The mayor of London is the head of the executive of the Greater London Authority. The role was created in 2000 after the Greater London devolution referendum in 1998, and was the first directly elected mayor in the United Kingdom.
The metropolitan counties are a type of county-level administrative division of England. There are six metropolitan counties, which each cover large urban areas, with populations between 1 and 3 million. They were created in 1974 and are each divided into several metropolitan districts or boroughs.
The Constitution of 1782 is the series of legal changes which freed the Parliament of Ireland, a parliament established by and subordinate to the Crown of England, of legal restrictions that had been imposed by successive Norman, English, and later, British governments on the scope of its jurisdiction.
The administrative geography of the United Kingdom is complex, multi-layered and non-uniform. The United Kingdom, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe, consists of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For local government in the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each have their own system of administrative and geographic demarcation. Consequently, there is "no common stratum of administrative unit encompassing the United Kingdom".
Politics of England forms the major part of the wider politics of the United Kingdom, with England being more populous than all the other countries of the United Kingdom put together. As England is also by far the largest in terms of area and GDP, its relationship to the UK is somewhat different from that of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The English capital London is also the capital of the UK, and English is the dominant language of the UK. Dicey and Morris (p26) list the separate states in the British Islands. "England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark.... is a separate country in the sense of the conflict of laws, though not one of them is a State known to public international law." But this may be varied by statute.
Referendums in the United Kingdom are occasionally held at a national, regional or local level. National referendums can be permitted by an Act of Parliament but by tradition are extremely rare due to the ancient principle of parliamentary sovereignty meaning that they cannot be constitutionally binding on either the Government or Parliament, although they usually have a persuasive political effect. Referendums are regulated through the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 whilst in Scotland referendums on devolved matters can be held under the Referendums (Scotland) Act 2020.
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 Local Government Act 1985 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Its main effect was to abolish the six county councils of the metropolitan counties that had been set up in 1974, 11 years earlier, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with the Greater London Council that had been established in 1965. In their place many single purpose authorities known collectively as 'joint authorities' were established for fire service, police and passenger transport. An ad hoc education authority was established for Inner London and a planning authority for Greater London. The legislation permitted councils to form 'joint arrangements' for waste disposal and other services that they wished to provide together. Time-limited residuary bodies were created to dispose of the assets of the former authorities.
In the United Kingdom (UK), each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one member to the House of Commons.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom currently has 650 parliamentary constituencies across the constituent countries, each electing a single member of parliament (MP) to the House of Commons by the plurality voting system, ordinarily every five years. Voting last took place in all 650 of those constituencies at the United Kingdom general election on 12 December 2019.
Directly elected mayors in England and Wales are local government executive leaders who have been directly elected by the people who live in a local authority area. The first such political post was the mayor of London, created as the executive of the Greater London Authority in 2000 as part of a reform of the local government of Greater London. Since the Local Government Act 2000, all of the several hundred principal local councils in England and Wales are required to review their executive arrangements.
The Greater London Authority Act 1999 is the Act of Parliament that established the Greater London Authority, the London Assembly and the Mayor of London.
The Greater London Authority (Referendum) Act 1998 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which made legal provision for the holding of a non-binding referendum in Greater London on whether there should be a democratically elected Assembly for London and a separately elected Mayor for London.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), since 1922, comprises four constituent countries: England, Scotland, and Wales, as well as Northern Ireland. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom. Some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom, refer to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as "regions". With regard to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales particularly, the descriptive name one uses "can be controversial, with the choice often revealing one's political preferences".
The regions, formerly known as the government office regions, are the highest tier of sub-national division in England, established in 1994. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within government. While they no longer fulfil this role, they continue to be used for statistical and some administrative 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 within the European Union. The regions generally follow the boundaries of the former standard regions, established in the 1940s for statistical purposes.
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.
Greater London is an administrative area governed by the Greater London Authority, and a ceremonial county of England that covers the bulk of the same area, with the exception of the City of London. It forms the London region. Greater London is the administrative boundary for London, and is organised into 33 local government districts: the 32 London boroughs and the City of London, which is part of the region but forms a separate ceremonial county. The Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
Federalism in the United Kingdom refers to the distribution of power between constituent countries and regions of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom, despite being composed of four countries has traditionally been a unitary state governed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in Westminster. Instead of adopting a federal model, such as that of the United States, the United Kingdom employs a system of devolution, in which political power is gradually decentralised. Devolution differs from federalism in that devolved regions are not states and thus have no constitutional precedence. As such, an Act of Parliament could undo devolution, whereas the federal United States government cannot revoke a state's statehood. Devolution has only been extended to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Greater London, with London being the only English region to have significantly devolved power.
The ceremonial county of Cheshire, which comprises the unitary authorities of Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton and Warrington, has returned 11 MPs to the UK Parliament since 1997.
