If you ask someone in Yorkshire where they’re from, the answer is simple. If you ask the government where Yorkshire is, however, the answer depends entirely on which department you’ve phoned.Yorkshire has the unusual distinction of having existed as a distinct territory for well over a thousand years. For a century it was even an independent Anglo-Viking kingdom with its own þing (aka thyng) or parliament. Yet somehow in the 21st century no two official bodies can agree on what, or even where, Yorkshire actually is.
Historically, Yorkshire was England’s largest province, dominating the north. It was divided into the three “ridings” (derived from a Viking word roughly meaning ‘thirds’), recognised as counties in their own right and centred on the great city of York, for a millennium England’s northern capital. That Yorkshire still exists. It exists in terms of identity, culture, and geography – but not, inconveniently, in most of the administrative systems that govern our daily lives.
How did Yorkshire’s administration get so complicated?
In 1974, the administrative three counties (or ridings) were abolished and replaced with new local government areas that borrowed the Yorkshire name but not the Yorkshire map. Parts of the historic province were shunted into “Greater” this and “Merseyside” that; other places that had never been Yorkshire in their lives were suddenly bundled into something called “Humberside” and then later unbundled again. What remained was not a clean reform but a patchwork: bits of old Yorkshire inside new creations and bits of new creations sitting awkwardly on top of old Yorkshire.
Since then, Yorkshire has been reorganised so many times that it now resembles a set of Russian dolls, each one containing a slightly different version of Yorkshire. First came the metropolitan counties of West and South Yorkshire, then their abolition as counties but survival as collections of metropolitan boroughs. Elsewhere, districts were merged and re-merged into unitary authorities. On top of that sit the ceremonial counties, which preserve tradition but not administration, and then overlaid again are combined authorities, each with its own mayor, powers, borders, and logic.
Meanwhile, the statisticians in Whitehall created “Yorkshire and the Humber”, a region that included North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire – places that have never been part of Yorkshire – and yet excluded historic Yorkshire communities now marooned in Greater Manchester, Lancashire, County Durham and beyond. Folks in Middlesbrough believe they are just Teessiders. Yet the concept of a region still exists for statistical, planning and funding purposes, and is recognised internationally and even by the occasional government press release which refers to the English regions.
Yorkshire as a region? That’s complicated, too
Colin Speakman, in his book Yorkshire: Ancient Nation, Future Province, argues that Yorkshire today functions more as a region or province than as any anachronistic “county” in practical terms. And he is right: the machinery of governance treats Yorkshire as a region, even if the people who live here – largely as a result of Yorkshire County Cricket Club – still understand it as a mere county. The historic three counties survive in tradition and identity, but the administrative reality has drifted so far from that old structure that regional framing is often the only way to make sense of what survives.
Yet even that regional framing is anything but simple. Today, different parts of Yorkshire are run by entirely different systems of local government, each with its own rules, responsibilities and political centres of gravity.
In West Yorkshire, five metropolitan boroughs – Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Kirklees and Calderdale – sit under the umbrella of the West Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, with a metro mayor responsible for some areas of transport, economic development and more. In South Yorkshire, four metropolitan boroughs – Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster – are grouped into the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, with its own mayor, its own priorities, and its own deals with Whitehall.
To the north, the old two-tier structure of North Yorkshire county and district councils has recently been swept away and replaced by a single North Yorkshire Council, a vast unitary authority covering dales, moors, coast and market towns alike. Alongside it sits the City of York, a separate unitary authority with its own council and its own boundaries. Over both now sits the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, with yet another mayor and yet another set of powers and funding streams.
On the east coast, East Riding of Yorkshire Council and Hull City Council operate as separate unitary authorities, while a new Hull and East Riding Mayoral Combined Authority has been created to sit above them. Across the Humber, North and North East Lincolnshire – not Yorkshire at all, in historic terms, but still lumped into “Yorkshire and the Humber” for statistical purposes – have their own unitary councils and their own deals, and have recently voted to become part of Greater Lincolnshire.
Different structures for policing, health, transport, and more …
Layered on top of this are systems that follow completely different maps. Policing is divided between West Yorkshire Police, South Yorkshire Police, North Yorkshire Police (which also covers York) and Humberside Police (which covers the East Riding, Hull, and both Lincolnshire unitary authorities). Health services are organised into Integrated Care Boards that slice the county into West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Humber and North Yorkshire, and North East and North Cumbria – a set of boundaries that would baffle anyone who thought Yorkshire was just Yorkshire. Transport planning, bus regulation, skills funding and economic strategy are split again between the various combined authorities, county-scale unitaries, and Whitehall departments, each drawing its own lines and talking its own language.
The result is that different parts of Yorkshire live under different constitutions. A resident of Leeds deals with a metropolitan borough council and a powerful Combined Authority Mayor; someone in Scarborough deals with a giant unitary council and a different mayor; someone in Hull deals with a city council and, soon, yet another mayoral structure. Council tax is set by different bodies, transport is planned by different bodies, and regeneration money is bid for by different bodies – all within what most people would still casually describe as ‘Yorkshire’.
Fragmentation, not modernisation
The trouble is that none of these layers – historic, administrative, ceremonial, regional, statistical – aligns with any other. They overlap, contradict, and occasionally ignore one another entirely. Policing follows one map, transport another, health services a third, and economic planning a fourth. Local government itself is split between metropolitan boroughs, unitary authorities and combined authorities, each with different powers and different relationships with central government. Yorkshire is governed not as a single entity but as a collection of mismatched parts, each pulling in its own direction. Yet they are tightly controlled from the centre – Whitehall – where most decision making still firmly lies.
This is not modernisation. It is fragmentation. It is a confused system that layers new structures on top of old ones without ever resolving the contradictions. It slows decision-making, weakens accountability, and leaves Yorkshire without a clear voice or a coherent strategy. It is governance by historical sediment – a landscape shaped not by design but by the gradual accumulation of everything that came before.
A better way – local power under a proper regional framework
The Yorkshire Alliance believes Yorkshire deserves better. Not nostalgia, not bureaucracy, but clarity. Power should sit at the lowest effective level: parish, ward, townships and districts, where local decisions can be made quickly, locally, and with real understanding of the communities they affect. But those local decisions should sit within a framework that recognises Yorkshire as a whole – as a single, coherent, devolved region with a clear identity and a clear, strategic voice, not a jigsaw puzzle of overlapping failed experiments. The English regions deserve to have the same powers and democratic and financial control as the highly successful German and Austrian Länder, the Swiss cantons and French régions. This is real democracy.
Yorkshire’s identity and economic potential is strong enough to support this. A reunified, single Yorkshire region, like Britain’s most prosperous and successful region, Greater London, with its own elected assembly and single mayor, and real devolved powers and fair funding, could bring together the scattered pieces of the current system, align boundaries where possible, and at least make sense of where they do not. It would restore local pride in towns, cities and districts; it would give them a common platform from which to speak.
And so, I invite you to reflect on these simple questions:
How can Yorkshire move forward when even its borders can’t agree where they are?
And how much longer are we prepared to let that confusion speak for us when Yorkshire should be speaking for itself?
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