Talk Elections

And because that was the Conservative Party policy, that means all the constituencies have to be 77,658 (and not one elector bigger or smaller than that number). This means that the regions split as follows:

Northern Ireland: 15 (rounding down to the nearest whole seat 15.06)
Scotland: 49 (rounding down) 50 (rounding up) 49.8
Wales: 29 (29.12)
England: 491/492

Allow me to start the ball rolling with my own constituency of Ceredigion. Based on that average, Ceredigion is 18,615 electors too small and needs to be merged with somewhere. I suspect that they might say that the preserved counties must be adhered to so that rules out merging with Dwyfor, Montgomeryshire, Brecon and Radnorshire, so that leaves only Carmarthen East and Preseli Pembrokeshire. Without knowing the exact electorates of the wards of Carmarthen East (which I should point out are being rejigged at the moment) I think that a merger with Preseli Pembrokeshire seems the most likely (as there has been a historical link with that constituency between 1983 and 1997) but would hope that the constituency would be called Ceredigion and the Preselis, or Ceredigion and Preseli and not just Ceredigion and Pembroke North as it was between 1983 and 1997

When does the boundary commision start... commisioning?

Would Na-h-Eileanan-an-Iar, Orkney and Shetlands, Ynys Mon and the Isle of Wight be affected by these changes? They're far under Cammy's 77,658 requirement.

I did some work on this last year on the Vote UK forum thread "Equal Voting Size".  http://www.vote-2007.co.uk/index.php?topic=3672.0 (http://www.vote-2007.co.uk/index.php?topic=3672.0).  We assumed a House of 585 seats.

Some observations:
(1) Getting each constituency to be exactly the same size is an impossible task.  Apart from anything else, it's very unlikely that the electorate will be an exact multiple of 500 or 585 or whatever.

(2) The only way to get each constituency the same size would be to divide at property level, which means that the number of possible counter-proposals becomes for all practical purposes unlimited.  For example, if we need to transfer two electors from Anytown East to Anytown West is there any reason for us to prefer transferring 1 Avenue Road instead of 2 Avenue Road?

(3) Legal precedent is not on the Conservatives' side here.  Back in 1983 Michael Foot (then Leader of the Opposition) took the Boundary Commission for England to judicial review arguing that the Commission had not taken enough weight of having an equal number of voters in each seat.  He lost.  (If you want to know more, google R v Boundary Commission for England ex parte Foot 1983.)

What we may see is the introduction of a tolerance level of something like +/-10% for all parliamentary constituencies except where there is a very good reason to depart from this (I'm thinking Orkney and Shetland, Na he Na h-Eili Western Isles and Wight here).  That's how the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (or whatever they're called this week) work.  However, even though a 10% tolerance sounds large it would create problems in the metropolitan areas and Scotland where ward sizes are very large - wards would almost certainly have to be split, presumably along polling district lines or some such.  The new Scottish Parliament constituencies coming in next year have taken this approach.

Wight is actually a lot bigger than that - it already has more than 100,000 electors.

I suspect Anglesey might well be subject to this.  Anglesey is connected to the mainland by two bridges, which is more than can be said for the rest of the island seats named.  You could combine it with Arfon.  [waits for Al to explain why this is a bad idea]

Trivia time here - there are actually five constituencies which contain no part of the British or Irish mainland.  What's the other one?

One of the Thanet seats? If you consider the Isle of Thanet to be not a part of the British mainland.

Or perhaps Portsmouth South? There's a canal separating Portsmouth from the mainland, but it used to be a part of the mainland.

Edit: You must mean Portsmouth South, as the Thanet seats both contains parts of the original mainland as well (a bit of pro-Tory gerrymandering, that).


Also, Isle of Wight would be affected by it, but by means of having to be split and partially merged with the mainland (or Portsmouth South, since my guess is that they'd connect Ryde to Portsmouth and then leave the rest of Wight intact).

And if this were implemented by the Tories alone rather than the current coalition, LD Gain Wight & Hold Forever.

Wouldn't the voters there appreciate their increased share of representation vis-a-vis the rest of the country, or at least recognize the value in that enough to forgive the Tories for spitting their blessed island?

The Welsh version of the Electoral Reform Society has been having a go at this and will be publishing their report on Wednesday in Cardiff. I have asked for the report to be e-mailed to me following publication (and will post once I get it) but they have raised an interesting statement, namely that according to the Government of Wales Act, the number of constituency AM's in the Assembly MUST equal the number of MP's elected. This means that if these plans do indeed go ahead (as expected), then the Assembly will shrink from it's current 60 to as few as 44 (when the Richards Commission called for a long term goal of an Assembly with 80 members).

No. People don't think that way. Even splitting the island into two undersized constituencies (which the commission never planned to - as yet) wasn't a popular suggestion; mostly because there's no readily apparent 50-50 split (I've tried).

I still have some hope that the Tories will see sense on this (or that the Lib Dems will persuade them to) and go for something like a 10% tolerance retaining the rule which allows it to be ignored in exceptional cases (e.g. Wight, Orkney and Shetland, Na h-Eileanan an Iar).  If not there are going to be a lot of controversial recommendations, and see the response to the Boundary Commission's absurd proposal of a cross-Mersey seat in the last review to see the sort of reaction they're likely to get.

Does the Ilse of Man send a representative to Westminster?  If so, is there a constituency there that contains no part of the British mainland?

No, the Isle of Man isn't part of the UK, it's just... there. It has its own government.

Portsmouth South?

Yes, it's Portsmouth South.

Yeah, I suppose you're right.  There's a woman from Kennebunk, Maine, on a Maine political web forum I frequent who hates that her town is split between (state) House districts even though Kennebunk had enough population for 1.24 House districts as of and according to the 2000 census and has grown by a larger percentage than the state since then according to 2008 estimates.  Of course Maine had 8,443 people per State Representative as of an according to the 2000 census and 8,730 people per representative according to 2009 estimates, and has exclusively single member districts unlike New Hampshire, so you end up having to split municipalities that would be a small portion of a Representative or Assembly district in most states.

Welsh Electoral Reform Society Recommendations for Wales
(published June 9th 2010)

