South East England is the third-largest region of England, with a land area of 19,072 square kilometres (7,364sqmi), and is also the most populous with a total population of 9,379,833 in 2022.[3] The region contains eight legally chartered cities: Brighton and Hove, Canterbury, Chichester, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester. The region's close proximity to London has led to South East England becoming a prosperous economic hub with the largest economy of any region in the UK, after London. The region is home to Gatwick Airport, the UK's second-busiest airport, and Heathrow Airport (the UK's busiest airport) is located adjacent to the region's boundary with Greater London. The coastline along the English Channel provides numerous ferry crossings to mainland Europe.
In medieval times, South East England included much of the Kingdom of Wessex, which was the precursor to the modern state of England. Winchester was the capital of England after unification of the various states, including the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex and Mercia. Winchester stopped being the administrative capital of England some time in the 13th century as its influence waned while the City of London dominated commerce. The last monarch to be crowned at Winchester was Richard II in 1377, although the last monarch to be crowned by the Bishop of Winchester was Queen Mary I in 1553.
Bletchley Park in north Buckinghamshire was the principal Allied centre for codebreaking. The Colossus computer, arguably the world's first, began working on Lorentz codes on 5 February 1944, with Colossus 2 working from June 1944. The site was chosen, among other reasons, because it is at the junction of the Varsity Line (between Oxford and Cambridge) and the West Coast Main Line. The Harwell computer (Dekatron), now at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley, was built in 1949 and is believed to be the oldest working digital computer in the world.[6]
Sir David N. Payne at the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre invented the erbium-doped fibre amplifier, a type of optical amplifier, in the mid-1980s, which became essential for the internet. Henry Moseley at Oxford in 1913 discovered his Moseley's law of X-ray spectra of chemical elements that enabled him to be the first to assign the correct atomic number to elements in periodic table; he did not receive any Nobel Prize as it is not awarded posthumously (he was killed in 1915 at Gallipoli with the Royal Engineers). Carbon fibre was invented in 1963 at the RAE in Farnborough by a team led by William Watt. The Apollo LCGspace-suit cooling system originated mostly from work done at RAE Farnborough in the early 1960s.
Sir John Herschel, son of the astronomer, from Kent, invented the term photography in 1839, meaning light writing. and discovered the first photographic fixer, sodium thiosulphate, known as hypo, also in 1839.
William Harvey of Folkestone, in Kent, discovered the circulation of blood. The Lilly Research Centre in Windlesham, Berkshire, part of Eli Lilly, developed Olanzapine in 1996 (for bipolar disorder, selling around $5bn worldwide annually). Beecham Research Laboratories at Brockham Park in 1959 discovered meticillin (or methicillin), the first semi-synthetic penicillin (beta-lactamase stable), deriving from their discovery in 1958 of 6-APA, the core constituent; the team, led by Prof George Rolinson, won the Mullard Award in 1971. Bipyridine compounds (Paraquat-Gramoxone and Diquat) were discovered for herbicide use in 1954 by William Boon at ICI's Plant Protection division at Jealott's Hill, being released onto the market in 1958. AZT/Retrovir (zidovudine) was first manufactured by Wellcome in 1987 in Kent; they also introduced Zovirax (aciclovir), and the naturally occurring digoxin, a cardiac glycoside. After a plane crashed near his house in Oxford in 1940, Sir Peter Medawar helped the injured pilot, and in the process discovered homograft rejection, leading to organ transplantation using azathioprine. Viagra (Sildenafil) was synthesized at Pfizer in Sandwich, Kent.
The world's first submarine telephone cable was laid between England and France in 1891 by HMTS Monarch, enabling London-Paris calls from April 1891. On 3 December 1992, Neil Papworth of Reading, an engineer from Sema Group Telecoms at Vodafone in Newbury, sent the world's first text message from his computer to an Orbitel 901 handset of Richard Jarvis, Vodafone's technical director.
The first public automatic telephone exchange in the UK was at Epsom telephone exchange from 18 May 1912. It was introduced as standard across the UK's 6,700 telephone exchanges in 1922, lasting for around 70 years; it could handle up to 500 lines. It used the Strowger design and was made by Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company of Liverpool.[7] The world's first automatic telephone exchange had opened in La Porte, Indiana in November 1892.
BritNed connects from the Isle of Grain in Medway to the TenneT network in the Netherlands.
