] Urlan Wannop, Regional Imperative: Regional Planning and Governance in Britain, Europe and the United States, Routledge, 2002 (http:/ /books. google. co. uk/ books?id=tc-e1Hjn4XsC& dq=regional+ planning+ england+ 1973& lr=& source=gbs_navlinks_s), pp.8-30

[7][7] Whitehall powers would go to Scotland, Wales and regions, but no full self-government. The Times. 1 November 1973.[8][8] More freedom for Scots, Welsh in proposals to region regions. The Times. 1 November 1973.[9][9] Dissenters urge plan for seven assemblies. The Times. 1 November 1973.[10] Devolution and British Politics. Chapter 10. English regional government : Christopher Stevens[11] National Statistics (http:/ / www. statistics. gov. uk/ geography/ gor. asp) - Beginners' guide to UK geography[12] http:/ / www. election. demon. co. uk/[13] Committee of the Regions (http:/ / www. cor. europa. eu/ en/ presentation/ national_delegations. htm#) - Appointing the UK delegation[14] HM Treasury Press Release 79/07 (http:/ / www. hm-treasury. gov. uk/ newsroom_and_speeches/ press/ 2007/ press_79_07. cfm) - 17 July

2007[15] Regional Ministers at Government Offices webpage (http:/ / www. gos. gov. uk/ ournetwork/ 675481/ ). Retrieved 27 February 2010.[16] eGov monitor - Planning transfer undermines democracy (http:/ / www. egovmonitor. com/ node/ 16178). 29 November 2007[17] ONS: Regions (Former GORs) (http:/ / www. ons. gov. uk/ ons/ guide-method/ geography/ beginner-s-guide/ administrative/ england/

government-office-regions/ index. html). Accessed 8 August 2012[18] http:/ / www. ons. gov. uk/ ons/ guide-method/ geography/ beginner-s-guide/ administrative/ england/ government-office-regions/ index.

html

External links Local Government Boundary Commission for England (http:/ / www. lgbce. org. uk/ ) Dept of Communities and Local Government (http:/ / www. communities. gov. uk/ )

Article Sources and Contributors 7

Article Sources and ContributorsRegions of England Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=608071315 Contributors: AJD, Adambro, Alansohn, Anameofmyveryown, Andy Farrell, AnonMoos, Arcturus, AxG,Bazj, Bevo74, Big Adamsky, Bill william compton, Bjankuloski06en, Boffin, BritishWatcher, Bcherwrmlein, CalJW, Charles Matthews, Chrism, Cnyborg, D6, David Kernow, Denelson83,DerBorg, Deror avi, DjScrawl, Dl2000, Dn9ahx, Dpaajones, Dr Greg, Duncharris, Eldumpo, EoGuy, Equester, Exok, Fishiehelper2, G-Man, Ghmyrtle, Govynn, Graham87, Guidod, Haigh21,Hairy Dude, Hdt83, Henrygb, Heron, Highvale, Hugh Mason, IMSoP, Ian Pitchford, JaT, Jance day, Jasca Ducato, Java13690, Jdforrester, JimmyGuano, Jlpinar83, Johnluisocasio, Jrleighton,Kaihsu, Kalamkaar, Kateshortforbob, Keith Edkins, Khazar2, KirkEN, Ksbrown, Laurel Lodged, Lexusuns, Little muddy funkster, Lofty, Lost tourist, Lozleader, Luwilt, MRSC, Maccoinnich,Mais oui!, Mankind 2k, Mark J, Master Jay, Mattis, Mauls, Melab-1, Meven, Mhockey, Mic, Michael Hardy, Michig, Morwen, Mr Taz, Municipalist, Nevilley, Nicke L, Nightstallion, NomadicWhitt, Numbo3, Oliver Pereira, Orioane, Oscarthecat, Osomec, Othniel25, PBS, Pacaro, Paul-L, Pcpcpc, PeterIto, Philmillhaven, Phunting, Piccolo Modificatore Laborioso, R'n'B, Rama,Randywombat, Rarelibra, Ratzer, Rbrwr, Renata, Richard elphick, Rob984, Routlee, Rror, Rupertslander, Sandy Scott, Sceptic, Skol fir, Sparky the Seventh Chaos, Steff, Steinsky, Stevvvv4444,Tangerines, Template namespace initialisation script, The Thing That Should Not Be, The Tom, Tim!, Timrollpickering, Tpbradbury, Trevor MacInnis, Tristatestar, Vanished user82345ijgeke4tg, Vendrov, Wayneghall, Wereon, WikHead, Wikigk, Willhsmit, Wonkotsane, Xavier1019, Xn4, Xufanc, Zondor, 136 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsFile:English regions 2009.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:English_regions_2009.svg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors:English_metropolitan_and_non-metropolitan_counties_2010.svg: Nilfanion derivative work: Dr GregFile:Flag of England.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_England.svg License: Public Domain Contributors: AnomieFile:Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg License: Creative CommonsAttribution-Sharealike 3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0 Contributors: Sodacan

LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Regions of EnglandHistoryRegions as areas of administrationList of Regions

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