Regions of England

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Regions of England
Image:EnglandRegions.png
Greater London South East England South West England West Midlands North West England North East England Yorkshire and the Humber East Midlands East of England

The region, also known as Government Office Region, is currently the highest tier of local government subnational entity in England.

England is divided into nine regions each containing one or more county level entities. The regions were created in 1994 by John Major's government and since 1999 have been used as England's European Parliament constituencies [1] and as statistical NUTS level 1 regions.

The original need to create regions in the UK (and the regions of England) was due to the European Union (then European Community) decision to create regions of the EU, pursuant to the Maastricht Treaty - see Committee of the Regions, to which English regions send personnel for EU-wide discussions.

Merseyside originally constituted a region in itself. In 1998 it was merged into the North West England region. [2]

The Regions are to be used for fire brigade co-ordination in the future, with one headquarters for each region. [3] The current plans for consolidating the number of police forces propose merging forces within the confines of the current Government Office regions.

1 Current powers
2 Regional devolution
- 2.1 Criticism
- 2.2 Northern England referendums, 2004
3 See also
4 External links

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Current powers

Template:Main The powers of the regions are very limited and there are no elected regional governments except for London.

Each region has a Government Office and a few associated institutions, including a Regional Development Agency (RDA) and an assembly. As there are no regional elections, local representatives on regional bodies are nominated by county, unitary authority and borough councils. London is a special case because it has an elected mayor and an assembly with powers in a number of policy areas.

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Regional devolution

The Labour Government announced that it wished to increase the power of government at the regional level, as part of the "devolution" that led to elected assemblies in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and part of the concept of regions in the EU. The present nominated regional assemblies would be replaced by elected bodies.

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Criticism

There is some strong opposition to the introduction of such assemblies from the general public, and also some in politics: especially from the Conservative Party, but also from back-bench Labour Party MPs. Opponents of regionalism argue that instead of decentralising power from London, the new tier of government will simply take power away from county councils, and that the assemblies will be far weaker than those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Template:Citeneeded.

There is also resentment that the regionalisation policy is based on continental patterns of local government supported by the European Union and ignores the traditional primacy of the county system in England. Template:Citeneeded Regions were introduced originally in 1994 as they were needed due to the European Community's creation of the regions of the EU, but the UK also took the opportunity to use these new divisions of the nation as a way to better and more efficiently deliver government services. The regions of England were never intended to form a part of government decision making. However, over time, the centralising tendency of governments in the UK has led to central governments granting powers more to the regional government level as opposed to the local government level, making regional area government offices decision-making bodies - this has led to the calls for more democracy at the regional level. Template:Citeneeded

The regions themselves have also been criticised as being largely based on those devised by the UK government in the Cold War for coordinating civil defence Template:Citeneeded. They are identical apart from that Yorkshire and the Humber and North East England made up two sub-regions in a larger region in the civil defence system - see Civil defence regions. These civil defence regions were in turn based on older Second World War-era divisions, although they saw a major shakeup in the 1970s. [4]

Specific objections include:

the North West region is too elongated, and Cumbria should instead be associated with the geographically closer North East; [5] [6]
the South East region is too large, in terms of both population and area; or that it is too small as three counties which were previously part of it (Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Essex) were combined with East Anglia to create the East of England, but these counties are similar to those which were left in the South East as they are all part of the London commuter belt; or that it is inappropriate to separate it from London. [7]
the South West region is either too large (Gloucestershire being considered a West Midlands county by some), or too small (and that Hampshire and Berkshire should be associated with it). Many Cornish people feel that Cornwall should be removed from this region and should form its own region, on historical and cultural grounds. [8]. Opponents of this proposal point out that Cornwall has only a fifth of the population of the smallest existing region.
the Yorkshire and the Humber region excludes the Cleveland area, of which the areas south of the River Tees are traditionally part of Yorkshire and includes the Grimsby and Scunthorpe areas which have been split from their traditional county of Lincolnshire, the rest of which lies in the East Midlands region. Template:Citeneeded

Other suggestions have included a new Marches region, consisting of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire [9] or that Devon and Cornwall should form a region of their own. [10]

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Northern England referendums, 2004

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A referendum was held in the North East region of England on November 4, 2004; in it, the voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal that this region should have an elected regional assembly.

Similar referendums had been planned in North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber. Following the rejection of the proposal in the North East, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott ruled out holding further referenda in other regions for the foreseeable future.

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