Name of constituency   Con   Lab   Lib Dem   Plaid   UKIP   Green   BNP   Ind   Others   Totals   Electorate   Turnout   Winner
Barry and Penarth   18,106   16,387   8,112   2,433   1,419   485   0   186   306   47,434   73,652   64.40%   Con
Blaenau Gwent and Tredegar   2,781   16,612   4,198   1,981   623   0   1,227   696   4,675   32,795   78,027   42.03%   Lab
Breconshire and Montgomeryshire   14,085   3,304   15,520   1,839   994   181   0   152   409   36,485   73,630   49.55%   Lib Dem
Bridgend   10,213   15,024   7,870   2,514   796   0   1,072   0   0   37,489   75,991   49.33%   Lab
Caerphilly   6,038   16,700   5,587   4,996   893   0   1,450   985   14   36,662   78,773   46.54%   Lab
Cardiff Central   10,637   13,184   12,753   1,437   912   532   0   191   341   39,988   74,574   53.62%   Lab
Cardiff North East   13,568   15,702   10,680   1,589   1,043   479   0   236   361   43,658   75,345   57.94%   Lab
Cardiff West   13,851   17,175   8,066   2,335   1,125   607   0   106   165   43,428   74,061   58.64%   Lab
Carmarthen   11,546   11,885   5,156   9,011   1,173   13   0   134   16   38,934   75,798   51.37%   Lab
Ceredigion and Rhaeadr   7,325   3,406   16,990   8,634   980   528   0   34   66   37,963   74,042   51.27%   Lib Dem
Conwy and Abergele   13,623   8,667   5,765   5,561   759   0   18   54   194   34,642   74,374   46.58%   Con
Denbigh, Llangollen and the Vale of Conwy   12,256   12,428   5,762   3,543   764   0   711   21   80   35,564   74,357   47.83%   Lab
Flint and Rhyl   12,629   15,043   4,982   1,978   571   0   834   0   76   36,114   73,720   48.99%   Lab
Gwynedd and Machynlleth   6,367   5,220   4,325   10,863   774   0   0   788   31   28,369   75,318   37.67%   Plaid
Llanelli   7,203   14,349   4,590   10,804   1,063   0   118   0   0   38,127   75,776   50.32%   Lab
Merthyr Tydifl and Ystrad Mynach   4,034   15,421   8,002   3,495   891   0   1,338   1,303   111   34,596   78,860   43.87%   Lab
Mold and Shotton   12,868   15,638   6,949   1,617   928   0   1,247   0   0   39,247   75,949   51.68%   Lab
Monmouth   18,945   12,211   9,526   1,140   1,017   445   283   0   30   43,598   78,292   55.69%   Con
Neath and Aberavon   4,681   16,768   5,183   3,531   615   0   1,284   556   338   32,955   74,811   44.05%   Lab
Newport   10,524   14,672   8,710   935   924   238   1,176   0   58   37,237   75,491   49.33%   Lab
Pembroke   16,827   12,691   5,414   3,883   1,001   0   0   145   0   39,961   75,339   53.04%   Con
Pontypridd and Aberdare   3,845   15,315   6,302   5,011   1,037   110   0   135   250   32,004   76,594   41.78%   Lab
Rhondda and Ogmore   3,300   17,213   4,727   4,712   564   41   313   1,648   94   32,612   75,838   43.00%   Lab
Swansea East and the Vale of Neath   5,861   15,564   6,960   4,863   806   120   1,286   81   96   35,637   77,901   45.75%   Lab
Swansea North and Loughdor   8,123   15,936   7,478   2,280   758   221   1,345   52   25   36,217   74,988   48.30%   Lab
Swansea West and Gower   9,345   13,539   10,561   1,870   695   272   927   252   120   37,581   77,775   48.32%   Lab
Torfaen   9,213   16,527   6,474   1,826   922   449   1,492   1,594   0   38,497   78,434   49.08%   Lab
Vale of Ely   11,178   15,772   8,758   2,776   1,234   479   84   0   374   40,657   73,196   55.55%   Lab
Wrexham   9,003   12,505   7,744   2,322   787   0   1,124   0   0   33,486   74,020   45.24%   Lab
Ynys Môn and Bangor   7,223   10,322   3,105   8,805   1,035   0   0   1,526   123   32,140   74,167   43.33%   Lab

Could I ask someone more skilled than me to table that please and could I also ask for a named current ward map of Wales so I can show which wards go into which seats? (please e-mail me direct with map)

I haven't drawn many Welsh ward maps but tend to be fairly useless in my experience - some Welsh wards are absolutely tiny.

Also I can't see this on the ERS website - do you have any further details?

One more thing:


WTF??!?!?!??  If you're going to combine Cardiganshire with anywhere presumably the Preseli or Machynlleth would be a better idea - at least there aren't a load of mountains in the way.

The Welsh part of the ERS e-mailed me the designs of the new constituencies and they were embaroged until a meeting today in Cardiff. If they have not yet appeared on the website, then pass. As to the idea of Ceredigion and Rhaedr, the wards in question are:

Ceredigion
All wards
Powys
Blaen Hafren, Llandinam, Llanfair Caereinion, Llanidloes, Rhiwcynon, Llanyre, Nantmel, Rhaeadr Gwy and the northern half of the electoral division of Llanafanfawr
Pembrokeshire
Cilgerran, Clydau, Crymych, Dinas Cross, Newport, Scleddau

OK, so it looks like it already has the Mynydd Preseli in it.  Still, communication links between Aberystwyth and Rhayader consist of the A44 road via Llangurig.  And, er, that's it.

Surely the ERS Cymru can't be trying for the most insane constituencies they can think of in order to discredit FPTP?  Nah, that can't be right.

What's all this hogwash about you cant redo the boundaries cause the list of electors is out of date.
Do you use registered electors to determine boundaries? I can't think of anything less democratic. Canada uses citizens, all citizens (old, young). You could also use citizens over 18 (IE can vote).

Oh, just brilliant ::)

The agrument that Harriet Harman used in the Commons yesterday is that what is the point of rejigging the boundaries if not everyone who can vote is allowed to vote (and cited all the data listed). My response would be "that did not stop you rejigging the boundaries of Scotland for the 2005 elections, and the rest of the UK for the 2010 elections"

The UK lets noncitizens vote (on certain conditions), so they've still got you beat.

Complete with Welsh translations (corrections welcome) :)

Name of constituency	Con	Lab	Lib Dem	Plaid	UKIP	Green	BNP	Ind	Others	Totals	Electorate	Turnout	Winner
Y Barri a Phenarth - Barry and Penarth	18,106	16,387	8,112	2,433	1,419	485	0	186	306	47,434	73,652	64.40%	Con
Blaenau Gwent a Thredegar - Blaenau Gwent and Tredegar	2,781	16,612	4,198	1,981	623	0	1,227	696	4,675	32,795	78,027	42.03%	Lab
Siroedd Frycheiniog a Threfaldwyn - Breconshire and Montgomeryshire	14,085	3,304	15,520	1,839	994	181	0	152	409	36,485	73,630	49.55%	Lib Dem
Pen-y-Bont ar Ogwr - Bridgend	10,213	15,024	7,870	2,514	796	0	1,072	0	0	37,489	75,991	49.33%	Lab
Caerffili - Caerphilly	6,038	16,700	5,587	4,996	893	0	1,450	985	14	36,662	78,773	46.54%	Lab
Canol Caerdydd - Cardiff Central	10,637	13,184	12,753	1,437	912	532	0	191	341	39,988	74,574	53.62%	Lab
Gogledd Ddwyrain Caerdydd - Cardiff North East	13,568	15,702	10,680	1,589	1,043	479	0	236	361	43,658	75,345	57.94%	Lab
Gorllewin Caerdydd - Cardiff West	13,851	17,175	8,066	2,335	1,125	607	0	106	165	43,428	74,061	58.64%	Lab
Caerfyrddin - Carmarthen	11,546	11,885	5,156	9,011	1,173	13	0	134	16	38,934	75,798	51.37%	Lab
Ceredigion a Rhaeadr - Ceredigion and Rhayader	7,325	3,406	16,990	8,634	980	528	0	34	66	37,963	74,042	51.27%	Lib Dem
Conwy ac Abergele - Conwy and Abergele	13,623	8,667	5,765	5,561	759	0	18	54	194	34,642	74,374	46.58%	Con
Dinbych, Llangollen a Bro Conwy - Denbigh, Llangollen and the Vale of Conwy	12,256	12,428	5,762	3,543	764	0	711	21	80	35,564	74,357	47.83%	Lab
Y Fflint a'r Rhyl - Flint and Rhyl	12,629	15,043	4,982	1,978	571	0	834	0	76	36,114	73,720	48.99%	Lab
Gwynedd a Machynlleth - Gwynedd and Machynlleth	6,367	5,220	4,325	10,863	774	0	0	788	31	28,369	75,318	37.67%	Plaid
Llanelli	7,203	14,349	4,590	10,804	1,063	0	118	0	0	38,127	75,776	50.32%	Lab
Merthyr Tudful ac Ystrad Mynach - Merthyr Tydifl and Ystrad Mynach	4,034	15,421	8,002	3,495	891	0	1,338	1,303	111	34,596	78,860	43.87%	Lab
Yr Wyddgrug a Shotton - Mold and Shotton	12,868	15,638	6,949	1,617	928	0	1,247	0	0	39,247	75,949	51.68%	Lab
Trefaldwyn - Monmouth	18,945	12,211	9,526	1,140	1,017	445	283	0	30	43,598	78,292	55.69%	Con
Castell-nedd ac Aberafan - Neath and Aberavon	4,681	16,768	5,183	3,531	615	0	1,284	556	338	32,955	74,811	44.05%	Lab
Casnewydd - Newport	10,524	14,672	8,710	935	924	238	1,176	0	58	37,237	75,491	49.33%	Lab
Penfro - Pembroke	16,827	12,691	5,414	3,883	1,001	0	0	145	0	39,961	75,339	53.04%	Con
Pontypridd ac Aberdâr - Pontypridd and Aberdare	3,845	15,315	6,302	5,011	1,037	110	0	135	250	32,004	76,594	41.78%	Lab
Rhondda ac Ogwr - Rhondda and Ogmore	3,300	17,213	4,727	4,712	564	41	313	1,648	94	32,612	75,838	43.00%	Lab
Dwyrain Abertawe a Bro Nedd - Swansea East and the Vale of Neath	5,861	15,564	6,960	4,863	806	120	1,286	81	96	35,637	77,901	45.75%	Lab
Gogledd Abertawe a Llwchwr - Swansea North and Loughor	8,123	15,936	7,478	2,280	758	221	1,345	52	25	36,217	74,988	48.30%	Lab
Gorllewin Abertawe a Gŵyr - Swansea West and Gower	9,345	13,539	10,561	1,870	695	272	927	252	120	37,581	77,775	48.32%	Lab
Tor-faen - Torfaen	9,213	16,527	6,474	1,826	922	449	1,492	1,594	0	38,497	78,434	49.08%	Lab
Bro Elai - Vale of Ely	11,178	15,772	8,758	2,776	1,234	479	84	0	374	40,657	73,196	55.55%	Lab
Wrecsam - Wrexham	9,003	12,505	7,744	2,322	787	0	1,124	0	0	33,486	74,020	45.24%	Lab
Ynys Môn a Bangor - Anglesey and Bangor	7,223	10,322	3,105	8,805	1,035	0	0	1,526	123	32,140	74,167	43.33%	Lab

