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In England, the region is the highest tier of sub-national division used by Her Majesty's Government. 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 some administrative purposes. They define areas (constituencies) for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament. Eurostat also uses them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions ("NUTS 1 regions") within the European Union. The regions generally followed the boundaries of "standard regions" established in the 1940s. The London region (also known as Greater London) has a directly elected Mayor and Assembly. The other eight regions have local authority leaders' boards to assist with correlating the headline policies of Districts and Unitary Authorities. Leaders' boards replaced indirectly elected regional chambers, which were established in 1998 and produced strategic plans and recommendations to local authorities. During the regional chambers period the regions had an associated (central) Government Office with some responsibility for coordinating policy, and, from 2007 to 2010, a part-time regional minister within the Government. House of Commons regional Select Committees were established in 2009. The chambers and select committees were abolished in May in 2010 restoring these functions to the main tier of local government. Regional ministers were not reappointed by the incoming Coalition Government, and the Government Offices were abolished in 2011. ==History== 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.〔''Local Parliaments For England. Mr. Churchill's Outline Of A Federal System, Ten Or Twelve Legislatures'', The Times, 13 September 1912, p.4〕 While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a while widely anticipated and various schemes for dividing England devised.〔In 1917 the Royal Geographical Society debated a paper by C.B. Fawcett that detailed 12 provinces he considered to be the "natural divisions of England". Detailed boundaries were proposed with regional capitals designated on the basis of the possession of universities or university colleges. (C. B. Fawcett, ''Natural Divisions of England'' in ''The Geographical Journal'', Vol. 49, No. 2. (Feb., 1917), pp. 124-135, accessed 28 November 2007 )〕〔In 1919 Fawcett expanded his paper into a book entitled the ''Provinces of England'', and a similar system of regions was proposed by G.D.H. Cole in ''The Future of Local Government'' in 1921. In 1920 the Ministry of Health published its own proposals for 15 provinces, subdivided into 59 regions (E. W. Gilbert, ''Practical Regionalism in England and Wales'' in ''The Geographical Journal'', Vol. 94, No. 1. (Jul., 1939), pp. 29-44. Accessed 28 November 2007 )〕 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. In 1946 nine "standard regions" were set up, in which central government bodies, statutory undertakings and regional bodies were expected to cooperate.〔(Paul N. Balchin and Luděk Sýkora, ''Regional Policy and Planning in Europe'', Routledge, 1999 ), pp.89-100〕 However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s.〔(Urlan Wannop, ''Regional Imperative: Regional Planning and Governance in Britain, Europe and the United States'', Routledge, 2002 ), pp.8-30〕 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 (1973 ) existing for economic planning purposes, modified to make boundaries to conform with the new county structure".〔Whitehall powers would go to Scotland, Wales and regions, but no full self-government. The Times. 1 November 1973.〕〔More freedom for Scots, Welsh in proposals to region regions. The Times. 1 November 1973.〕 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.〔Dissenters urge plan for seven assemblies. The Times. 1 November 1973.〕 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.〔 These institutions continued to operate until they were abolished by the incoming Conservative government in 1979. However, by the mid-1980s local authorities in most regions had jointly established standing conferences to consider regional planning issues. Regional initiatives were bolstered by the 1986 Government Green Paper and 1989 White Paper on ''The Future of Development Plans'', which proposed the introduction of strong regional guidance within the planning system,〔 and by the Government's issuing of Strategic Guidance at a regional level, from 1986 onwards.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Regions of England」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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