UK-Belgium 5, laid in 1986 from Kent, was the world's first optical fibre submarine cable, and is 36 miles long.
The BritNed 1000MW power-supply submarine cable from Isle of Grain to Rotterdam, was built in 2009. The HVDC Cross-Channel (2000MW) submarine cable was built in 1986. This is the world's highest-capacity submarine HVDC cable; it goes from France and lands near Folkestone, with the large transformer station (built by GEC) squeezed between the CTRL and the M20 in Aldington and Smeeth, made of eight 270 kV cables.
Aviation
On 16 October 1908 the British Army Aeroplane No 1, flown by the American Samuel Franklin Cody, was the first aircraft flown in the UK, at Farnborough; on 14 May 1909 he flew it for more than a mile. On 13 August 1909, his wife was the first woman in the UK to fly in a plane, also at Farnborough.
The first human airborne ejection seat firing took place on 24 July 1946 over Chalgrove Airfield, Oxfordshire, in a Meteor, piloted by Bernard Lynch; the first dummy ejection had been 10 May 1945 over RAF Oakley in west Buckinghamshire (today near the M40); on 13 March 1962, the first in-flight rocket-powered ejection took place by Peter Howard, an RAF doctor based at Farnborough's Institute of Aviation Medicine in Meteor WA364 at 250ft over Chalgrove, with the rocket giving a maximum force of 16G. The Miles M.52, designed at Woodley Aerodrome in Berkshire by Miles Aircraft, was an advanced design of aircraft which had the innovation of the flying tail or all-moving tail also known as a stabilator; this would solve the problem of stability and aircraft control at supersonic speeds, and its design was taken wholesale into the American Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft.
The first Harrier aircraft XV738 flew on 28 December 1967; this was the first aircraft of the RAF to have a head-up display avionics system. The first two-seat Harrier XW174 flew on 24 April 1969, later crashing at Larkhill in June 1969. The British Aerospace Sea HarrierXZ450 first flew on 20 August 1978; on 4 May 1982 this aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire at Goose Green, killing the pilot with 800 Naval Air Squadron from HMS Hermes; the aircraft had no radar warning receiver (RWR), due to testing the Sea Eagle, so could not detect the Skyguard radar had locked on to it. It was destroyed with the Oerlikon GDF (35mm) of GADA 601; it was the first Sea Harrier lost in the Falklands campaign.
Royston Instruments of Byfleet developed the world's first multi-channel flight data recorders in 1965.
South Foreland Lighthouse on 8 December 1858 was the world's first lighthouse with electric light, with the first type of industrial electrical generator made by Frederick Hale Holmes, from work he had carried out with Floris Nollet of Belgium, and 36 permanent magnets. By 1880, of the ten lighthouses with electric light, five were in the UK. From the lighthouse in 1899, the first international radio broadcast to France was made. Zénobe Gramme of Belgium made a much better design in 1870 with self-excitation of magnets, and the first modern dynamo. North Foreland Lighthouse was the UK's last-staffed lighthouse until 1998.
Portland cement was developed in Northfleet, Kent, by William Aspdin, son of Joseph Aspdin. The development was to heat the ingredients to around 1450°C, producing clinker. Previously, temperatures were taken to only 800°C, which was not enough. The first ever cement kiln is still in Northfleet today in a cardboard factory. In the late 1800s, the rotary kiln made the process much more efficient. Concrete, effectively human-made stone, is the most widespread human-made material. 5% of all carbon emissions worldwide are from concrete production.
The National Fruit Collection is the largest collection of fruit trees in the world, at Brogdale, and is next to the M2 at the A251 junction in Ospringe. Scalextric was invented by Fred Francis in 1956, who founded Minimodels in Havant; initially the model cars had been clockwork; it was made from 1967 at Triang in Margate. The world's first Mars Bar was made in Slough in 1932; it was modelled on the Milky Way, popular at the time in the USA. Twix was introduced at Slough in 1967, with production moving to eastern France (Mars Chocolat France at Haguenau in Alsace) in 2005. The Ford GT40 was developed by Ford Advanced Vehicles at Slough in the mid-1960s.
Geography
England population density and low elevation coastal zones. South East England is particularly vulnerable to sea level riseView of South East England coast from northern France.
In unofficial usage, the South East can refer to a varying area – sometimes only to London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, and Surrey; but sometimes to an area corresponding to the former Standard Statistical Region. The South East is also occasionally used as a synonym for the home counties.
