Residents consider themselves more Yorkshire than English, new survey reveals

The survey was launched by The Yorkshire Society in April in what is hoped will be a wide-ranging discussion about the future of the region.

The study was seeking the views and opinions of Yorkshire people via a number of questions.

How do we define Yorkshire identity and our sense of Yorkshireness? What best symbolises Yorkshire? How best to promote Yorkshire in future? How do these things feed into the devolution agenda of Government? And so on.

More than 4,500 people responded, and the results are now available, providing a great deal of interesting data and a real insight into the Yorkshire public’s opinion.

The key findings are:

○ Perceptions of the Yorkshire name are strong with many more people (77.6%) more likely to buy a product with Yorkshire in the brand name than not (19.3%).

○ People (44.9%) and landscape (34.1%) are considered the main things that give Yorkshire its unique identity, with a strong case for the region’s variety and diversity made too.

○ A clear majority (56.8%) feel the White Rose Yorkshire flag best symbolizes Yorkshire – more than anything else, including Yorkshire Pudding (18.7%).

○ Most respondents (53.6%) consider themselves more Yorkshire than English and it’s a vast majority (84.3%) when you add those who feel as equally Yorkshire as English.

○ Almost three quarters (73.4%) agreed that Yorkshire should have more decision-making powers in the same way Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London have.

○ Support in a referendum on establishing a Yorkshire parliament, if there was one now, would be overwhelming with twice as many of our respondents voting ‘Yes’ (56.3%) than ‘No’ (23%).

○ Most people (55.5%) feel uninformed about the devolution (or levelling up) agenda, so there is a lot of work for government and local authorities to do here.

Philip Bell, chief executive of The Yorkshire Society, said: “The current debate about Yorkshire’s future seemed to have been limited to discussions between council leaders and

Government ministers.

“The great majority of Yorkshire people are getting no say in their own future and The Yorkshire Society wanted to do something about that. So, the idea of the Big Yorkshire Conversation was born, to encourage the people of Yorkshire to have their say on how Yorkshire is defined, what Yorkshire is now and where its future direction lies.”

This first survey report is available free of charge to anyone, and a copy can be requested at www.theyorkshiresociety.org/report