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2011 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 2011 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Events

January

February

March

April

  • 1 April – The Daily Sport and Sunday Sport tabloid newspapers cease publication and enter administration.
  • 3 April – The UK's last circus elephant is retired.
  • 4 April – As part of the government's package of welfare reforms, the one-and-a-half million people in the UK who are claiming Incapacity Benefit begin to receive letters asking them to attend a work capability assessment. The tests are part of government plans to reduce the number of long-term claimants and will take until 2014 to complete.
  • 5 April – Police investigating the murder of Sian O'Callaghan identify human remains found at a second site as those of Swindon woman Becky Godden-Edwards, who was last seen alive in 2002 at the age of 20.
  • 6 April
  • The mandatory retirement age begins to be phased out, and will be fully abolished by 1 October.
  • The Competition Commission release their investigation order designed to prevent future mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI); most rules will come into force in October.
  • 13 April – 53-year-old actor Brian Regan, most famous for his role as Terry Sullivan in the former Channel 4 TV soap Brookside, is charged – along with another man – with the murder of a man who was fatally shot in Aigburth, Merseyside, on 24 February.
  • 24 April – Senior Liberal Democrat minister Chris Huhne threatens legal action over "untruths" told by Conservative MP's opposed to the Alternative Vote System, 11 days before the referendum. He also warns that the dispute could damage the coalition government.
  • 27 April – The Office for National Statistics reveals that the economy had returned to growth during the first quarter of the year, growing by 0.5%.
  • 29 April – Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton marry in Westminster Abbey. A public holiday is held to celebrate the day, which in conjunction with the May bank holiday, makes a four-day weekend.

May

June

  • 10 June – 2011 Belfast West by-election: Sinn Féin's Paul Maskey wins the seat.
  • 15 June
  • St Paul's Cathedral completes its £40 million restoration project. The 15-year programme of cleaning and repair was among the largest restoration projects ever undertaken in the UK.
  • The National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers confirm a co-ordinated strike across England and Wales on 30 June as part of a dispute over changes to pensions.
  • 23 June – Levi Bellfield, three years into a life sentence for the murder of two young women and the attempted murder of a third, is found guilty of murdering Amanda Dowler, the Surrey teenager who disappeared in March 2002 and whose remains were found in Hampshire six months later.
  • 24 June
  • Levi Bellfield receives an additional life sentence for the murder of Amanda Dowler. The jury fails to reach a verdict on the attempted abduction of another girl and the judge orders that the charge should remain on file.
  • Household furnishings retailer Habitat goes into administration. 30 of its 33 outlets are affected by the administration, as the three central London stores are being sold to Home Retail Group in a £24.5 million deal which will safeguard a total of 150 jobs.
  • 30 June
  • Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers go on strike across the UK over planned pension changes.
  • The cheque guarantee card scheme is withdrawn after operating for over 40 years. The scheme ensured some cheques were honoured even if the account holder did not have sufficient funds in their account.

July

  • July – The British economy grew by 0.2% during the second quarter of the year, down from 0.5% in the first quarter.
  • 1 July – 2011 Inverclyde by-election: The Labour Party's Iain McKenzie wins the by-election with a majority reduced from 14,416 in 2010 to 5,838.
  • 7 July – Following recent allegations that its journalists had hacked into the mobile phones of celebrities, politicians and high-profile crime victims over the last decade, it is announced that the News of the World will cease publication after its final edition on Sunday 10 July, having been in circulation for 168 years.
  • 8 July – Rushden & Diamonds F.C. goes out of business after 19 years in existence, having recently been expelled from the Blue Square Premier League because of their huge debts. The Northamptonshire club had been members of the Football League from 2001 until 2006.
  • 12 July – A Scottish ticket scooped €185m (£163,077,500.00) in the EuroMillions jackpot, the biggest ever jackpot win in its history.
  • 15 July – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, the final instalment in the Harry Potter film series, is released in UK cinemas.
  • 18 July – Sean Hoare, the former News of the World reporter who made phone-hacking allegations against the newspaper which contributed to its recent demise, is found dead in Watford. His death is being treated as "unexplained but not suspicious" by police.
  • 23 July – The singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, 27, is found dead at her London home.
  • 27 July – Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher, a landmark case in UK labour law, is decided in the Supreme Court: Inequality of bargaining power must be taken into account in deciding whether a person counts as an employee for the purpose of defining employment rights.
  • 29 July – Wolverhampton man Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, 23, is sentenced to 12 years in prison for making calls on an internet blog for MPs who backed the war in Iraq to be murdered.

