Metropolitan counties are a subdivision of England which were originally used for local government. There are six metropolitan counties: Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.
Devolution is the statutory delegation of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to govern at a subnational level, such as a regional or local level. It is a form of administrative decentralization. Devolved territories have the power to make legislation relevant to the area, thus granting them a higher level of autonomy.
The subdivisions of England constitute a hierarchy of administrative divisions and non-administrative ceremonial areas.
Humberside was a non-metropolitan and ceremonial county in Northern England from 1 April 1974 until 1 April 1996. It was composed of land from either side of the Humber Estuary, created from portions of the East Riding of Yorkshire, West Riding of Yorkshire, and the northern part of Lindsey, Lincolnshire. The county council's headquarters was County Hall at Beverley, inherited from East Riding County Council. Its largest settlement and only city was Kingston upon Hull. Other notable towns included Goole, Beverley, Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Bridlington. The county stretched from Wold Newton at its northern tip to a different Wold Newton at its southernmost point.
The Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Act 2003 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its core provision was to allow the Deputy Prime Minister to make orders for referendums in each of the Regions of England on the question of whether they wish to have an elected regional assembly. If the answer was "yes", this would have been implemented by further legislation; and existing two-tier local government areas would have become unitary authorities.
The regional chambers of England were a group of indirectly elected regional bodies that were created by the provisions of the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998. There were eight regional chambers, one for each of the regions of England except Greater London, which had opted for an elected mayor and assembly in 1998. All eight regional chambers had adopted the title "regional assembly" or "assembly" as part of their name, though this was not an official status in law. The chambers were abolished over a two-year period between 31 March 2008 and 31 March 2010 and some of their functions were assumed by newly established local authority leaders' boards.
The Redcliffe-Maud Report was published in 1969 by the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, under the chairmanship of Lord Redcliffe-Maud. Although the commission's proposals were broadly accepted by the Labour government, they were set aside by the Conservative government elected in 1970.
Local authority areas in England typically have an executive leader and a cabinet selected from the local council, similar to how the national prime minister and cabinet are selected from Parliament. In contrast, residents of some areas, or groups of areas known as combined authorities, directly elect the executive mayors of their local government.
The Royal Commission on the Constitution, also referred to as the Kilbrandon Commission or Kilbrandon Report, was a long-running royal commission set up by Harold Wilson's Labour government to examine the structures of the constitution of the United Kingdom and the British Islands and the government of its constituent countries, and to consider whether any changes should be made to those structures. It was started under Lord Crowther on 15 April 1969, Lord Kilbrandon took over in 1972, and it finally reported on 31 October 1973.
The history of local government in Yorkshire is unique and complex. Yorkshire is the largest historic English county and consists of a diverse mix of urban and rural development with a heritage in agriculture, manufacturing, and mining. After a long period with little change, it has been subject to a number of reforms of local government structures in modern times, some of which were controversial. The most significant of these were the Local Government Act 1972, the 1990s UK local government reform, and the Localism Act 2011. The historic area currently corresponds to several counties and districts and is mostly contained within the Yorkshire and the Humber region.
North Yorkshire Council is the unitary authority which governs the non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire, within the larger ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, in England. North Yorkshire was a two-tier non-metropolitan county from 1974 to 2023, when North Yorkshire Council was a county council called North Yorkshire County Council. On 1 April 2023 the seven lower-tier districts of the county were abolished and their functions taken over by the new unitary authority.
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 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.
A combined authority is a type of local government institution introduced in England outside Greater London by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. Combined authorities are created voluntarily and allow a group of local authorities to pool appropriate responsibility and receive certain delegated functions from central government in order to deliver transport and economic policy more effectively over a wider area.
In the United Kingdom, devolution is the Parliament of the United Kingdom's statutory granting of a greater level of self-government to the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the London Assembly and to their associated executive bodies: the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and in England, the Greater London Authority and combined authorities.
In the United Kingdom, the Alternative Vote referendum also known as the UK-wide referendum on the Parliamentary voting system was a referendum that took place on 5 May 2011, on whether to change the system for electing the House of Commons, the lower house of the national Parliament at Westminster. In the result of a Yes vote, future United Kingdom general elections would have used the "Alternative Vote" (AV); in the event of a No vote, the voting system would remain the same, with the UK continuing to use the "First Past the Post" (FPTP) voting system. The votes cast in the referendum were first counted in each of 440 districts or electoral divisions across the country, which were then combined and declared at a regional level.
The Yorkshire Party is a regionalist political party in Yorkshire, a historic county of England. The party, which was founded in 2014, campaigns for the establishment of a devolved Yorkshire Parliament within the United Kingdom, with powers over education, environment, transportation and housing.
The Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom designed to introduce directly elected mayors to combined local authorities in England and Wales and to devolve housing, transport, planning and policing powers to them. The bill was introduced to the House of Lords by Baroness Williams of Trafford, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, on 28 May 2015.
Structural changes to local government in England took place between 2019 and 2023. Some of these changes continue the trend of new unitary authorities being created from other types of local government districts, which was a policy of Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick from 2019.
The Mayor of West Yorkshire is a directly elected mayor responsible for the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire in England. The Mayor chairs and leads the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and assumes the office and powers of the West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner.
Northern England devolution is the broad term used to describe the wish for devolved governmental powers that would give more autonomy to the Northern Counties.