The South East of England is the most Conservative voting region of Britain in terms of both seats and votes. The area also has some seats where there is strong support for other parties, for example, Oxford, Slough and Southampton Test for Labour and Brighton Pavilion which is held by the Green Party. Out of 84 parliamentary seats, the Conservatives hold 72. In the 2017 general election, the Conservatives won 54.8% of votes, Labour 28.6%, Liberal Democrats 10.6%, Greens 3.1%, and UKIP 2.2%.
Buckinghamshire, Medway and Kent, and Slough have an almost completely selective education system – not just a few grammar schools as other English areas may have – with secondary modern schools as the alternative. Kent has 33 grammar schools, Buckinghamshire 13, Medway 6 and Slough 4. The other areas are comprehensive. The top thirty schools at A level are almost exclusively selective schools; one or two are sixth form colleges. However, the results for each county as a whole are not always directly related to the number of grammar schools, as Kent and Medway perform below average at A-level. The King's School, Canterbury claims to be oldest in England: 597 AD. Herschel Grammar School in Slough is the most oversubscribed school in England, with 14 people per place, Langley Grammar School in Slough is next with 13 per place, then Burnham Grammar School.[33]
508,000 in the region are at state secondary schools (the highest in England) with 101,000 in Kent (the highest in England for a county and completely selective) then 70,000 in Hampshire, 60,000 in Surrey, 45,000 in West Sussex, 36,000 in Oxfordshire, 35,000 in Buckinghamsire. The lowest is 6,000 at Bracknell Forest, then Reading with about 6,000. Of all regions, the South-East has the greatest percentage that attend a grammar school: 12%; the next highest is the South-West with 6%.[34] The most-educated people (NQF level 4 or above) in the region live in Elmbridge (51%), then Waverley, and Epsom and Ewell; 33% of people are at this level for the South-East, only second to London at 40%.
The region has the highest number of sixth formers, outside of London, in England;[35] the highest number is in Kent, the highest for England, then Buckinghamshire (also completely selective), then Surrey. For state school pupils, there is patchy STEM participation. Hampshire has the most passing STEM subjects in England and in the region, followed by Kent, Surrey and Buckinghamshire. For STEM subjects, Portsmouth is lowest by some distance (6 people passed A level Chemistry) and is almost the worst in England. Southampton also gets low STEM subject results. Bracknell Forest gets low STEM results, for its economic prosperity, but does not include private schools.
For languages, the best is Kent: the county achieves the most A-level language passes in England, although Hampshire is a close second. Both counties get more German A level passes than the whole of North East England. Buckinghamshire and Surrey have high language A-level passes. Hampshire gets the most A-level passes in England (27,500), again more than North-East England (25,000). Although Hampshire is the best at languages, Portsmouth gets the fewest language passes in the region, and some of the lowest in England, with four French A levels, and has only 500 A level passes in total; next lowest are Slough, Bracknell Forest, and Southampton.
Reading School often gets the highest percentage of Oxbridge acceptances for a state school in England.
Reading School, a grammar, is the state school that gets the highest percentage (23%) into Oxbridge in 2010, behind 10 independents, and is also the oldest existing state grammar school in England;[36] above it in the region, of the independent schools, are Magdalen College School, Oxford (32%), Guildford High School (26%) and Wycombe Abbey (25%). The Kendrick School, also in Reading, gets the 4th highest state school acceptance percentage to Oxbridge (18%) and the second highest in England outside of two grammar schools in London. Of the 25 state schools in the top 100 schools getting to Oxbridge, 7 are from the region. Many people from the north of East Sussex go to Kent's grammars; some people on the London edge of Surrey attend grammars in Kingston upon Thames; and Buckingham's two grammars attract people from nearby Milton Keynes;[37] Buckinghamshire's grammar schools get some of best admissions to Oxbridge in the UK. Surrey has twice as many acceptances into Oxbridge as the whole of Wales; acceptances to Oxbridge are concentrated in 10 counties in the South-East.
1% of those at school in the South-East gained no GCSE passes in 2010; Portsmouth was most with 2.5%, and Windsor and Maidenhead had the lowest with 0.2%. For school free school meals, the region has the lowest percentage in England with 7.2%; the highest percentage is Southampton with 17%, and the lowest is Wokingham with 3.5% (the second lowest in England after Rutland); Buckinghamshire is 4.3%, then Bracknell Forest and Surrey are 4.9%. For truancy, the highest is South Bucks at 7.0, then Canterbury 7.0, Portsmouth 6.9, Thanet 6.9, Southampton 6.4, and Rushmoor 6.1. The lowest truancy percentages are for Tandridge 2.5, Windsor & Maidenhead 2.5, and Slough 2.5.