August

  • 4 August – Downing Street launches a new e-petition website to encourage the public to prompt parliamentary debate on topics they feel are important. Several of the initial petitions concerned proposals for and against restoring the death penalty, last used in the UK in 1964.
  • 6 August – The 2011 English riots begin.
  • 7 August – The Metropolitan Police struggle to restore order in Tottenham, London after a riot the previous evening.
  • 8 August
  • Prime Minister David Cameron cuts short his holiday to chair a meeting of the COBRA Committee as rioting in London continues into its third day and violence spreads across England with Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol also affected.
  • The Royal Navy appoints its first female warship commander. Lieutenant Commander Sarah West, 39, will take control of HMS Portland in May 2012.
  • 9 August – Further sporadic violence breaks out in several towns and cities around England, although London stays largely quiet overnight. Police say that the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old man in Croydon, London, may be linked to the rioting in the area.
  • 10 August
  • Police from Scotland are sent to England to help combat riots and disorder. There are three fatalities in Birmingham, all Muslim men who were run over in the Winson Green district of the city while protecting their neighbourhood from the rioting.
  • Say What?!, English video game is released.
  • 11 August – Parliament is recalled due to riots and disorder.
  • 12 August – The number of deaths in the recent wave of rioting across England reaches five when 68-year-old Richard Bowes died in hospital from injuries suffered when he was attacked while trying to put out flames during rioting in Ealing, London, four days ago.
  • 20 August – A pilot dies when an RAF Red Arrows aeroplane crashed at the Bournemouth Air Festival following a display.
  • 23 August – An e-petition calling for the British Government to release cabinet documents relating to the Hillsborough disaster collects 100,000 signatures – enough for MPs to consider a House of Commons debate on the matter. It is the first government e-petition to reach the target.
  • 31 August – Mobile internet use reaches 50% in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.

September

  • September – Official figures show that UK unemployment rose by 80,000 to 2.51 million, the largest increase in nearly two years, in the three months to July.

October

  • 1 October – A new record is set for the highest temperature recorded in October – at 29.9 °C (85.8 °F).
  • 3 October – The UK government pledges £50 million towards developing spin-off technologies from the super-strong material graphene.
  • 5 October – The world's largest solar bridge project gets underway in London.
  • 6 October – The Bank of England says it will inject a further £75 billion into the economy through quantitative easing (QE), but holds interest rates at 0.5%.
  • 9 October – Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney marries American heiress Nancy Shevell at a ceremony in London.
  • 10 October – The trial of Vincent Tabak, accused of murdering British landscape architect Joanna Yeates, begins at Bristol Crown Court.
  • 12 October – A government ban on non-EU foreign spouses under the age of 21 coming to the UK is ruled unlawful by the UK Supreme Court.
  • 13 October – BP is given the go-ahead to proceed with a new £4.5 billion oil project west of the Shetland Islands.
  • 14 October – Liam Fox resigns as Defence Secretary after a week of allegations over his working relationship with friend and self-styled adviser Adam Werritty.
  • 17 October – Former Defence Secretary Liam Fox broke the ministerial code in his dealings with his friend Adam Werritty, an official report says.
  • 18 October
  • The final episode of Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures airs following Elisabeth Sladen’s death. It is named “The man who never was”.
  • The Stone Roses announce their reunion tour after splitting in 1996.
  • 21 October – London's St Paul's Cathedral is forced to close its doors to visitors for the first time since the Second World War after Occupy London protesters set up camp on its doorstep.
  • 27 October
  • The serial killer Robert Black is convicted of the 1981 murder of Northern Ireland schoolgirl Jennifer Cardy.
  • As police prepare to remove protestors from the grounds of St Paul's Cathedral, Giles Fraser resigns as its canon chancellor, saying he could not condone the use of violence against the demonstrators.
  • 28 October
  • Dutch engineer Vincent Tabak is convicted of the murder of landscape artist Joanna Yeates and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
  • As St Paul's Cathedral re-opens to visitors, the City of London Corporation announces plans to launch legal action to evict protesters from the cathedral's grounds.
  • 31 October – Graeme Knowles resigns as Dean of St Paul's as protestors by Occupy London demonstrators continue.