I can't help but think that they may have to revise this 30-seat scheme.  The electorate figures I have for 2009 only give Wales 29 seats.

Update: The Welsh ERS have now published all the details, including maps, at http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/reduce_and_equalise_english_web.pdf (http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/reduce_and_equalise_english_web.pdf).

I'm currently working on a scheme for a 62-seat Cheshire and Lancashire which fits the new requirements.  Anyone interested?

Ugh, that Powys East seat is ugly. Though I like the Empty Parts of Northeast Wales seat, somehow.

Let's have a look map by map...

Gwent & Mid Glamorgan: overall impression... urgh, but I've seen worse. Some of the constituencies make a degree of sense (putting all of Nye's old seat in one constituency is something I approve of, of course) but some are very odd. Their Caerphilly would not survive the hearings process. Also, stupid names... they don't seem to be aware that Tredegar is actually in Blaenau Gwent already.

South Glamorgan: overall impression... ghastly. Words don't exist to describe the utter stupidity of 'Vale of Ely'. The overall map like a desperate attempt to keep a LibDem seat in Cardiff with less seats to play with and I don't have any nicer words for it than that.

West Glamorgan: overall impression... these people should never be allowed to have anything to do with drawing electoral boundaries ever. A clear attempt to draw a non-Labour constituency in the Swansea area. There are not words. Vile. And they don't seem to know what the Gower actually is. Idiots.

Dyfed: this is just insane. I know Mid Wales quite well and I think you'll find that transport links make severl constituencies there impossible. I also don't know what the hell they think they're doing with Llanelli.

Gwynedd: surprisingly reasonable, though I don't think there's any way that Gwynedd & Machynlleth would survive hearings.

Clwyd: again, better than other areas though I don't like it. I would have to question whether the interests of the people of Chirk have much to do with those of the people of Llanrwst, though will admit that interior NE Wales is a problem.

Powys: DIAF

I imagine that if the proposal really is a rigid 3.5% tolerance either side of the quota then you'll have a lot of similar concerns about a lot of the proposals, and not just in the obvious places like the Isle of Wight and the Highlands and Islands.

That's true. But some of the worst proposals are easily avoidable,

OK, it's time to go public.  Here's my plan for the North West:

() (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/fantasy/nw-585.html)

Click on the map for all the details.

Interesting solution to the Manchester problem.

Could you list / send me a "how similar each seat is to the last one" tally and I'd be able to create a set of notionals for those suggestions. By that I mean, Wirral : 100% Wirral West + 7% Wirral South

Harry, you have a PM.

Hooray for Tory gerrymandering!

Notional North Western Summary
(Source: Andrew's allocations, Election 2010 Results from the Guardian)
Votes Cast
Labour 1,208,658 (40.25%)
Conservatives 933,978 (31.11%)
Liberal Democrats 634,547 (21.43%)
United Kingdom Independence Party 97,991 (3.26%)
British National Party 64,125 (2.14%)
Independents 32,975 (1.10%)
Green Party 15,486 (0.52%)
Other Parties 5,787 (0.19%)

Party Wins
Accrington and Blackburn North
Altrincham and Sale West
Ashton under Lyne and Stalybridge
Birkenhead
Blackburn and Darwen
Blackpool North and Fleetwood
Blackpool South
Bolton North and Turton
Bolton South
Bootle and Kirkdale
Burnley and Nelson
Bury North
Bury South and Crumpsall
Cheadle
Chorley
City of Chester
Colne and Clitheroe
Congleton
Crewe and Nantwich
Crosby and West Lancashire
Eccles and Worsley
Eddisbury
Ellesmere Port
Fylde
Garston and Halewood
Halton
Hazel Grove
Heywood and Middleton
Hyde
Knowsley
Lancaster and Morecambe
Leigh
Liverpool, Riverside
Liverpool, Walton
Liverpool, West Derby
Lunesdale and Wyre
Macclesfield
Makerfield
Manchester Central and Moston
Manchester, Didsbury and Wythenshawe
Manchester, Gorton and Hulme
Manchester, Withington and Levenshulme
Oldham East and Saddleworth
Oldham West and Royton
Ormskirk, Maghull and Skelmersdale
Preston
Rochdale
Rossendale
Salford
South Ribble
Southport
St. Helens North
St. Helens South and Whiston
Stockport
Stretford, Urmston and Sale East
Tatton
Wallasey
Warrington North
Warrington South
Westhoughton
Wigan
Wirral

Thanks Harry.

Pretty much as I was expecting except for Lancaster and Morecambe.  The two predecessor seats (Lancaster & Fleetwood and Morecambe & Lunesdale) both have Tory majorities of less than 1000, and the best Tory areas of both seats are in the new Lunesdale and Wyre.  I would have expected Lancaster & Morecambe to be safeish Labour.

I imagine that Bolton North & Turton and Bury North would have been very close.

I think he's using the method that assumes that all parts of a given constituency vote the same way; which will obviously get a situation like Lancaster and Morecambe wrong.

