North East England

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**North-East England**
Geography
North-East region shown within England
Status	Region
Area — Total	Ranked 8th 8,592 km² 3,317 sq mi
NUTS 1	UKC
Demographics
Population — Total — Density	Ranked 9th 2,515,442 (2001) 293/km²
GDP per capita	£13,275 (9th)
Government
HQ	Newcastle
Assembly — Type	North East non-directly elected
European parliament	North East England
Website

North-East England is one of the nine official regions of England and comprises the combined area of Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear and a small part of North Yorkshire.

The highest point in the region is The Cheviot, in Northumberland, at 815 metres (2,674 ft). The principal city is Newcastle, with the largest city in terms of area and population being Sunderland.

As well as its urban centres of Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside the region is also noted for the richness of its natural beauty. Northumberland National Park, the region's coastline, its section of the Pennines and Weardale provides evidence for this. It also has great historic importance, the evidence of which is seen in Northumberland's Castles and the two World Heritage Sites of Durham Cathedral and Hadrian's Wall.

The shipbuilding industry that once dominated both Wearside and Tyneside suffered a terrible decline during the second half of the twentieth century. Tyneside is now re-inventing itself as an international centre of art and culture and, through The Centre For Life, scientific research (especially in stem cell technology). After suffering economic decline during the last century, Wearside is becoming an important area for quaternary industry, science and high technology. The economy of Teesside is largely based on its petrochemical industry. Northumberland and County Durham, both being largely rural, base much of its economy on farming and tourism. The North East has the lowest GDP/capita in England.

In May 2005 the 'Passionate people. Passionate places' Regional Image campaign was launched to promote North East England as a great place to work, study, visit and invest in.

1 Local government
2 History
3 Biodiversity
4 Demographics
5 Transport
6 Economy
7 Education
- 7.1 Top ten state schools in North East England
8 Local media
9 External links

The official region consists of the following subdivisions:

Ceremonial county	County /unitary	Districts
1. Northumberland †		Blyth Valley Wansbeck Castle Morpeth Tynedale Alnwick Berwick-upon-Tweed
Tyne and Wear *		2. Newcastle upon Tyne 3. Gateshead 4. North Tyneside 5. South Tyneside 6. Sunderland
County Durham	7. County Durham †	City of Durham Easington Sedgefield Teesdale Wear Valley Derwentside Chester-le-Street
	8. Darlington
	9. Hartlepool
	10. Stockton-on-Tees North of River Tees
North Yorkshire (part only)	10. Stockton-on-Tees South of River Tees
	11. Redcar and Cleveland
	12. Middlesbrough

Key: shire county = † | metropolitan county = *

The region was created in 1994 and was originally defined as Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Cleveland. As part of a reform of local government Cleveland has since been abolished and several unitary districts created. The North East has been considered to be very religious especially County Durham, some of the scenery in the outlying villages is amongst the best in the land.

The region is now considered to consist of four distinct 'sub-regions':

County Durham
Northumberland
Tyne and Wear
Tees Valley (former Cleveland area plus Darlington)

The region has a rich natural heritage, its diverse landscape includes maritime cliffs and extensive moorland containing a number of rare species of flora and fauna. Of particular importance are the saltmarshes of Lindisfarne,the Tees Estuary, the heaths, bogs and traditional upland hay meadows of the North Pennines, the distinctive Arctic-alpine flora of Upper Teesdale, the Farne Islands (which contain rare seabirds such as the Roseate Tern) and the Magnesian Limestone grasslands of East Durham - a habitat found nowhere else in the world. The North East also features woodland such as Kielder Forest, the largest man-made forest in Europe. This is located within Northumberland National Park and contains an important habitat for the endangered red squirrel. The region is the English stronghold of black grouse and contains 80-90% of the UK population ofyellow marsh saxifrage.

Although the North-East region has the lowest rate of HIV infection in the UK, it has the highest rate of heart attacks for men, and for lung cancer for women in England (just below Scotland), and the highest lung cancer rate for men in the UK. It has the joint highest birth rate for women under 20 in the UK (with Wales). It also has the highest youth unemployment (ages 16-24) in the UK, and the second highest trade union membership for men (after Northern Ireland). For English students in higher education, those for the North East are most likely (72%) to pick a university in their home region; Scotland is the highest with 95% staying in their home country. The North East also has the highest proportion of Christians in the UK.

