The regions of England, formerly known as the government office regions, are the highest tier of sub-national division in England. They were established in 1994[1] and follow the 1974–96 county borders. They are a continuation of the former 1940s standard regions which followed the 1889–1974 administrative county borders. Between 1994 and 2011, all nine regions had partly devolved functions; they no longer fulfil this role, continuing to be used for limited statistical purposes.[2]
The London Region has a directly elected Mayor and Assembly. Six regions have local authority leaders' boards to assist with correlating the headline policies of local authorities. The remaining two regions no longer have any administrative functions, having abolished their regional local authority leaders' boards.
In 1998, regional chambers were established in the eight regions outside London, which produced strategic plans and recommendations to local authorities. Each of the regions also had an associated (central) Government Office with some responsibility for coordinating policy, and, from 2007, a part-time regional minister within the Government. House of Commonsregional Select Committees were established in 2009. However, the chambers and select committees were abolished in May 2010, restoring these functions to the main tier of local government,[3] with limited functions transferred to the regional local authority leaders' boards created in 2009. Regional ministers were not reappointed by the incoming Coalition Government, and the Government Offices were abolished in 2011.
From 2011, combined authorities have been introduced in some city regions, with similar responsibilities to the former regional chambers (and in some cases, replacing a regional local authority leaders' board on a smaller scale), but which also receive additional delegated functions from central government relating to transport and economic policy.
Regional development agencies were public bodies established in all nine regions in 1998 to promote economic development. They had certain delegated functions, including administering European Union regional development funds, and received funding from the central government as well. These were abolished in 2012, with statutory functions returning to local authorities and central government; however, smaller scale local enterprise partnerships were voluntarily established to take on some functions relating to coordinating economic priorities and development.
Proposals for administrative regions within England were mooted by the British government prior to the First World War. In 1912, the Third Home Rule Bill was passing through parliament. The Bill was expected to introduce a devolved parliament for Ireland, and as a consequence calls were made for similar structures to be introduced in Great Britain or "Home Rule All Round". On 12 September the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, gave a speech in which he proposed 10 or 12 regional parliaments for the United Kingdom. Within England, he suggested that London, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands would make natural regions.[5][6] While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a while widely anticipated and various schemes for dividing England devised.[7][8] By the 1930s, several competing systems of regions were adopted by central government for such purposes as census of population, agriculture, electricity supply, civil defence and the regulation of road traffic.[9] Nine "standard regions" were set up in 1946, in which central government bodies, statutory undertakings and regional bodies were expected to cooperate.[10] However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s.[11]
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, consisting largely of indirectly elected representatives of local authorities and operating along the lines of the Welsh advisory council". One-fifth of the advisory councils would be nominees from central government. The boundaries suggested were the "eight now [in 1973] existing for economic planning purposes, modified to make boundaries to conform with the new county structure".[12][13] A minority report by Lord Crowther-Hunt and Alan T. Peacock suggested instead seven regional assemblies and governments within Great Britain (five within England), which would take over substantial amounts of the central government.[14]
Some elements of regional development and economic planning began to be established in England from the mid-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 1970s, these produced a number of regional and sub-regional planning studies.[10] These institutions continued to operate until they were abolished by the incoming Conservative government in 1979. However, by the mid-1980s local authorities in most regions had jointly established standing conferences to consider regional planning issues. Regional initiatives were 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,[10] and by the Government's issuing of Strategic Guidance at a regional level, from 1986 onwards.[11]
In 1998, regional chambers were created in the eight English regions outside London under the provisions of the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998.[18] The powers of the assemblies were limited, and members were appointed, largely by local authorities, rather than being directly elected. The functions of the English regions were essentially 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 for the UK members of the Committee of the Regions, with members drawn from the elected councillors of the local authorities in the region. The final nominations were made by central government.[19] Although they were publicly funded, one of the Regional Assemblies claimed not to be a public authority and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000.[20]
As power was to be devolved to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales without corresponding devolution in England, a series of referendums were planned to establish elected regional assemblies in some of the regions. The first was held in London in 1998 and was passed. The London Assembly and Mayor of London of the Greater London Authority were created in 2000. A referendum was held in North East England on 4 November 2004, but the proposal for an elected assembly was rejected.
Abolition of regional institutions
In 2007, a Treasury Review for new Prime Minister Gordon Brown recommended that greater powers should be given to local authorities and that the Regional Chambers should be phased out of existence by 2010.[21] The same year, nine Regional Ministers were appointed by the incoming Brown ministry. Their primary goal was stated as being to improve communication between central government and the regions of England.[22] The assemblies were effectively replaced by smaller local authority leaders' boards between 2008 and 2010, and formally abolished on 31 March 2010, as part of a "Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration". Most of their functions transferred to the relevant regional development agency and to local authority leaders' boards.[23]
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 most cases continue to exist as voluntary associations of council leaders, funded by the local authorities themselves.[24][25][26] No appointments as Regional Ministers were made by the incoming UK government in 2010.
Following the abolition of the Government Offices in 2011, it was announced that the former Government Office Regions (GOR) would henceforth be known, for the purposes of statistical analysis, simply as Regions.[27]
International Territorial Level (ITL) is a geocode standard for referencing the subdivisions of the United Kingdom for statistical purposes, used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Between 2003 and 2021, as part of the European Union and European Statistical System, the geocode standard used for the United Kingdom were Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics or NUTS. The NUTS code for the UK was UK and the NUTS standard had hierarchy of three levels, with 12 first level regions, which are currently mirrored by the ITL classification, of which 9 regions are in England. The sub-structure corresponds to administrative divisions within the country. Formerly, the further NUTS divisions IV and V existed; these have now been replaced by Local Administrative Units (LAU-1 and LAU-2 respectively).
Between 1994 and 2011, the nine regions had an administrative role in the implementation of UK Government policy, and as the areas covered by (mostly indirectly) elected bodies.
Local government in England does not follow a uniform structure. Therefore, each region is divided into a range of further subdivisions. London is divided into London boroughs and one county, while the other regions are divided into metropolitan counties, shire counties and unitary authorities. Counties are further divided into districts and some areas are also yet further divided into civil parishes. Regions are also divided into sub-regions, which usually group socio-economically linked local authorities together. However, the sub-regions have no official status and are little used other than for strategic planning purposes.
^Local Parliaments For England. Mr. Churchill's Outline of a Federal System, Ten Or Twelve Legislatures, The Times, 13 September 1912, p.4
^G. K. Peatling, "Home Rule for England, English Nationalism, and Edwardian Debates about Constitutional Reform" in "Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies", Vol. 35, No. 1. (Spring, 2003), pp.71–90. JSTOR4054518
^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 university colleges. C. B. Fawcett, Natural Divisions of England in The Geographical Journal, Vol. 49, No. 2. (February 1917), pp. 124–135 JSTOR1779341
^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, subdivided into 59 regions E. W. Gilbert, Practical Regionalism in England and Wales in The Geographical Journal, Vol. 94, No. 1. (July 1939), pp. 29–44. JSTOR1788587
^E. W. Gilbert, "Practical Regionalism in England and Wales" in "The Geographical Journal", Vol. 94, No. 1. (July 1939), pp. 29–44. JSTOR1788587
