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 1994Local government geography and history, Department for Communities and Local Government. Retrieved 23 November 2016. 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.
While the UK was a member of the European Union, they defined areas (constituencies) for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament. Eurostat also used them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions ("NUTS 1 regions") within the European Union, which in 2021 were superseded by International Territorial Level (ITL) regions ("ITL 1 regions").
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 Commons regional 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, 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.
History Background
After 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 unified as the Kingdom of England, roughly coincide with those of modern regions. During Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate in the 1650s, the rule of the Major-Generals created 10 regions in England and Wales of similar size to the modern regions.
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.Local Parliaments For England. Mr. Churchill's Outline of a Federal System, Ten Or Twelve Legislatures, The Times, 13 September 1912, p.4G. 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. While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a while widely anticipated and various schemes for dividing England devised.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 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. 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.E. W. Gilbert, "Practical Regionalism in England and Wales" in "The Geographical Journal", Vol. 94, No. 1. (July 1939), pp. 29–44. Nine "standard regions" were set up in 1946, in which central government bodies, statutory undertakings and regional bodies were expected to cooperate.Paul N. Balchin and Luděk Sýkora, Regional Policy and Planning in Europe, Routledge, 1999, pp.89–100 However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s.Urlan Wannop, Regional Imperative: Regional Planning and Governance in Britain, Europe and the United States, Routledge, 2002, pp.8–30
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".Whitehall powers would go to Scotland, Wales and regions, but no full self-government. The Times. 1 November 1973.More freedom for Scots, Welsh in proposals to region regions. The Times. 1 November 1973. 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.Dissenters urge plan for seven assemblies. The Times. 1 November 1973.
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. 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, and by the Government's issuing of Strategic Guidance at a regional level, from 1986 onwards.
Regions as areas of administration In 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 be different 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 Transport and the Department for the Environment.Devolution and British Politics. Chapter 10. English regional government: Christopher Stevens Following the Labour Party's victory in the 1997 general election, the government created regional development agencies. Around a decade later the Labour administration also founded the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships (RIEPs) with £185m of devolved funding to enhance councils' 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 of the Regions of the European Union: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland had each constituted a region, but England represents such a large proportion of the population of the United Kingdom that further division was thought 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. The nine regions were used as England's European Parliament constituencies from 1999 until Britain's departure from the European Union; and as statistical NUTS level 1 regions.
From 2006 to 2013, there were ten strategic health authorities (SHAs), which were part of the structure of the National Health Service in England. Each SHA corresponded to a region, except for South East England, which was divided into western and eastern parts. Each SHA was responsible for managing performance, enacting directives and implementing health policy as required by the Department of Health at a regional level. Initially twenty-eight in number, they were reduced to ten in 2006. Along with primary care trusts, they were replaced by clinical commissioning groups and Public Health England in 2013 under the Health and Social Care Act 2012.