Well, various things happened/went wrong with that:

• my DNS provider emigrated, allowing all my domains to lapse without telling me
• the server broke
• lots of people joined the mailing list, and Cumbria.pm got set up, but nothing happened further south
• my personal life went a bit awry, which left me without much time to devote to things perl for a few months

So I'm trying once again. The general feeling after a few months of messages passing back and forth was that the whole north of england was too large a scope (something I thought might be the case) but the mailing list would be handy for allowing individual groups to share information.

The mailing list is back up and running at http://www.hexten.net/mailman/listinfo/northofengland-pm. I'm hoping to start Leeds.pm up again (pm.org tells me it's inactive). Anyone interested in this, or in setting up another group in the area, please join the mailing list.