Borough of Hartlepool


The Borough of Hartlepool is a unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of County Durham, in north-east England. It is centred on, and named after, the town of Hartlepool.
In 2003 it had a resident population of 90,161, increasing to 92,028 at the 2011 Census. It borders the non-metropolitan county of County Durham to the north, Stockton-on-Tees to the south and Redcar and Cleveland to the south-east along the line of the River Tees.
It is made up of 17 council wards and since the 1983 parliamentary redistribution is coterminous with the Hartlepool constituency. The local authority is Hartlepool Borough Council; the borough is a member of the Tees Valley combined authority.

History

After several unification efforts starting in 1902, the county borough of Hartlepool was formed in 1967 by the merger of the original borough of Hartlepool with the county borough of West Hartlepool further south on Tees Bay, together with the parish of Seaton Carew to provide coastal land for industrial development.
The district was formed on 1 April 1974, by the merger of the previous county borough of Hartlepool, along with the parishes of Brierton, Claxton, Dalton Piercy, Elwick, Elwick Hall, Greatham, Hart and Newton Bewley, from the Stockton Rural District, all of which had been part of the administrative county of Durham. It was one of the four districts of the non-metropolitan county of Cleveland.
Cleveland was abolished in 1996 after a review by the Banham Commission, with the four boroughs of Stockton-on-Tees, Hartlepool, Redcar & Cleveland and Middlesbrough becoming unitary authorities. For ceremonial purposes Hartlepool returned to County Durham, however it continues to share certain local services with the other former Cleveland boroughs, including the Cleveland Police and Cleveland Fire Brigade.

Elected mayor

Hartlepool was one of a small number council in the United Kingdom to have a directly elected mayor. This followed a referendum held in the borough in October 2001, and the first mayoral election was held in May 2002. The election became famous for being won by the mascot of Hartlepool United F.C., 'H'Angus the Monkey', with a majority of approximately 500 over the second-placed Labour Party candidate. The man inside the monkey costume, Stuart Drummond, served as mayor as an independent since then, being re-elected in 2005 with a majority of over 10,000 and again in 2009 with a second round majority of 844.
In November 2012 Hartlepool voted in a referendum to abolish the directly elected mayor and return to having the council leader used by most English councils. 7,366 voted against the directly elected mayor system, while 5,177 voted to retain it, on a turnout of 18%.

Places in the borough

As well as Hartlepool, locations within the borough include:
This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees at current basic prices by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.
YearRegional Gross Value AddedAgricultureIndustryServices
19952,80491,4431,352
20003,25261,3591,887
20033,36461,0372,320

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