Lancaster and Morecambe
BNP 422 Con 19,737 Green 1,274 Ind 96 Lab 18,972 Lib Dem 7,915 UKIP 1,768

Bolton North and Turton
Con 19,323 Green 76 Ind 271 Lab 23,196 Lib Dem 7,196 UKIP 2,162

Bury North
BNP 2,092 Con 20,386 Green 153 Ind 307 Lab 19,500 Lib Dem 9,225 UKIP 1,405

Those boundaries don't generally seem too bad, although I remain sceptical about the merits of such a strict size criterion.  I can't see anything obviously wrong with the way you've crossed the metropolitan county boundaries, and the boundaries in the north of the area seem neat.

I don't know north Manchester well enough to know whether crossing the Manchester/Bury boundary like that is a good idea.

"Wirral West" seems more descriptive of 62 than just "Wirral".

20 could be "Crosby and Burscough".

17 could be "Pendle and Bowland": I like naming constituencies after hills.  Quite a bit of it is of course really in Yorkshire...

Thanks YorkshireLiberal.

The make-up of Bury South and Crumpsall is basically, from north to south:
(a) Redvales ward, which covers from the edge of Bury town centre to Blackford Bridge.  This is the only ward in Bury with a significant Muslim population. (Incidentally the Pakistan fast bowler Asif Masood now lives in this ward and used to run Fishpool post office.)
(b) Unsworth ward, the southern end of Bury county borough.  This is a socially mixed ward including the villages of Hollins and Unsworth together with the Sunny Bank estate.
(c) Besses and Pilkington Park wards, the old Whitefield Urban District.  Besses (which used to be well-known for Besses o' th' Barn brass band) is very working-class while Pilkington Park is filthy rich and has a very large Jewish population.
(d) St Mary's, Holyrood and Sedgley wards, which cover Prestwich where I grew up.  Prestwich as a whole is more middle-class than Manchester, and again very Jewish.  (Incidentally Joel Barnett started his political career on the old Prestwich Urban District Council.)
(e) Crumpsall ward, based around Crumpsall tram stop and including the North Manchester General Hospital and the northern end of Cheetham Hill proper.  As I put in the penpic, a lot of parents in Crumpsall ward used to send their kids over the borough boundary down the tram line to Prestwich high school, because of the dodgy reputation of the local high school (Abraham Moss).  The tram line and the 135 bus up Bury Old Road mean that communications between Crumpsall and Prestwich are very good.  That's my justification for crossing the boundary here.
(f) Higher Blackley ward, which to be honest has nothing whatsoever to do with Bury beyond the fact that a lot of people from Prestwich like to relax/exercise in Heaton Park, which is the western half of the ward geographically.  However, a Manchester seat which contained Blackley but not Crumpsall would look very weird indeed.

The problem with calling 20 "Crosby and Burscough" is that Burscough is really just an overgrown village and nobody outside the general area knows where it is, or even how to pronounce it.  Burscough was never important enough to have its own Urban District, but was part of West Lancashire Rural District (along with Maghull).  If you want to put two towns in the name Formby would be a better bet - it's bigger than Burscough and full of powerful millionaires - but "Crosby and Formby" would imply that the seat only contained the coastal strip.

Any more regions in the pipeline?

Not from me for a while.  I have another project which is consuming much of my spare time at the moment.

Some blogger called Penddu has had a go at 29 seats for Wales: http://syniadau--buildinganindependentwales.blogspot.com/2010/06/wales-29.html# (http://syniadau--buildinganindependentwales.blogspot.com/2010/06/wales-29.html#)

Given the source I was half-expecting an amusing attempted gerrymander, but, no, quite reasonable for the most part. Much better than the atrocity produced by a certain organisation supporting electoral reform...

Generally South is better than North (though a closer look at Cardiff would have been helpful and I don't like that split of the Gower). I don't think that adding the Conwy valley to Anglesey/Bangor is a good idea and the Wrexham-area seats are a little on the crazed side. But, yeah. Not so bad overall.

Based on today's announcement and the December 2009 electorate figures, a target size of 600 gives a quota of 75,701, with a target window from 71,916 to 79,486.  (I guess it may be slightly higher if the target is 598 excluding Orkney and Shetland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar.)

Conveniently, this gives Sheffield almost exactly 5 quotas.  Wards would need to be split, though.  (I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing.)

Cornwall and Scilly seem to come out at 5.5 quotas, so it looks like there'll be a "Devonwall" constituency, which could provoke an interesting reaction.

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2740
Reading through some of the guesses from UKPR, I can tell this is gonna end up being a rather funny electoral map. Halton's bad enough, but an actual Wirral-Liverpool seat? It's as wierd as a Wirral-Wales seat would be.

I would have thought the obvious solution wrt the Wirral would be to re-create the 1974-1983 Wirral and Bebington & Ellesmere Port constituencies? The main problem is after all with the suburban seats and not with Burke & Hare or Welsh Island.

That would be obvious, which means it will not happen.

I am trying to fathom out what to do with Lancashire and Gtr Manchester, although if the average electorate will be below 80,000, I will have to undo some of my more radical suggestions

(I think my proposal of "Fleetwood, Bispham and Thornton Cleveleys" will have to be redone =)  )

Nicholas Whyte discusses the review in Northern Ireland at http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1471864.html

I'm having a look at Scotland :)

I've been playing around with the south which for one doesn't look too bad. The electorates don't create huge monstrosities.

()

So essentially;

East Lothian
Midlothian and Peebleshire
Berwick, Selkirk and Roxburgh
Dumfries and South Nithsdale
Galloway and South Ayrshire
Central Ayrshire
Kilmarnock

I'll revisit it all when I've finished.

I am working on Lancashire and Gtr Manchester. Now that I know 80,000 is the very maximum of a seat, I will have to revisit some of my creations to cut them down a bit.

Does any one have a blank Lancashire, and blank Gtr Manchester, ward map? It would come in very handy!

Cheers...

I can throw Cheshire in as well: http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/fantasy/ches_lancs_wards.png (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/fantasy/ches_lancs_wards.png).  It is a very, very large outline map tho'.

I'm going to have a go at this as well at some point, but not before the end of next week.

BTW doktorb, good to see you posting again.

Cheers for that.

I am a bit stuck in the Fleetwood area. I want to stop Fylde being linked with Preston, so it's caused a logjam around the awkward bit of Lancashire where Blackpool/Thorton Cleveleys/Poulton-le-Fylde/Carleton all meet.

I'll post my map of progress so far at some point. I've got an idea....but it does mean quite an interesting combination of towns.....=S

Welsh Allocation Averages
Clwyd 331,525 / 75,716 = 4.37 = 4 seats
Dyfed 279,972 / 75,716 = 3.69 = 4 seats
Gwent 348,532 / 75,716 = 4.60 = 5 seats
Gwynedd 180,376 / 75,716 = 2.38 = 2 seats
Mid Glamorgan 393,121 / 75,716 = 5.19 = 5 seats
Powys 102,601 / 75,716 = 1.36 = 1 seat
South Glamorgan 332,608 / 75,716 = 4.40 = 4 seats
West Glamorgan 293,034 / 75,716 = 3.87 = 4 seats
Total 29 seats

Right, close to giving up with this =<

All was working well until I got - AGAIN - to Blackpool and Fleetwood. REALLY p1ssed off here, just can't move on from this same old log jam....

I've got a new Lancaster and Morecambe at 78,808; then a Wyre and Lunesdale at 77,898. But this leaves Fleetwood and the whole of Blackpool, into which both will not go - I've got a core urban Blackpool seat at 74,283....and a Fleetwood plus Bits at, erm, 59,926.

STUCK :(

I'll try my hands at London.

This'll force an hilarious amount of cross-borough seats.

