Regional government in England

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I have an interest in law and, in particular, constitutional and administrative law - how the state works - and I have been thinking about this for a little while, because I'm odd like that. The current set up in the UK is not, to my mind, satisfactory. The UK government is far too centralised (although Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have a better set up thanks to devolution) and local authorities in England have too few useful powers to affect the lives of the people who live within their borders.

This lack of influence over their own territory will become more important and more marked over the next couple of years as Scotland gains more powers either as an independent state, or with a more powerful devolved government. Here in the north east of England, we have already seen this imbalance at work when Amazon decided to set up a new site in Scotland rather than North Tyneside. Even now, the Scottish government has sufficient powers to significantly influence the lives of people living south of the border. Without significant repatriation of powers to local government, this is only likely to get worse.

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