[Talk-GB] Metropolitan Districts at admin_level=8

[Colin Smale]

Although they are unitaries in function (so the same as Cornwall, Wiltshire etc) they are legally Metropolitan Districts. The Metropolitan Counties to which they belong still exist - only the councils have been abolished. The county council could, in theory, be brought back without needing an act of parliament to create a new county. This applies to Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, and West Yorkshire. The tagging should at least be consistent across these six, but when I last looked it wasn't (some level 6, some level 8). 

Berkshire is in the same position, except that it is a Non-Metropolitan County. The county still exists in a legal sense, but it has no council.

The Combined Authorities should IMHO be admin_level=5, because their constituents are typically admin_level=6. Previously level 5 was used for the Regions, but they no longer have an administrative function (did they ever?) so I consider level 5 to be available for the Combined Authorities. The CA's also have two classes of member, constituent members and associate members, and can cross county boundaries; they don't fit into the strict hierarchy we see elsewhere.

Colin

>     On 03/04/2021 3:34 PM SK53 <sk53.osm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>     I've just noticed that most (all?) metropolitan district councils (e.g., Wirral, Rotherham) are at admin_level=8 despite having functions equivalent to other primary local authorities which are mapped with admin_level=6.
> 
>     I know that the new West Midlands Combined Authority also has admin_level=6, but I always thought that was an unhappy compromise resulting in admin_level=6 having no clear meaning.
> 
>     I note that until 4 years or so these were admin_level=6 (which is what I expected) until changesets like these: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/49040249#map=8/53.037/-2.318. I can't recall if these were discussed, but certainly the values dont match my naive expectations.
> 
>     Jerry
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