At GCSE, the area in the South East (and England) with the highest results is consistently Buckinghamshire. Berkshire is split into unitary authorities, and Wokingham, Windsor and Slough have the next best GCSE results. All of Berkshire's unitary authorities have results above the England average, with West Berkshire considerably above average. Schools in Surrey and Hampshire also have consistently good GCSE results, and they are above average in Oxfordshire, West Sussex, Kent, Medway, and East Sussex. There are a small number of districts where results are significantly below average including the unitary authorities of Portsmouth (one of the lowest LEAs in the country), the Isle of Wight, Southampton, Brighton, and the districts of Oxford in Oxfordshire, Adur in West Sussex and Hastings in East Sussex.
There are forty-nine FE colleges in the region. The two main FE colleges are Northbrook College in Sussex and Basingstoke College of Technology in Hampshire. Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshore share an LSC (which fund FE colleges), and Sussex has a combined LSC. The region's LSC office was in Reading, looking after five areas.
Universities
Tom Tower of Christ Church, Oxford; in 1920, the University of Oxford was the first in the UK to award degrees to women.
The best known university in the region is the University of Oxford, famous for its academic achievements, and also for its ornate colleges and its rowing crews on the Thames. It was ranked the fourth best university in the world by the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2013.[38]
By total HEFCE funding, the biggest university is the Open University, followed by Oxford University.[39] The Open and Oxford each receive around three times as much funding as any other university in the region, and Oxford receives the largest research grant in England (as of 2009). The University of Southampton gets the third largest amount of funding, with the next largest research grant, one of the largest in England. Other universities with a large research grant are Reading, Sussex and Surrey. Oxford gets twice as much total income (around £700million) as the next largest, Southampton. Surrey and Reading get the next largest total income.
Oxford and Southampton have the largest numbers of students, followed by Brighton. Of total students in the region, around 45% are from the region and 35% from other regions. Of full-time first degree students in the region, over 35% are from the region, 15% are from London, and 10% each are from the East of England and the South-West; in total, around 70% are from the south of England. Very few are from the North-East or Scotland. Around 35% of the region's native students stay in the region, with 15% going to London and over 10% going to the South-West. In general, for other regions of the UK, the South-East's students are more prepared to study in other regions than those regions' students are prepared to study in the South-East. Once they graduate, over 50% stay in the South-East, with 25% going to London, around 5% going to the East of England, and around 10% going to the South-West; around 90% stay in the south of England.
Economy
Overall, the South East of England is a very prosperous area with the second largest regional economy in the UK (after London), valued at £177billion in 2006.[40] GDP per capita in 2007 was estimated at £22,624, compared with a UK average of £19,956, making South East England the second richest region per capita, behind London.[41] However prosperity varies significantly across the region and despite its image of wealth there are large pockets of deprivation. GDP per capita in Berkshire and Milton Keynes is more than twice that of East Sussex and the Isle of Wight.[42]
Many high technology companies are located near the M3 in Surrey and the M4 in Berkshire. Sun Microsystems had their UK base in Blackwater near Camberley until 2009. Microsoft and Oracle have their UK headquarters next door to each other in Reading (Wokingham borough), as do the Yell Group and Logica (near junction 11 of the M4). The Gatwick Diamond is also a hub for hi-tech industry, centred at Gatwick Airport with Epsom to the north and Burgess Hill to the south. The largest company, by turnover, in the South East is Vodafone, followed by Ineos.
Redhill with the diesel Class 166 service run by First Great Western to Reading as the line has not got the Third rail electrification fully installed on the North Downs LineMost main routes in the region are radials from London. Shown here is the A21. It is one of the major north–south routes connecting London and commuter towns and the coastRail transport infrastructure map - UK - South East England
The main road transport routes are along the M1 through Buckinghamshire; the M40 through Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire; the M4 through Berkshire and Buckinghamshire; the M2 motorway/A2 and M20 through Kent; the M23 through Surrey and West Sussex; the M3 through Surrey and Hampshire. All these routes connect to the M25, which runs near to and occasionally through the region's border with Greater London.