November

  • 1 November – Junior Individual Savings Accounts replace Child Trust Funds.
  • 3 November
  • Two Acts of Parliament receive Royal Assent:
  • Pensions Act 2011, bringing the state pension qualifying age of 65 for women forward to 2018 and raising it for men and women to 66 by October 2020.
  • Armed Forces Act 2011, providing for the Defence Secretary to make an annual report on progress towards 'rebuilding' the Armed Forces Covenant.
  • 4 November
  • Ruth Davidson becomes the new leader of the Scottish Conservative Party.
  • Seven people die and 51 are injured after 34 vehicles collided – many bursting into flames – on the M5 motorway near Taunton in Somerset.
  • 6 November – A public opinion poll carried out for the BBC Politics Show about Scotland's constitutional future indicates that devo-max is the most popular option with Scottish voters but 'no further constitutional change' is the most popular option with English voters. In Scotland, 33% backed devo-max, 28% supported Scottish independence and 29% backed 'no further constitutional change', while in England, 14% supported devo-max, 24% supported Scottish independence and 40% backed 'no further constitutional change'.
  • 9 November – Supreme Court decides Kernott v Jones giving Patricia Jones a 90% interest in a family home owned jointly with her former cohabitee but to which he had not contributed since their relationship ended, a leading case on unmarried couples' property rights in England and Wales.
  • 16 November – New official figures show that unemployment has risen to more than 2,600,000 – the highest level since 1994 – during September. Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, warns that the UK is now at a great risk from the Eurozone debt crisis. Youth unemployment has also passed the 1,000,000 mark for the first time since 1986.
  • 17 November
  • Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond is named The Spectator magazine's 2011 politician of the year.
  • The UK Government sell the Northern Rock Bank – which was nationalised in 2008 – to Virgin Money for £747m.
  • 19 November – Four Metropolitan Police officers are stabbed while chasing a suspect in Kingsbury, north London. Two officers are seriously injured, and a 32-year-old suspect is arrested for attempted murder.
  • 22 November – Median survival periods for cancer in England and Wales have risen from 12 months to nearly six years since the 1970s, but with little change in some cancers, figures show.
  • 27 November
  • Iran's parliament vote by a large majority to downgrade diplomatic relations with the UK. The move comes after the UK Treasury imposed sanctions on Iranian banks.
  • Wales national football team manager Gary Speed, 42, is found dead at his home in Chester. Speed, who had previously managed Sheffield United, had been a prominent footballer who was one of his country's most capped players with 85 appearances at senior level and also won a league title with Leeds United and was an FA Cup runner-up twice with Newcastle United.
  • 28 November – The OECD warns that the UK and the Eurozone could be on the brink of another recession barely two years after the previous one.
  • 30 November – Public sector workers stage a strike over government plans to make their members pay more and work longer to earn their pensions.

December

Undated

  • 2011 was the second warmest year on record for the UK, according to the Met Office. Only 2006, with an average temperature of 9.73C (49.5F), was warmer than 2011's average temperature of 9.62C (49.3F).
  • The UK population rose by 470,000 between 2009 and 2010, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics – the biggest increase in nearly 50 years.

Publications

Births

  • 30 September – Jamie Duffy, Thai footballer

Deaths

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

See also

References