Just looking at 2010 electorates by borough, not having looked at ward maps so far...
Redbridge and Havering can be combined for 5 seats.
Waltham Forest can theoretically stand alone for two seats, far at the upper edge though. Barking and Newham are slightly too small for four seats together and will probably use some ward from Waltham (ie the three are combined for 6 seats).
Tower Hamlets and Haringey can both continue to stand alone for 2 seats each (Tottenham will have to take in parts of Hornsey, though.)
Hackney is barely too small to stand alone, so we might see Hackney South & City of London. (The City's population is mostly on the eastern end anyhow.)
Islington, Camden and Westminster can be combined for 5 somewhat oversized seats. (Add Kensington and it's too large for six.)
Enfield, Barnet and Brent can be combined for 8 undersized seats (technically three undersized seats fit into Barnet, but you'd definitely have to split wards and anyways Enfield needs to go somewhere) but Harrow is too large for two and adding it produces 10 seats much nearer the quota.
Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Ealing, Hounslow and Hillingdon have to all be combined for another 10 seats. (This means recreating enlarged versions of the 97-05 Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham and Acton & Shepherd's Bush seats, with the latter now including part of North Kensington.)
Richmond and Kingston are still the size for three oversized seats, Croydon is slightly too large for three, Wandsworth and Lambeth are together just barely not too large for five seats, although that would probably require ward splitting, and Sutton and Merton are both too small for two seats (and far too large to be combined with each other),  - so I'll try to combine Merton with Wandsworth/Lambeth for 7 and Sutton with Croydon for 5, leaving Richmond/Kingston as is. (I think that means I can save the Twickenham seat... and any change to that would be quite uncomfortable.)
Bromley is perfect for three seats and Greenwich for two... but that leaves the areas to the east and west in an impossible position, so one of them will have to be sacrificed:
Either Bromley 3, Bexley/Greenwich/Lewisham/Southwark 9
Or Greenwich 2, Bexley/Bromley/Lewisham/Southwark 10
Either way the big combination is somewhat undersized.

Obviously hitting a 7500 corridor with building bricks of an average population of 10,000 is utterly, non-negotiably impossible. At least if there are any other considerations (sense, shape, higher-up political boundaries). And if your average isn't in the middle of the range, but say 2000 from the bottom boundary, as in the case of my Redbridge/Havering pairing...

---

The only area where I've managed to hit close to the target is Ilford South which is an oversized (but very sensibly drawn) constituency that could drop one ward and be close to target. Indeed, drop Newbury, the largest ward in Redbridge, and you're at 73,924 which is one below the Redbridge/Havering average. It's not the geographically most sensible ward to remove though, that'd be Cranbrook which works out at 75,661 residents. (Actually, it probably makes most sense to lop off the Little Heath neighborhood, which is however parts of the two wards of Chadwell and Seven Kings. Or alternatively, all of Cranbrook and part of Valentines - the part with the nw/se street grid.)
Beyond that, though... ugh. Sure, I can get a Wanstead, Woodford & Ilford West seat and a Hornchurch seat at the upper ends of the legal corridor... but the remainder is much too small for two seats then.

Yeah. Without access to polling station populations this is just not fun to do. Broadly speaking though there would be a tightish drawn Romford seat and a fairly sizable seat spanning from northeastern Ilford across the less populated northern parts of Havering. What's the point of working out which wards to use exactly when you have to guess every third step of the way?

Had a go at Lancashire this morning and I think it's actually the easiest bit of the North West to do.  Throw in Sefton as well (as you have to to avoid splitting Formby) and you have 17.32 quotas.

As far as I can see Fleetwood and Blackpool do go into two if you're prepared to keep the current boundary between the Blackpool North and Wyre seats.  Move Fleetwood back into Blackpool North and move a couple of wards from Blackpool North into Blackpool South to even up the electorates.

So far I've ended up with:
Accrington and Blackburn North 77,911 (this is the 'bits and pieces' seat as Padiham is in there too)
Blackburn and Darwen 76,800
Blackpool North and Fleetwood 78,166
Blackpool South 74,144
Bootle 71,995 (unchanged, but I'll probably throw half a Liverpool ward in there at some point)
Burnley and Nelson 76,611
Chorley and Bamber Bridge 78,501 (also has a rural ward from Blackburn)
Colne and Clitheroe 78,171
Fylde 78,706 (expands north of Preston)
Lancaster and Morecambe 78,808
Preston 77,401 (all the urban wards except Ingol)
Rossendale and Oswaldtwistle 76,104
Sefton Central 77,202 (now includes the countryside west of Ormskirk)
South Ribble 79,239 (Penwortham, Leyland and Euxton)
Southport 78,531 (goes east to the River Douglas)
West Lancashire 77,504 (expands northeast as far as Coppull).
Wyre and Lunesdale 75,930

The rest of the NW will be more difficult.  Cumbria comes to 5.16 seats so it can have five seats of its own. The Wirral comes to 3.18 seats so it'll have to be moved in with Cheshire, but that leaves 25.57 seats for Greater Manchester, 13.52 seats for Cheshire + Wirral and 7.48 seats for Liverpool, Knowsley and St Helens (which is impossible with a 5% tolerance).  You'll have to combine those areas somehow, and the larger ward sizes in Cheshire and the mets will make it difficult to do. 

Yeah I am going to use your maps and description as a guide :P  I'm actually going to stick to my plan of only combining Lancashire with Gtr Manchester, which may end up being part of the cause of my problems! I'm going to undo the four seats I have tried to create in the Blackpool area and try again - start with a decent sized "Blackpool South" and work from there.

and don't forget, if you would like your notionals worked out, simply PM me with the similarity to each old seat (for instance: Blackpool South (95% Blackpool South, 4% Wyre, 1% Blackpool North) and I will post the new notional makeup of your area.

Cheers Harry, I'll have to actually finish them first, but yeah that'd be fantastic.

I can still try though!

Having played around a bit, a semireasonable map with only two split wards is possible.

Hornchurch & Upminster 69,616+x
South Hornchuch, Elm Park, Rainham & Wenningham, Upminster, Cranham, Hacton, Saint Andrews and part of Hylands (10,049) wards
Romford & Harold Hill 69,825+x
Gooshays, Heaton, Harold Wood, Squirrel's Heath, Emerson Park, Romford Town, Brocklands and remainder of Hylands ward, all in Havering
Ilford South 75,661
Current constituency except Cranbrook ward
Wanstead, Woodford & Ilford West 68,916+x
Cransbrook, Wanstead, Snaresbrook, Church End, Monkhams, Bridge, Roding, Clayhall and a part of either Barkingside (9162) or Fullwell (9202) wards finely calculated to have between 3000 and 3500 inhabitants, all in Redbridge
Ilford East & Havering Park (absolutely no idea what this area should be called, actually, and just making something up here) 75,556-x
Havering Park, Mawneys and Pettits wards, in Havering; Hainault, Fairlop, Aldborough, Barkingside and Fullwell wards except portion in Wanstead etc., in Redbridge

---

If Barking&Dag, Newham and Waltham Forest are to be paired, the general mapshape is sort of self-evident...

Dagenham 73,513
Areas currently in Dagenham & Rainham; Alibon, Parsloes, Valence (which were in Dagenham til 2010) and Becontree wards

Barking & Canning Town 70,181+x
Remaining Barking & Dagenham wards, Beckton, Royal Docks, Custom House, Canning Town South and part of Canning Town North (8088) wards, Newham, so a riverhugging constituency as it were.