The A34 provides a north–south road link through Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hampshire. The east–west corridor through the south of the region is provided by the A27 and the M27.
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(May 2020)
As part of the transport planning system the Regional Assembly is under statutory requirement to produce a Regional Transport Strategy (RTS) to provide long term planning for transport in the region. This involves region wide transport schemes such as those carried out by the Highways Agency and Network Rail.[46] Within the region the local transport authorities carry out transport planning through the use of a Local Transport Plan (LTP) which outlines their strategies, policies and implementation programme.[47]
Vodafone HQ north of Newbury; it arrived as Racal-Vodafone in 1983, when Bayer also arrived; Vodafone is the world's second-biggest mobile phone company (the world's largest privately owned) with £40 billion of revenue and 464 million customers, and profits of £11bn; it has around 19M UK customers, and by value makes up about 5% of the FTSE 100.
Further east on the A404(M) is McGraw-Hill UK in Cox Green; other the side of the A404(M) at the Cox Green Interchange (9A), GSK makes Sensodyne, Corsodyl, Aquafresh, and Macleans; Volvo Cars UK are at Scandinavia House (in Marlow from 1986 to 2012) next to GSK; Nortel UK left in 2009. Sanofi Pasteur MSD UK (vaccines) is based next to the Maidenhead council offices. Initial Washrooms Solutions is next to the railway station and on the other side of A308 is Hutchison 3G UK; on the other side of the railway is the Rank Group at the A308 roundabout, in Braywick. Adobe Systems have their European HQ on the A4, south of the B4447 roundabout, next to a Sainsbury's. Hanson UK is based at the A4/A308 roundabout; Hitachi Europe (with Maxell Europe) is off the A4094 on the northern outskirts towards Cookham at Whitebrook Park, with DS Smith, at the former Formica Research Centre. Avery Dennison UK are based to the north off the A308 at Furze Platt.
Syngenta UK and Wincor Nixdorf UK (ATMs) are in Bracknell. Boehringer Ingelheim UK is off the A3095 in west Bracknell in Easthampstead; nearby to the north is Waitrose; to the east along the A3095 is Panasonic UK; next door to the south is IHS UK (owner of Jane's Information Group) and HHI Europe (construction equipment); further along the A3095 is BMW (GB); BMW sold their first model in the UK in 1966, the 2002, and sold 230,000 cars in the UK, a record amount. In 2017, German car imports to the UK were worth €20.8 billion.[66] To the south on the Southern Ind Est is Daler-Rowney (known for its acrylic paint; Rowney was the first supplier in Europe in 1963.
Martin-Baker Mk 9 ejection seat; Martin-Baker seats have saved around 950 RAF pilots, and around 7600 pilots around the world, and were developed by Sir James Martin (1893–1981) from Northern Ireland.
NT CADCAM in Haddenham is the UK distributor of the industry-standard SolidWorks CAD software package; Schwartz UK (spices) and McCormick UK, the parent company of Camp Coffee, is near Haddenham and Thame Parkway railway station off the A418 between Thame and Aylesbury. Acco UK (stationery), who own Rexel (stationery) and GBC (pouch laminators), are on the A418 in Aylesbury, opposite Aylesbury College; Askeys have made ice cream cones since 1965 next to the A4157 and Grand Union Canal. Demag Hamilton (owned by Sumitomo) who make plastic injection-moulding machines, is based on the Triangle Business Park on the A413 next to the railway in Stoke Mandeville. At Long Crendon is Terex Demag UK (cranes), and Unic UK (mini cranes). Arla opened its huge Aylesbury dairy in Aylesbury in 2014, on the A41 Aston Clinton bypass. Arla Aylesbury is a fresh milk processing facility with 34 acres; its plastic bottles are made on-site by Alpla.[67]
Argos head office on Avebury Boulevard in Milton Keynes; Argos was established in 1973 from what was the Green Shield Stamps company and shops, and since 2016 has been owned by Sainsbury's, formerly Home Retail Group.
In the south-west of Milton-Keynes, Chemetall, a chemical company, is in Denbigh West, Bletchley, near Marshall Amplification, near Denbigh Roundabout (B4034); Yokohama UK (tyres) is at Mount Farm (Bletchley and Fenny Stratford) north of Denbigh West, next to the A5 (Fenny Stratford bypass); to the east of Mount Farm, Kemble and Co. were Britain's last piano manufacturers, until the factory closed in 2009. Holophane Europe make floodlighting on the Mount Farm Ind Est, east of A4146/A5 Caldecotte Interchange; on the west of Mount Farm, on the B4034, Basell Polyolefins UK (part of the Dutch LyondellBasell) make polypropylene compounds. Domino's Pizza Group (arrived in the UK in 1985) is in West Ashland near the A5/A421 junction. Suzuki GB is on the A421 near B4034 roundabout at Tattenhoe in Shenley Brook End on the south-western edge.
