City Region - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the city regional agenda began to be seen as an alternative to the Regional Assemblies in England that were favoured as a partial answer to the West Lothian question but rejected in a referendum by voters in North East England in November 2004. The concept of city regions and their development features heavily in The Northern Way, a collaborative development plan between the three northernmost English Regional Development Agencies. An embryonic city regional framework exists in the form of the Passenger Transport Executive and the Core Cities Group. The October 2006 Local Government White Paper did not contain firm proposals for city-region-wide authorities however.

The New Local Government Network proposed the creation of city regions as part of on-going reform efforts, while a report released by the IPPR's Centre for Cities proposed the creation of four large city-regions based on Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Greater Manchester. Edinburgh and it's hinterland strong economy (Forth Valley, Fife, West Lothian, Midlothian and East Lothian) means it has been named a one of Europe's fasting growing city-regions.

Also in 2006, the OECD published a number of studies on city regions, including an assessment profile of the Newcastle-Gateshead city region and a review of numerous city regions across the world.

In July 2007, HM Treasury published its Review of sub-national economic development and regeneration, which stated that the government would allow those city regions that wished to work together to form a statutory framework for city regional activity, including powers over transport, skills, planning and economic development. Under the government's Transport Innovation Fund, city regions can band together to pilot forms of road pricing, such as the Greater Manchester congestion charge considered by councils in Greater Manchester (but later rejected by referendum). In the April 2009 Budget, the government announced that Greater Manchester and Leeds would be the first two city regions with formal powers. While this was later discontinued as a result of the May 2010 general election, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government did agree to the creation of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in 2011, with all other proposals and the Regional Development Agencies being subsumed into the Local Enterprise Partnerships.