East Ham 73,359
As currently minus Beckton and Royal Docks wards

West Ham 67,687+x
Current constituency, minus Custom House, Canning Town South and part of Canning Town North; plus Cann Hall ward in Waltham Forest

Leyton & Walthamstow South 70,751+x
Southern half of Waltham Forest (except Cann Hall) as far as Wood Street, Hoe Street and part of High Street (7967) wards

Chingford & Walthamstow North 71,566+x
Remainder of Waltham Forest

Poplar & Limehouse 70,880+x
the current constituency is just outside the corridor, so will have to include some streets off Saint Dunstan's & Stepney Green (10,136) ward
Bethnal Green & Bow 66,136+x
I did actually check whether Bethnal Green & Stepney vs Bow & Poplar works out, but Bow & Poplar is still barely outside the corridor and it's far less obvious where to go next.

Tottenham 68,338+x
Current constituency plus part of Noel Park (7498)
Hornsey & Wood Green 71,007+x
Current constituency minus part of Noel Park
That's the minimum change configuration o/c. I did actually check whether I could avoid the ward split if I exchanged a ward or two, but doesn't seem like it.

Hackney North & Stoke Newington 72,335
no change

Hackney South & City of London 77,192
Just has the city lopped on. What lucky coincidence - S is barely too small as it stands right now. :P Still looking a bit ridic, of course.

There are several ways of drawing five seats in Westminster, Camden and Islington. I eventually came up with this arrangement, putting Frank Dobson's seat on the chopping block (eh, that was always the most likely as it's the central one of the six):
Islington North 75,677+x
Current constituency plus Holloway ward and, if that's not too much already, the part of Saint Mary's ward (8051) north of the railway line
Islington South & Saint Pancras 73,410+x
Remainder of Islington; Saint Pancras & Somers Town, Cantelowes, Kentish Town wards of Camden
Hampstead & Highgate 73,938+x
Northwesterly parts of Camden borough, including the Primrose Hill part of Camden Town with Primrose Hill (8062) ward
Holborn & Regent's Park 72,348+x
Holborn & Covent Garden, King's Cross, Bloomsbury, Regent's Park and Camden Town part of that ward, Camden; and Abbey Road, Regent's Park, Church Street, Maida Vale, Little Venice, Marylebone High Street, Bryanston & Dorset Square wards of Westminster (so all of the historical Marylebone borough, plus the northeastern part of Paddington)
Westminster & Paddington 79,277
Remainder. And yes, of course it's possible to move the Queen's Park etc areas to Holborn etc instead of Marylebone proper. Which of course would have major effects on the political colors of both seats I suppose... This one probably saves us a split ward.

Blech.
Enfield North 76,620
Current constituency plus Cockfosters ward
Edmonton 73,008
Current constituency plus Grange ward
Southgate & East Barnet 76,327
Remainder of Enfield borough; Brunswick Park, East Barnet, Coppetts wards of Barnet borough
Barnet & Edgware 75,304
Remainder of Chipping Barnet constituency; Edgware, Mill Hill, Hale wards
Finchley & Hendon 79,232
Woodhouse, Finchley East, West, Church End, Hendon, West Hendon, Colindale and Burnt Oak wards
Brent East & Golders Green 71,216+x
Golders Green, Childs Hill, Garden Suburb wards, Barnet; Dollis Hill, Mapesbury, Brondesbury Park, Kilburn, Queens Park and part of Dudden Hill (7895) wards, Brent. Sadly the part of Dudden Hill can't be large enough to make geographic sense.
Brent South 67,755+x
Willesden Green, Kensal Green, Harlesden, Stone Bridge, Tokyngton, Alperton, Wembley Central, Sudbury wards and remainder of Dudden Hill
Brent North & Kenton 70,680+x
remainder of Brent (of which the Welsh Harp ward is currently in Brent Central); Kenton East and part of Kenton West (8323) wards, Harrow
Harrow East 70,822+x
Current constituency except Kenton E and part of Kenton W; plus Marlborough and Greenhill wards
Harrow West 76,423
Remainder, which is identical to 1997-2010 Harrow West constituency.

This drove me a little mad, and I seriously contemplated adding Haringey to the mix, which would have allowed a Southgate & Wood Green and a Hornsey & Finchley seat with the current Chipping Barnet and Hendon unchanged - their populations are fine as is. Then again those are hardly reasonably drawn constituencies as is (not really saying my Hendon-Finchley thing is better, mind... although I suppose Labour would have hung on to it in 2010. ;D Might be completely wrong, of course... would have to look at Al's ward maps of London...) The lopping off of Golders Green from Finchley allowed me to not have to split the Hendon part of Hendon, and to not create a tri-borough seat.

While in the next major area, one triborough seat was planned from the outset and another proved less inelegant than the alternatives.

Kensington & Chelsea 76,496
Excludes Saint Charles, Golborne wards
Hammersmith & Fulham 74,544
Excludes College Park & Old Oak, Wormholt & White City, Shepherd's Bush Green, Askew, Ravenscourt Park wards (and thus actually smaller than the 97-10 constituency of the same name)
Ealing Acton & Shepherd's Bush 70,972+x
Remainder of the two boroughs; Acton Central, South Acton, Southfield and (major) part of East Acton (9069) wards, Ealing
Ealing Central 70,111+x
Ealing Common, Ealing Broadway, Hanger Hill, Walpole, Northfield, Elthorne, Cleveland, Hobbayne and at least about 2000 strong part of East Acton ward. (Basically as little as possible, for obvious geographic reasons)
Ealing North 73,539
Perivale, Greenford etc, Northolt etc, Lady Margaret, Dormers Wells wards
Brentford & Isleworth 73,808
current constituency except Hounslow Heath
Feltham & Heston (South) 73,077+x
Hounslow Heath, current Feltham & Heston constituency except Heston West and part of Heston East (8217) wards
Southall & Hayes (and Heston North) 71,039+x
Norwood Green, Southall Green, Southall Broadway wards, Ealing; Heston West, part of Heston East wards, Hounslow; Yeading, Barnhill, Charville, Townfield and part of Botwell (9288) wards, Hillingdon
Uxbridge & Harlington 71,564+x
Current Uxbridge & South Ruislip minus Cavendish, Manor, South Ruislip; plus West Drayton, Heathrow Villages, Pinkwell, part of Botwell (ie remainder of borough south of Western Avenue)
Ruislip-Northwood 72,924
Remainder (similar to the 97-10 constituency of same name, but larger by Ickenham)

It's not possible to intelligently remove an area of the needed size from Hounslow. There aren't any (that don't split it in two).

---

Twickenham 78,667
no change
Richmond Park 75,495+x
Kingston & Surbiton 80,229-x
Kingston is too large and has to shed part of a ward, probably Beverley (6466) into Richmond Park.

No comments so far? :(

Well, to answer one point, Hendon is currently Edgware, Hale, Mill Hill, Hendon, West Hendon, Burn Oak and Colindale. Going off the borough elections, that's four Tory wards to three Labour ones. Your Finchley & Hendon has just two Tory wards. It's pretty ugly, but not worse than the current split (Barnet seems to be tricky to split in a pretty way) and has a certain logic to it.

