<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div style="" class="default-style">
<div class="default-style">
At present there are relations present in OSM representing the nine former Government Regions. They are tagged as boundary=administrative and admin_level=5. These entities lost their (very limited) administrative role years ago and no longer have any administrative function (please correct me if I am wrong here...). They are however still extant in the context of statistics, being the NUTS level 1 regions.
</div>
<div class="default-style">
<br>
</div>
<div class="default-style">
At the same time we have gained a new type of administrative structure in England - the Combined Authority, which groups adjoining authorities in a geographic/economic region together. In contrast to the Government Regions these new authorities have attributes which makes them worthy of a place in the boundary=administrative hierarchy: They are (indirectly) democratically elected , and in many cases have a directly elected Mayor. The contituent authorities are mostly Metropolitan Districts (admin_level=8) and Unitary Authorities (admin_level=6) although Cambridgeshire and Peterborough contains a regular county (admin_level=6) *plus* its constituent non-metropolitan districts (admin_level=8).
</div>
<div class="default-style">
<br>
</div>
<div>
Currently I am only able to find the following in OSM:
</div>
<ul>
<li class="default-style">Greater Manchester [3]</li>
<li class="default-style">West Midlands [4]</li>
</ul>
<div class="default-style">
We are therefore missing the following Combined Authorities:
</div>
<ul>
<li class="default-style">South Yorkshire</li>
<li class="default-style">West Yorkshire</li>
<li class="default-style">Liverpool City Region</li>
<li class="default-style">Cambridgeshire and Peterborough</li>
<li class="default-style">West of England</li>
<li class="default-style">Tees Valley</li>
<li class="default-style">North East</li>
<li class="default-style">North Tyne</li>
</ul>
<div>
My proposal is:
</div>
<ol>
<li class="default-style">to deprecate the regions as admin boundaries, and retag them to boundary=statistical [1]</li>
<li class="default-style">to formally "allocate" admin_level=5 to the Combined Authorities (boundary=administrative, designation=combined_authority)</li>
<li class="default-style">manually retag the Regions and create relations for the missing Combined Authorities to consistently reflect the above</li>
<li class="default-style">update the wiki page boundary=administrative[2] to reflect updated UK usage</li>
<li class="default-style">any other wiki pages that will need updating</li>
</ol>
<div class="default-style">
<br>
</div>
<div class="default-style">
Does anyone have any comments, objections, suggestions?
</div>
<div class="default-style">
<br>
</div>
<div class="default-style">
Best regards,
<br>Colin Smale
</div>
<div class="default-style">
<br>
</div>
<div class="default-style">
Note this is not a proposal for an import or automated re-tagging. It will be done manually, individually and with care. I have a lot of experience with maintaining UK admin boundaries in OSM.
</div>
<div class="default-style">
<br>
</div>
<div class="default-style">
[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NUTS_and_LAU
<br>[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative
<br>[3] https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/88084
<br>[4] https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6965187
</div>
<div class="default-style">
<br>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>