Elsewhere in the borough, Welcome Break is at the M1 service station in Newport Pagnell, where Aston Martin had a factory until 2007 (The existing site is now home to the Aston Martin Works, which focuses on heritage sales, service, spares and restoration operations). The town is also home to a customer centre of car retailer Cazoo, located just off the A509/A422 junction at Tickford Roundabout. FCO Services and HMGCC is based at Hanslope Park, in a rural area 6mi (9.7km) north of Central Milton Keynes.
Further south along the M20, Givaudan UK (flavourings, former Quest International, and previously Proprietary Perfume and Flavours, or PPF International) has a 10-acre large plant in Kennington; next-door is Premier Foods (former RHM before 2007, and opened as Batchelors in 1957) on the A2070 next to the River Great Stour and the railway, east of the M20; the 16-acre site makes Paxostuffing, Savoury Rice, Pasta n Sauce, Bisto, Cup-a-Soup (introduced in 1972), Vesta curries (launched by Batchelors in 1961), and claims to be the largest dry food manufacturing site in Europe; it now makes Bird's Custard and Angel Delight. Chartham Papers (owned by Arjo Wiggins) is the UK's only manufacturer of tracing paper at Chartham. Kent grows three-quarters of the UK's Bramley apples.[citation needed]
Cummins Power Generation is in Acol, near Manston Airport on the A299, and Pfizer, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world and manufacturer of Anadin, had its European R&D site in Sandwich until 2012, next to the River Stour and A256. Hornby, with Airfix and Humbrol, is on the A254 on Westwood Ind Est on the southern edge of Margate; the site started out as Tri-ang Railways in 1954, becoming Hornby in 1972 when the parent company collapsed, and the last model train sets were made there in 1999; these are now made by a company owned by Kader. Delfinware (owned by WPP plc) makes dish drainers off the A259 on the Pennypot Ind Estate in Hythe. Megger Group Limited make electrical test equipment in Dover on the A20; nearby P&O Ferries is on the A20 below the Dover Western Heights. Saga plc, founded in 1959, has a large headquarters in Sandgate, next to Folkestone School for Girls, at the A259/B2963 junction.
Around 1,000 Minis are made each day in Cowley; BMW bought the plant in 1994 and has made around 3m since 2001; there are 4,500 staff and around ten miles of conveyors; the engines are made at Hams Hall in North Warwickshire.
Ascari are in Banbury. Kenco coffee is made at Kraft Foods Banbury owned by Mondelēz International (former Kraft before October 2010) with Café HAG and Carte Noir off A422/A423 roundabout opposite a Tesco; the site was built to make Bird's Custard in 1964, by General Foods who were bought by Kraft in 1990, and claims to be the biggest coffee-production site in Europe; Nestle make much of their coffee in South Derbyshire. On other side of A422 to Kraft is a manufacturing site of Dematic UK, with Terex MHPS (former Demag Cranes), and Kannegiesser UK (industrial clothes washers). On north-east side of Banbury is the large site of Norbar Torque, who are a main international manufacturer of torque wrenchs. Next door is a large factory of Barry Callebaut UK, a Swiss manufacturer of cocoa (for Nestle and Cadbury), on the Wildmere Road Ind Est, north of the A422 near the M40 junction 11. Prodrive are on the north of the estate, and iSOFT are on the east near the M40. Further north was a main site of Alcan Extrusions (former British Aluminium, bought by Alcan in 1982), which closed in 2008.
BAM Nuttall (opposite Camberley Theatre) and Krispy Kreme (south of the M3 near junction 4 on Albany Park) are in Camberley; Alfa Laval is on the Yorktown Ind Est, in York Town off the A331 near Stihl with a technical centre of Toshiba on the other side of the A331; to the south on Watchmoor Park off the A331 are Adaptec and Fluor and Zodiac Aerospace. Further south in Frimley Green, home to the Lakeside Leisure Complex, between the B3411 and the railway is SC Johnson and its Gladeair freshener factory. Opposite Albany Park over the A331 is Frimley Business Park, with Advanced Micro Devices, off M3 junction 4 next to the A331; nearby is Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK (Sandoz) and Alcon. Further along the A325 towards Frimley at the B311 roundabout is Siemens (the former site of Marconi Command & Control Systems, then BAE Systems Insyte). Frimley has Amer Sports (the world's largest sporting equipment manufacturer) on the B3411 Lyon Way Ind Estate, with VMware. Zoggs is in Lightwater, near the M3 Bagshot Interchange.