After trying around for other configurations in Lambeth and Merton, I was struck by the Wandsworth map, which really makes it quite clear what the least hassle approach is:

Battersea 71,941
unchanged
Tooting 71,993
unchanged. Not only are they the right population already, but Wandsworth wards are huge and expanding undersized Putney eastward makes little geographical sense.
Putney & Wimbledon 75,280
current Putney constituency; Village, Wimbledon Park wards (that's really just part of the Wimbledon part of Wimbledon, I think.)
Merton & Morden 78,392
always nice to have a constituency name retread. Remainder of current Wimbledon constituency (which really "ought" to be called Merton & Wimbledon, anyways) plus Lower Morden, Saint Helier, Ravensbury, Cricket Green
Streatham & Mitcham 73,835
Colliers Wood, Lavender Fields, Figge's Marsh, Graveney, Longmorton, Pollards Hill wards, Merton; St Leonard's, Streatham South, Streatham Wells, Knight's Hill wards, Lambeth (Lambeth wards are larger than Merton wards, and 47% of the constituency is in Lambeth
Vauxhall 71,781+x
Current constituency plus northern half of Coldharbour (10,207) ward
Brixton & West Norwood  72,780+x
Remainder

This one rewards lazyness:
Sutton & Cheam 73,677
Current constituency plus St Helier ward
Carshalton & Wallington (and perhaps some naming element to imply the new more easterly configuration) 69,560+x
Current constituency minus St Helier plus Broad Green and part of Waddon (10,688) in Croydon
Croydon North 72,768
Current constituency minus Broad Green ward
Croydon Central 75,646
Current constituency
Croydon South 70,092+x
Current constituency minus part of Waddon

From a cursory glance I think using Bromley in the larger unit may make a fairly sensible map, and I've managed to create a reasonable (I think) split of Greenwich, so I'm tentatively going with it:
Greenwich & Eltham 79,036
Current Eltham constituency except Shooters Hill; Blackheath Westcombe, Greenwich West, Peninsula
Woolwich 74,194
remainder of borough

Borough & Bermondsey (there, making Al happy) 77,087
Current constituency excluding Surrey Dock and Rotherhithe, plus Faraday and Camberwell Green
Peckham & Dulwich 69,670+x
Remainder of the borough, excepting also Livesey and some northerly parts of Nunhead (8414, both to solve a pop. balance in the next constituency and to make a less weirdly weaving boundary in the northeast corner)
Deptford & Rotherhithe 70,808+x
aforementioned remainders of Southwark borough; current Lewisham Deptford constituency except Crofton Park and Lewisham Central wards
Lewisham East 74,732
Current constituency plus Lewisham Central
Lewisham West & Penge 77,829
Current constituency plus Crofton Park. Yeah, noting that this would probably be possible was why I went with leaving Greenwich alone (and the 97-10 threedistrict Bromley wasn't exactly a fine example of the redistricter's art anyhow)
Bromley & Chislehurst 76,027
Current constituency plus Petts Wood & Knoll
Beckenham & Biggin Hill 73,918+x
Current constituency plus Biggin Hill and northwesterly part of Darwin (4007), just for territorial contiguency. (Strange ward, that. Huge but unpopulated. What's the deal with that area?)
Orpington & Sidcup 69,721+x
Remainder of borough; Longlands, Sidcup, Cray Meadows wards of Bexley
Bexley & Crayford 72,729
Remainder of Old Bexley & Sidcup constituency, southern tier of Bexleyheath & Crayford constituency
Erith 72,758
northern tier of Bexleyheath & Crayford, Bexley part of Erith & Thamesmead

Moar commentz plz.

MOAR BOUNDREEZ

I mean, er, I have a week off work starting this Saturday, so I intend to finish my Lancs/Gtr Manc combo during that week.

I've had an idea about why I am in a logjam -  I have wanted to stick to two absolute certainties - that Ribble Valley has to go back to curling around Preston, and that Fylde cannot touch Preston at all. Well this seems to be the root cause of my issues; Fylde cannot go north without blocking off western Wyre, and the 111,000 or so Blackpool electorate cannot be divided between itself and just Fleetwood.

Soooo, I've got a provisional idea for "Valleys of Ribble, Wyre and Lune", and "Preston North and Fylde".  I'll let you know how those go.....

Want a map of your London? Would be easier to comment that way.

Sure!

This seat will have to include Preston Rural North in order to make any sense on the ground.  Otherwise you would have a seat containing rural areas around Lancaster, rural areas around Clitheroe and only the Trough of Bowland to link them.

I plan on getting Scotland ironed out.

There's a dirty joke hiding in there somewhere.

My plan  - I've not looked at the maps properly - is to NOT include Rural North, but to include Wyresdale, Ellel at least and work from there. It's the only way I can fathom out what to do with Blackpool....

Christ, I've had a look at the northeast - just at counties and unitaries so far...

Northumberland 3.24. Meaning Northumberland must be paired. Yes. Which is sort of a shame because
North Tyneside 2.05. Not that that helps much because
Newcastle 2.54.
Gateshead is 1.94, actually, and might be two seats. Although that, of course, is not unproblematic in itself as it would mean that the Gateshead seat takes the eastern areas that have always been in Jarrow and the Blaydon seat expands into Gateshead.
South Tyneside 1.53
Sunderland 2.82.
All together 14 seats that will be on average 1% too large, massively reducing our tolerance, even if grouped all together. Leave Gateshead out and it gets worse, of course. (Though it gets better if you leave North Tyneside out, but that means a weird rurban constituency in Newcastle. Plus a restituted Tyne Bridge that includes less of Gateshead and more of Newcastle than the old one, but that more or less can't be helped no matter what.)

South of that, Durham is 5.17 and can only just about stand alone, Darlington is 1.05 (barely under, actually), Hartlepool is 0.92 and must expand, Stockton is 1.86 and must expand too. Grouped together they're close to 9 seats, but here's the rub:

Middlesbrough 1.33
Cleveland 1.40
What to do with them? North Yorkshire doesn't need them either, it's very close to six seats (and the current arrangement in York is fine, too.) Cumbria can also stand alone at five seats on the large side, btw. There's probably literally no alternative to grouping them in with Durham etc, meaning 12 seats on average 2% too small.


 

Yeah. Not good. I guess that might mean Hartlepool & Billingham or some such horror?

I guess Hartlepool will probably just have some rural territory slapped on. The horrors will lie elsewhere, in the Tyne & Wear metro mostly. Middlesbrough will also pretty much inevitably look disgusting.
Incidentally, I just noticed that the whole of the area plus Cumbria is exactly the population for 31 seats. Seeing how difficult it is to draw anything sensible if the av. is half your tolerance off the target, I would guess that Durham-Tyne&Wear line will be breached as well.

Northumberland and Cumbria? HAHA! Oh me oh My!  I would like to see how that would work - Penrith and..... Hexham? No, is that too far out? It would be a great mess...

Sod all people live in the rural areas around Monkeytown. You'd have to extend north to Blackhall (which has very strong links with Peterlee) or west to Sedgefield proper (blech).


I was trying not to think about that. Especially given the awful record of post-1983 boundary reviews in the area.


Yes, but it always looks that way. Oh...


That might not be quite so bad, as the boundary is pretty artificial

First draft of the Bill published: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/063/2011063.pdf (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/063/2011063.pdf)

Here's a rundown of the new Rules for the Redistribution of Seats:

1. There will be 600 constituencies for the UK.

2. The quota will be the parliamentary electorate of the UK minus Orkney and Shetland and Na hEi Na Heail Western Isles, divided by 598.  (So, sorry, we're going to have to work it out all over again.)  Every constituency must be within 5% of the quota except where stated below.

3. No constituencies crossing the boundaries between the four home nations.

4. No constituencies with an area of more than 13000 km^2.  Constituencies with an area of more than 12000 km^2 are allowed to be more than 5% below quota.

5. The Boundary Commissions can take all the usual factors into account (geographical considerations, local government boundaries, local ties and inconvenience caused by changing boundaries).

