2011 in the United Kingdom

2011 in the United Kingdom
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Countries of the United Kingdom
England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales
Popular culture

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 ceased publication and entered administration.
  • 3 April – the UK's last circus elephant retired.
  • 4 April – as part of the British government's package of welfare reforms, starting from this date the one-and-a-half million people in the United Kingdom who were claiming incapacity benefit began 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 identified 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
  • Prince William and Catherine Middleton on the balcony of Buckingham palace during their wedding
    13 April – 53-year-old actor Brian Regan, most famous for his role as Terry Sullivan in the former Channel 4 TV soap Brookside, was charged – along with another man – with the murder of a man who was fatally shot in Aigburth, Merseyside, on 24 February 2011.
  • 24 April – senior Liberal Democrat minister Chris Huhne threatened legal action over "untruths" told by Conservative MP's opposed to the Alternative Vote System, 11 days before the referendum. He also warned that the dispute could damage the coalition government.
  • 27 April – the Office for National Statistics revealed that the economy had returned to growth during the first quarter of this year, growing by 0.5%.
  • 29 April – Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton married in Westminster Abbey. A public holiday celebrated the day, which in conjunction with the May Bank Holiday, made a four-day weekend.

May

June

  • 10 June Sinn Féin's Paul Maskey won the West Belfast by-election.
  • 15 June
  • 23 June – Levi Bellfield, three years into a life sentence for the murder of two young women and the attempted murder of a third, was 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 received 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 went 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 went on strike across the UK over planned pension changes.
    • 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.
    • The cheque guarantee card scheme – which ensures some cheques are honoured even if the account holder does not have sufficient funds in their account – was withdrawn after operating for over 40 years.

July

  • 1 July – the Labour Party's Iain McKenzie won the Inverclyde 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 was announced that the News of the World would cease publication after its final edition on Sunday 10 July, having been in circulation for 168 years.
  • 8 July – Rushden & Diamonds F.C. went 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. This was the biggest ever jackpot won in its history.
  • Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson & Rupert Grint the lead actors of the Harry Potter films since childhood at the premiere of the series finale in London
    15 July – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the final instalment in the Harry Potter film series, was 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, was found dead in Watford. His death is being treated as "unexplained but not suspicious" by police.
  • 23 July – the singer songwriter Amy Winehouse, 27, was found dead at her London home.
  • 26 July – the British economy grew by 0.2% during the second quarter of the year, down from 0.5% in the first quarter.
  • 27 July – Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher, a landmark case in UK labour law, was 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, was 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 launched 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 began.
  • 7 August – The Metropolitan Police struggled to restore order in Tottenham, London after a riot the previous evening.
  • 8 August
  • 9 August – Further sporadic violence broke out in several towns and cities around England, although London stayed largely quiet overnight. Police say that the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old man in Croydon, London, may have been linked to the rioting in the area.
  • 10 August
    • Police from Scotland were 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 reached 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 died 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 of Cabinet documents relating to the Hillsborough disaster collected 100,000 signatures – enough for MPs to consider a House of Commons debate on the matter. It was the first government e-petition to reach the target.
  • 31 August – mobile internet use reached 50% in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.

September

October

  • 1 October – a new record was set for the highest temperature recorded in October – at 29.9 °C (85.8 °F).
  • 3 October – the UK government pledged £50 million towards developing spin-off technologies from the super-strong material graphene.
  • 5 October – the world's largest solar bridge project got underway in London.
  • 6 October – the Bank of England said it would inject a further £75 billion into the economy through quantitative easing (QE), but held interest rates at 0.5%.
  • 9 October – former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney married American heiress Nancy Shevell at a ceremony in London.
  • 10 October – the trial of Vincent Tabak, accused of murdering British landscape architect Joanna Yeates, began at Bristol Crown Court.
  • 12 October – a government ban on non-EU foreign spouses under the age of 21 coming to the UK was ruled unlawful by the UK Supreme Court.
  • 13 October – BP was given the go-ahead to proceed with a new £4.5 billion oil project west of the Shetland Islands.
  • 14 October – Liam Fox resigned 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 said.
  • 18 October –
  • 21 October – London's St Paul's Cathedral was 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 was convicted of the 1981 murder of Northern Ireland schoolgirl Jennifer Cardy.
    • As police prepared to remove protestors from the grounds of St Paul's Cathedral, Giles Fraser resigned as its canon chancellor, saying he could not condone the use of violence against the demonstrators.
  • 28 October
    • Dutch engineer Vincent Tabak was convicted of the murder of landscape artist Joanna Yeates and sentenced to life imprisonment.
    • As St Paul's Cathedral re-opened to visitors the City of London Corporation announced plans to launch legal action to evict protesters from the cathedral's grounds.
  • 31 October – Graeme Knowles resigned as Dean of St Paul's as protestors by Occupy London demonstrators continued.

November

  • 1 November – junior Individual Savings Accounts replaced Child Trust Funds.
  • 3 November – Acts of Parliament received 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
  • 6 November – a public opinion poll carried out for the BBC Politics Show about Scotland's constitutional future indicated that devo-max was the most popular option with Scottish voters but 'no further constitutional change' was 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 decided 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 – unemployment rose to more than 2,600,000 (the highest level since 1994) during September. Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, warned that the UK is now at a great risk from the Eurozone debt crisis. Youth unemployment has now passed the 1,000,000 mark for the first time since 1986.
  • 17 November
  • 19 November – four Metropolitan Police officers were stabbed while chasing a suspect in Kingsbury, north London. Two officers were seriously injured, and a 32-year-old suspect was 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
  • 28 November – the OECD warned 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 staged a strike over government plans to make their members pay more and work longer to earn their pensions.

December

  • 8 December – the Prime Minister, David Cameron, vetoed a European Union treaty concerning the Eurozone crisis.
  • 16 December – the Labour Party's Seema Malhotra retained the Feltham and Heston seat in south-west London for the party in a by-election sparked by the death of the previous MP.
  • 17 December
    • Opinion polls show that the Conservatives had established a lead of up to six points ahead of Labour, who had narrowly led most of the polls this year, since David Cameron's veto on the European Union treaty last week.
    • Johann Lamont became the leader of the Scottish Labour Party.
  • 23 December – Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was treated in hospital for a blocked coronary artery.
  • 30 December – 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).

Publications

Deaths

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Ronald Searle (self-portrait)

See also


This page was last updated at 2022-08-09 08:57 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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