Most important towns in the North East are on the East Coast Main Line, with fast connections to London and Edinburgh, as well as being close to the A1 or A19. However, north of Morpeth, the A1 is single carriageway. There is the Newcastle International Ferry Terminal at North Shields. DFDS operate two ferries a day to Amsterdam and one a day on the Stavanger - Haugesund - Bergen route. The two main airports are Newcastle Airport and Durham Tees Valley Airport. The Tyne and Wear Metro is a light rail network which serves the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, with stations in both Sunderland and Newcastle city centres, other towns and suburbs in the county, as well as at Newcastle Airport and other attractions such as the Stadium of Light, St James' Park and Gateshead International Stadium

The North-East region has the lowest GDP/capita in England, and second lowest in the United Kingdom only behind Wales. The economy for several decades was idiosyncratically predicated on ship building and coal mining; hence the phrase taking coals to Newcastle. County Durham and Northumberland are largely agricultural. Nationally well-known companies in the North East include ICI in Middlesbrough. Swan Hunter still makes ships in Wallsend. Scottish & Newcastle is the largest UK-owned brewery, and has the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston, producing Newcastle Brown Ale. Petroplus refine oil at the Port Clarence (former Teesside) Refinery. The government's Child benefit office is in Washington. Northern Rock building society is based in Gosforth. Findus UK is based in Longbenton. Nestlé have a chocolate factory in Fawdon. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Before 2000 the Government Offices in Longbenton had a 1 mile long corridor which went all along the outside of the buildings, since then the whole place has changed with new buildings being built.

The North East's digital sector

Regional development agency ONE NorthEast has established an E-Leadership Council, which will guide the development of a range of activities to ensure that cutting-edge technology is available to business, communities and individuals in the North East of England.

Middlesbrough and Sunderland have established themselves as Digital and Software cities, which are closely aligned to the E-Leadership agenda.

There are four main delivery organisations that assist and support the e-leadership agenda:

The North East Regional Portal Leading the e-business agenda and ensuring the region’s businesses adopt digital and e-business technologies.

Codeworks Supports digital businesses in the North East of England.

ADIT Provides IT infrastructure analytical geographical mapping and data storage and disaster recovery facilities.

Business Link Support and advice to businesses, particularly start-ups, and access to grants and funding.

More digital support

Awards to celebrate the region’s SMEs embracing digital technologies and innovating new technologies – The North East Digital Awards. See www.northeastdigitalawards.co.uk

Free advice and interaction about all e-business subjects and support – www.webetopia.com

The North East education system consists of largely comprehensive schools but with a number of private and independent schools found in Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham, Stockton and Northumberland in particular. At GCSE level, the region performs similar to other largely urban areas although generally results are below the national average. Middlesbrough performs the worst with average results significantly below the national average for England, followed closely by Newcastle and Sunderland. Both Northumberland and North Tyneside perform above average, with Northumberland the best. St Thomas More R.C. School in Blaydon (a voluntary funded Roman Catholic specialist technology college) and Emmanuel College (a selective independent state school) are two of the best performing schools in Gateshead. Other well performing schools in the region include Gateshead High School for Girls, Westfield School in Newcastle,Park View Community School in Durham and Lord Lawson of Beamish Community School in Birtley.

At A-level, local education authorities in the north east are improving at a greater rate than the national average, but produce results substantially below other areas of the England. Sunderland performs the best, followed by Darlington and Redcar and Cleveland. South Tyneside is the worst performing LEAs at A-level in the region.

The independent and private schools in the area perform highly. Central Newcastle High School and Royal Grammar School, Newcastle were both named in the top 100 independent schools nationally in 2006. Other well-performing private schools include Durham School, one of the oldest schools in England and Grindon Hall Christian School in Sunderland, a private non-selective school. The private schools out-perform the state schools.

This ranking is based on A-level results for the year 2006.

1. Cleveland College of Art and Design (910)
2. Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College
3. Durham Johnston Comprehensive School
4. Queen Elizabeth High School, Hexham
5. Park View Community School
6. St Robert of Newminster Roman Catholic School
7. King Edward VI School, Morpeth
8. Cramlington Community High School
9. Bede College
10. Longbenton Community College (803)

At the higher education level the North East contains a number of internationally acclaimed universities. These include the University of Durham, the third oldest university in England; Newcastle University, a member of the Russel Group and the newer universities of Northumbria University, University of Sunderland and the University of Teesside.

Local media include:

Regional television comes the BBC North East and Cumbria region, which has the regional evening Look North programme from Spital Tongues in Newcastle. The ITV region, Tyne Tees Television, has the evening programme North East Tonight from Gateshead.
BBC Radios Newcastle and Cleveland(BBC Tees)
Commercial radio stations such as: Metro Radio (Newcastle), 100-102 Century FM (Gateshead), Galaxy North East (Wallsend), TFM Radio (Thornaby-on-Tees), Alpha 103.2 (Darlington), Sun FM (Sunderland), and Durham FM.
Community radio stations also operate in the area such as: NE1 FM(Newcastle).
Local regional newspapers are the Sunderland Echo (Sunderland), Evening Chronicle (Newcastle), The Journal (Newcastle), Evening Gazette (Teesside) (Middlesbrough), Shields Gazette (South Shields), Hartlepool Mail, and The Northern Echo (Darlington).
New media company Great North News Services (Newcastle-upon-Tyne).

North East England Portal

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