History of local government in Yorkshire

Yorkshire is the largest historic English county[1] and consists of a diverse mix of urban and rural development with a heritage in agriculture, manufacturing, and mining.

[2] After a long period with little change, it has been subject to a number of reforms of local government structures in modern times, some of which were controversial.

The term originates from Old Norse þriðing, "third part", a legacy of the area's 9th century Scandinavian settlers.

Each of the ridings was then further subdivided into smaller units called wapentakes, which were administered by an early form of democratic representation termed a "Thing".

The administrative counties closely followed the three ancient ridings, with the exclusion of the large towns of Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Kingston upon Hull, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Sheffield and York.

Yorkshire continued to be classed as a single county under the act, although each of the ridings retained their own lieutenancies and shrievalties.

A review of local government took place during the 1990s which made a number of changes to the counties created in 1974.

In addition to becoming a unitary authority, the East Riding of Yorkshire was reintroduced as a county for the purposes of lieutenancy and shrievalty (also including Hull) and North Yorkshire gained territory for this purpose; the changes to the ceremonial counties were reconfirmed by the Lieutenancies Act 1997.

This was to replace the two-tier North Yorkshire council structure with a single tier of unitary authorities within a directly elected regional assembly, and would also address the drastic loss of population of Ryedale council where 50% of its population had been absorbed into an enlarged York.

[20][21] In 2020 the government instructed the councils in North Yorkshire to put forward options for reorganisation into unitary areas.

Six of the seven districts (all but Hambleton) jointly put forward a proposal to split the county east/west and merge York into the eastern council.

[22] On 21 July 2021, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced that in April 2023, the non-metropolitan county would be reorganised into a unitary authority.