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- 1970.0
- According to an opinion poll, 26% of 299 residents surveyed felt they belonged "very strongly" or "fairly strongly" to Greater Manchester, 64% to the borough of Wigan, and 63% to Lancashire. (fr)
- Several railway lines cross the borough. Wigan Wallgate railway station is served by trains to Southport, Kirkby, Manchester Victoria and Rochdale. Wigan North Western railway station is located on the West Coast Main Line and trains run from there to Liverpool Lime Street and Blackpool North.
Other stations are Atherton, Bryn , Gathurst , Hindley, Ince, Orrell, and Pemberton. There is also a long running campaign for Golborne railway station to be re-opened.
Leigh is the largest town in the UK whitout a railway station. One station, on the Bolton and Leigh Railway, closed in 1954. The second, on a loop of the Manchester to Wigan Line was closed in 1969.
The Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes through the borough, as does the M6 motorway, which runs through the west of the borough, and serves Ashton-in-Makerfield , Wigan 25 , Wigan and Orrell and Standish . The M58 motorway, to northern Liverpool, terminates at junction 26 of the M6 . The A580 , Liverpool to Manchester link, passes through the south of the borough. (fr)
- The first elections to the borough council were held on 10 May 1973. Each ward has three councillors, and elections are by third, with one councillor from each ward up for re-election in each election year. The 2004 election was for all seats, as ward boundaries had changed. The next elections are planned for 2007.
The borough council has a leader and cabinet system. The current leader is Peter Smith, who also sits in the House of Lords as a Labour Party life peer, under the title Lord Smith of Leigh. He first became leader in 1991. The council rejected the idea of a directly-elected mayor following a consultation in 2001.
The Metropolitan Borough of Wigan is traditionally a Labour stronghold - the council has been Labour Party-controlled since its creation. The local elections in 1998 resulted in a council with only 2 non-Labour members.
Labour have a majority with 43 seats as of the 2006 election. The second largest party on the council is the local Community Action Party, also active in St Helens and Warrington, which had 15 seats. Community Action first contested Wigan elections in 2002, and won 18 seats in the 2004 election following the re-warding - their councilors are for wards in the middle of the borough, between Wigan and Leigh. The Conservative Party has nine seats, and the Liberal Democrats eight.
The council uses Wigan Town Hall as its main headquarters. Leigh Town Hall is used as a secondary base. (fr)
- Four parliamentary constituencies cover the borough: Wigan, Makerfield, Leigh, and Worsley. Worsley also covers parts of Salford. New constituencies boundaries recommended by the Boundary Commission will see the link to Salford broken, and part of the borough included in the Bolton West constituency. All four seats are considered safe seats for the Labour Party, and they or predecessors have returned Labour members consistently since the Second World War. Makerfield is the only constituency to have returned Labour MPs continuously since 1906. (fr)
- The previous wards were (fr)
- Component areas of the borough include Wigan itself, Abram, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Aspull, Astley, Atherton, Bryn, Golborne, Haigh, Higher End, Hindley, Ince-in-Makerfield, Leigh, Lowton, Orrell, Platt Bridge, Standish, Shevington and Tyldesley.
The ONS identify a Wigan Urban Area as being the west of the district, including Skelmersdale and Upholland in West Lancashire, with a population of 166,840. It considers towns in the east of the borough to be part of the Greater Manchester Urban Area. Ashton-in-Makerfield, Aspull, Golborne and Shevington are identified as standalone urban areas. (fr)
- The borough has three civil parishes: Haigh, Shevington and Worthington. The rest of the borough is an unparished area. Turning to ecclesiastical parishes, the Wigan Deanery Parishes are under the Anglican Diocese of Liverpool and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Liverpool, although Anglican parishes in the east section of the Metropolitan Borough are under the Diocese of Manchester and the northern section under the Diocese of Blackburn. (fr)
- With a population of around 300,000, Wigan is the second most populous borough of Greater Manchester, after Manchester itself. It also has one of the lowest non-white populations, with the 2001 census reporting 98.7% of the population as white. Unemployment is around average for England and Wales. 9.5% of the population is "permanently sick or disabled" compared to an average of 5.5%. (fr)
- The borough is divided into 25 electoral wards, each of which elect three councillors. The present wards were adopted in 2003, following a review by the Boundary Commission : the previous review took place in 1979. The borough was formerly divided in 24 wards. The wards are as follows: (fr)
- Wigan Council has divided the borough into ten areas by the name of townships, with a Township Manager and a Township Forum each. The townships are as follows: (fr)
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