This article discusses the metropolitan borough and district named the City of Wakefield. For information on the city itself, see Wakefield, the district's principal settlement, from which it takes it's name.
Wakefield is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In addition to the town of Wakefield, the city covers a wide area including the towns of Normanton, Pontefract, Featherstone, Ossett, Horbury, Crigglestone , Castleford, Knottingley, Hemsworth, South Kirkby, Upton and South Elmsall.
The district was, for a long time, the council on which the Labour Party held more seats than anywhere else in the country. It is now placed third, behind Rotherham and Newham, in this rank. The district is mainly made out of old coal-mining towns, although Ossett and Horbury, in the west, are exceptions, in being formerly manufacturing areas of shoddy goods. Some of the old mining villages and towns have been totally transformed in recent years, so that many of the residents commute to well-paid jobs in Leeds; Outwood, Stanley and Crigglestone are examples of such villages. Other settlements in the areas have fared much worse; Fitzwilliam, Streethouse and Sharlstone are three of the poorest villages in the entire country, containing large numbers of derelict houses and high levels of unemployment. All the towns in the district have areas which suffer from intense deprivation, although the west end of Hemsworth is particularly impoverished. A decision was made, in 2004, to sell the district's extensive council housing to a private housing association, who would be more efficient with repairs and maintaining decent accomodation; as council housing represented almost 30% of the district, this was the second-largest stock transfer in British history. The new owners have indicated that they plan to demolish most of their new stock in Fitzwilliam and Hemsworth.
The present boundaries were set in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972, when the county borough of Wakefield merged with various other settlements in the West Riding.