Esso is based in Leatherhead; Esso have around 1,100 petrol stations in the UK - 14% of all stations, and pays around £7bn in UK tax, and own the Brent oil field; the site is also the worldwide base of ExxonMobil Aviation Fuels and Marine.
Virgin Atlantic on Manor Royal in Crawley; Virgin has 12 747s compared to BA's 56, but both have around 18 of the new Airbus 380; Gatwick now flies 40 million passengers a year, a world record for a single-runway airport.
Nestlé UK is moving its headquarters from City Place Gatwick to Manor Royal Business District in Crawley from September 2023.[75] To the south, on the east of Manor Royal, is MonierRedland (roof tiles) and ARINC UK (avionics), and a large site of Thales, with its civilian aircraft simulationTTS division (former Redifon) now owned since 2012 by L-3 Communications); much of Thales in Crawley is the former Mullard, who made radars, and Thomson Racal Defence Electronics (and Thorn EMI); Thales in Crawley make much of the Royal Navy's electronic (mission) systems. UK Power Networks (electrical operator for region) is south of Manor Royal in Three Bridges; SEEBOARD was based on the A23 in Broadfield. Invensys have many sites in Crawley. WesternGeco (geophysical services) is at the end of the Gatwick Interchange M23 spur.
The culture of South East England has been influenced a number of factors: by its part of contributing to the "idealised English identity", due to the region's historic idyllic rural landscape;[76] its serving for Greater London as commuting hinterland,[77] and, in recent times, the concentration of the UK's creative industry across the South East as well as London.[76][78]
Literature, TV Puppetry & Animation, Cinema, Music and Cuisine
Television coverage for Buckinghamshire is complex and is split three ways depending on location. The western part of the county is in the BBC South and ITV Meridian (South Coast sub-region).[citation needed] Much of Milton Keynes UA is covered by BBC East based in Norwich, with the Look East programme; similarly the ITV region for most of Milton Keynes is ITV Anglia with the ITV News Anglia programme, also from Norwich. South of the county is covered by BBC London News and ITV London News which both broadcast from London.
That's Solent TV, a subsidiary TV station from That's TV based in Portsmouth, covers Portsmouth, Isle of Wight, Southampton and Winchester.[89]
Greatest Hits Radio South Coast, formerly regional adult contemporary station Wave 105 in South Hampshire and East Dorset, and following its transition to GHR (with its own dedicated breakfast and afternoon shows separate from those on the other stations in the South) also broadcasts on the former Wessex FM and Vale FM frequencies in Dorset, which previously carried GHR South and GHR West respectively. Broadcast from the same studio complex as GHR South, the former Wave 105 base at Fareham
Nation Broadcasting operates two services based in Southampton: Nation Radio South Coast (a regional station, previously broadcasting as Greatest Hits Radio South Coast, Sam FM, JACK FM and Original 106), and Easy Radio South Coast (former Hits Radio South Coast, 107.4 The Quay, Portsmouth; The Saint, Southampton; and Dream 107.2, Winchester).
Charles William Miller, who went to school in Southampton, was responsible for taking football to Brazil. He had a Scottish father and a Brazilian mother; around the same time, Alexander Watson Hutton, a Scottish teacher, had taken football to Argentina; Dresden English Football Club, founded by British workers, would bring football to Germany.[98]
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshire to the east, Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, and Oxfordshire to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Milton Keynes, and the county town is Aylesbury.
The home counties are the counties of England that surround London. The counties are not precisely defined but Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent and Surrey are usually included in definitions as, except Berkshire, they all border London. Other counties slightly further from London – such as Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, East Sussex and West Sussex – are not always regarded as home counties, although on occasion may be thought of as such due to their proximity to London and their connection to the London regional economy.
The London metropolitan area is the metropolitan area of London, England. It has several definitions, including the London Travel to Work Area, and usually consists of the London urban area, settlements that share London's infrastructure, and places from which it is practicable to commute to work in London. It is also known as the London commuter belt, or Southeast metropolitan area.
