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. While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a while widely anticipated and various schemes for dividing England devised. 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. Nine "standard regions" were set up in 1946, in which central government bodies, statutory undertakings and regional bodies were expected to cooperate. However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s. 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". 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. 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. 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. In 1998,
regional chambers were created in the eight English regions outside London under the provisions of the
Regional Development Agencies Act 1998. The powers of the assemblies were limited, and members were appointed, largely by local authorities, rather than being directly elected. The functions of the English regions were essentially devolved to them from Government departments or were taken over from pre-existing regional bodies, such as regional planning conferences and regional employers' organisations. Each assembly also made proposals for the UK members of the
Committee of the Regions, with members drawn from the elected councillors of the local authorities in the region. The final nominations were made by central government. Although they were publicly funded, one of the Regional Assemblies claimed not to be a public authority and therefore not subject to the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. As power was to be devolved to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales without corresponding devolution in England, a series of
referendums were planned to establish elected regional assemblies in some of the regions. The first was held in
London in 1998 and was passed. The
London Assembly and
Mayor of London of the
Greater London Authority were created in 2000. A
referendum was held in North East England on 4 November 2004, but the proposal for an elected assembly was rejected.
Abolition of regional institutions In 2007, a Treasury Review for new Prime Minister
Gordon Brown recommended that greater powers should be given to local authorities and that the Regional Chambers should be phased out of existence by 2010. The same year, nine
Regional Ministers were appointed by the incoming
Brown ministry. Their primary goal was stated as being to improve communication between central government and the regions of England. The assemblies were effectively replaced by smaller
local authority leaders' boards between 2008 and 2010, and formally abolished on 31 March 2010, as part of a "Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration". Most of their functions transferred to the relevant
regional development agency and to
local authority leaders' boards. In June 2010, the incoming
Coalition Government announced its intentions to abolish regional strategies and return spatial planning powers to local government. These plans include the withdrawal of funding to the existing eight Local Authority Leaders' Boards, with their statutory functions also being assumed by local councils. The boards in most cases continue to exist as voluntary associations of council leaders, funded by the local authorities themselves. No appointments as Regional Ministers were made by the incoming UK government in 2010. These changes did not affect the directly elected
London Assembly, which was established by separate legislation as part of the
Greater London Authority. In 2011,
Greater London remains administered by the Greater London Authority, which consists of an elected
London Assembly and a separately elected
Mayor of London. Following the abolition of the Government Offices in 2011, it was announced that the former Government Office Regions (GOR) would henceforth be known, for the purposes of statistical analysis, simply as Regions. ==List of regions==