A combe can refer either to a steep, narrow valley, or to a small valley or large hollow on the side of a hill; in any case, it is often understood simply to mean a small valley through which a watercourse does not run.
South East England was a constituency of the European Parliament. It elected 10 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) using the D'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation until the UK exit from the European Union on 31 January 2020.
The schools in England are organised into local education authorities. There are 150 local education authorities in England organised into nine larger regions. According to the Schools Census, there were 3,408 maintained government secondary schools in England in 2017.
Central Milton Keynes is the central business district of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England and a civil parish in its own right, with a town council.
The Milton Keynes redway system is an over 200 miles network of shared use paths for cyclists and pedestrians in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. It is generally surfaced with red tarmac, and criss-crosses most of the city.
The South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) was one of a number of regional development agencies in England. It was set up as a non-departmental public body in 1999 to promote the region and to enable a number of more difficult regeneration projects which otherwise might not take place. It covered Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex
BBC South is the BBC English Region serving Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Dorset, West Sussex, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and parts of Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Surrey, and Wiltshire, with geographic coverage varying between digital, television and radio services.
Scouting in South East England provides an overview of Scouting activities in the governmental region of South East England. The largest number of Scouts and volunteer leaders in the region is linked to the Scout Association of the United Kingdom, while there is also a presence of traditional Scouting groups, such as the Baden-Powell Scouts' Association. The Scout Association administers the region through 9 Scout Counties, overseen by a regional commissioner, which follow the boundaries of the ceremonial counties they exist within. There are also a number of Scouting clubs within Universities in the region which are affiliated to the Student Scout and Guide Organisation.
The Milton Keynes grid road system is a network of predominantly national speed limit, fully landscaped routes that form the top layer of the street hierarchy for both private and public transport in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. The system is unique in the United Kingdom for its innovative use of street hierarchy principles: the grid roads run in between districts rather than through them. This arrangement permits higher speed limits due to the absence of buildings close to the roads – although more recently some have been limited in part to 40 mph (64 km/h). The grid road system also serves an important purpose of discouraging through-traffic from travelling through neighbourhoods and thus reduces traffic noise and pollution in pedestrian areas. Motor traffic is segregated from pedestrian and leisure cycling traffic, which uses the alternative Milton Keynes redway system. Almost all grid junctions are roundabouts, and the absence of traffic lights enables free and efficient movement of traffic.
The UK Rock Challenge was the British arm of the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge. The Rock Challenge was an anti-drug and crime-prevention event that took the form of a friendly performing arts competition for schools and colleges. Originating in Australia in the 1980s, it reached the United Kingdom after inspector Mark Pontin of Hampshire saw it in 1995 and was so impressed that he persuaded Hampshire's constabulary to form a joint venture with Tony Barron, chairman of the Hampshire Education Committee and Peter Coles, UK Rock Challenge's chief executive. Together, they introduced it in Hampshire and found joint funding to support it.
Transport in Buckinghamshire has been shaped by its position within the United Kingdom. Most routes between the UK's two largest cities, London and Birmingham, pass through this county. The county's growing industry first brought canals to the area, then railways and then motorways.
Local transport bodies are partnerships of local authorities in England outside Greater London. There are 38 local transport bodies. They cover similar areas to local enterprise partnerships, but are not permitted to overlap each other. Decision making for major transport infrastructure spending is devolved to these bodies from the Department for Transport. They will receive funding from April 2015.
↑ Hawkins, Oliver; Keen, Richard; Nakatudde, Nambassa; Ayres, Steven; Baker, Carl; Harker, Rachael; Bolton, Paul; Johnston, Neil; Cracknell, Richard (28 July 2015). "General Election 2015". House of Commons Library. Archived from the original on 28 September 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
1 2 "Eurostat database". eurostat. Archived from the original on 26 September 2018. Retrieved 26 September 2018. Follow 'Regional economic accounts - ESA2010 (reg_eco10)'. Then 'Gross domestic product indicators – ESA2010 (reg_eco10gdp)'. Then 'Gross domestic product (GDP) at current market prices by NUTS 3 regions (nama_10r_3gdp)'. Then 'folder with magnifying glass' icon. Then select 'GEO' [top of table]. Then 'select all' followed by 'deselect all'. Then scan down to UK data near end). Data source uses euros not pounds.
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