6. Orkney and Shetland and Na Healanna Western Isles can stay as they are.

7. Seats in Northern Ireland can deviate from the quota a little more if |(Northern Ireland's electorate) - (UK electoral quota) x (number of seats for Northern Ireland)| is more than one-third of the electoral quota.  This is because Norn Iron is quite small and probably won't work out very evenly.

8. Seats shall be apportioned between the home nations using the Ste-Lague process (but Orkney and Shetland and Western Isles won't count in the Scotland total).

Other boundary-related highlights include:

- The first Boundary Commission reports are due on 1.10.13 with reports every five years afterwards.
- The Boundary Commissions will have to submit annual progress updates to the Speaker while reviews are in progress.
- Reviews must take a maximum of 2 years 10 months (so the next one starts on 1.12.10).
- The next review does not have to take inconvenience caused by changing boundaries into account (although local ties can still be claimed. Work that one out.).
- No more local inquiries - instead the consultation period for provisional and revised recommendations is increased to 12 weeks.
- The link between parliamentary and Welsh Assembly constituencies will be broken, so the Welsh Assembly constituencies will not be affected by any of this.

Getting out the December 2009 electorate figures we have:

England	38,129,082	503 seats
Wales	2,261,269	30 seats
Scotland excluding islands	3,814,502	50+2 seats
Northern Ireland	1,160,757	15 seats
TOTAL	45,365,610	598+2 seats

The electoral quota would be 75,862 with an allowable range of 72,069 to 79,655.  The special provision for Northern Ireland doesn't actually make a difference on these figures.

My 585-seat draft for Cleveland had the Pools extending south to cover half of Billingham.  Apart from that, it actually worked out quite nicely.


:)

No more local inquries!!!!!


But.....but.....I liked going to those =<

I will have to redraw Wigan, then, I've got a Makerfield seat with 82,000 !

I'm glad that there is a December (ish) start date, that gives me some time to fathom out other regions :) It does seem like the Commission will be rather pushed for time, and that could mean dismissing cross-county creations out of hand? This could be something to watch, is there any clue about what it means for, say, crossing UA and county boundaries?

You would have put a bit of Cumbria into a huge-anyways rural Northumberland Berwick & Hexham remainder seat, not the other way round.
Since doing so would also force the rurban Newcastle seat further out, I've abandoned the idea.

That's a Highland-only rule. No other area is going to have seats that are even close.

It would have been easier to just fix separate quotas...

No, that makes perfect sense actually. "But but but - I've always represented that area" is not a valid argument if everywhere is redrawn and the quota changes. In future reviews though, it is.
Yes. Speeding up the review process is far more sensible than that idiotically tight 5%. Local Inquiries are still a good idea, actually, but you'd have to force the Commissions to hold them much faster and report on them MUCH faster.
Yes, that was sort of obvious. (Though not stated so far IIRC.) When will the Assembly get increased powers?

What do you think is meant by the "Commission can take account of the extent of the European Parliament electoral regions" thing? Does that imply that counties/UAs/met borough boundaries can be crossed, even if it's not said explicitly?

The 5% rule forces that on half the counties in Britain anyways.
I just really, really hope that it's shot down somehow. Because without it (and the cheaply populist reduction in House size), this reform actually makes sense.

Rechecking all of my London, and this is the only area where the new higher quota creates a problem.


Can't leave Battersea and Tooting alone anymore. Ugh.

Right. So Battersea gains part of the Nightingale ward from Tooting which makes sense anyways as the current boundary splits Balham; Tooting compensates by gaining part of Southfield ward even though that doesn't make any sense whatsoever; and Putney compensates by gaining the Hillside ward from Merton & Morden which makes sense again as that's in Wimbledon.

Battersea 71,941+x
current constituency plus part of Nightingale (10,785)
Tooting 61,208+x
Current constituency plus parts of Nightingale and Southfield (11,000)
Putney & Wimbledon 70,242+x
current Putney constituency except part of Southfield; Village, Wimbledon Park, Hillside wards in Merton
Merton & Morden 72,430
always nice to have a constituency name retread. Remainder of current Wimbledon constituency (which really "ought" to be called Merton & Wimbledon, anyways) plus Lower Morden, Saint Helier, Ravensbury, Cricket Green

It wasn't strictly *necessary* to move Hillside, but doing so gives some leeway on the northern ward splits (ie, makes it possible to split Nightingale by the railroad line... although it also moves more of Southfield into Tooting) and makes sense in and of itself. The transferred part of Southfield would probably be the northern part.

Working between 72k and 79k (ish) certainly makes my Lancashire problem seem a little easier now, LOL. Things are looking up!

Can't help but wonder about split wards. Doesn't seem to say anything about that in the new legislation, does it?

IIRC it's not banned right now either; Commissions just have chosen not to due to practical considerations. As long as they had sufficient leeway, they had no reason to.

Yeah, the current regulations say wards are building blocks and they favour keeping them as whole units. I don't have the figures to hand, but I do look at Birmingham (as one extreme example) and wonder how they are going to divide such huge wards into 72-79k seats!

They'll either split wards on a massive basis (and to all sort of unbearable sh!t elsewhere, too) or have that 5% changed to 10%. There is no third option really.

2010 electoral figures, from the Boundary Commision themselves, has the West Midlands at 1,921,952. So dividing by the new quota has an entitlement of 25.335, down from 26.867.  A loss of 2 seats then?

Three, as the region was currently overrepresented at 28 seats... although it's possible that you'll have to breach the boundary someplace.

Quotas all over England...

London 68.37 (but if I count right I created 69 seats. Uh oh. This may become a problem given the fixed target.)
Kent 13.77 + Medway 2.45. 16 seats together.
Surrey 10.80. Gonna be problematic keeping them all within the corridor, but at least it can be a minimum changes map as Surrey already has 11 constituencies.
East Sussex 5.18 + Brighton & Hove 2.53. Ugh. This is just barely, theoretically, possible to do with 8 seats... but probably better to use a sliver of Kent.
West Sussex 7.89. No prob.
Berkshire 7.89
Oxfordshire 6.23. Only barely feasible, and probably better to drop some of those populated parts by Reading into a Reading North constituency.
Buckinghamshire 4.89
Milton Keynes 2.23. Those rural areas north of MK proper will have to be dropped.
Central Bedfordshire 2.53, Bedford 1.46
Luton 1.66
Hertfordshire 10.61
Essex 13.73 + Southend 1.67 + Thurrock 1.44.
Though technically only Luton *must* be paired, this strongly suggests a triple pairing. (Stand-alone Hertfordshire is going to be a f*ing bitch at 4% under average.)
Suffolk 7.12
Norfolk 8.50
Cambridgeshire 5.82 + Peterborough 1.50 A Norfolk/Cambridgeshire pairing. Just great.
Northamptonshire 6.62. This has to be paired somehow. The combination of maths and maps suggests Milton Keynes... no one's going to like it, I think, though of course it won't actually hurt anybody. (Listing it here rather than with the Midlands because the places to the north have no problems, see below.)

Cornwall (with Scilly) 5.49
Devon 7.72 + Plymouth 2.37 + Torbay 1.36. The need for a Devonwall has been pointed out before, I think.
Dorset 4.35 + Poole 1.49 + Bournemouth 1.71 = 7.55
Hampshire 13.10 + Southampton 2.10 + Portsmouth 1.84 + Wight 1.45 = 18.49
Well... welcome back, Christchurch & Lymington! ;) Portsmouth South & Ryde won't solve much... wonder if a different solution can be found, though?
North Somerset 2.05, Bristol 3.95, Swindon 2.00, Gloucestershire 6.05. Alas, they share a map with
Somerset 5.37, Banes 1.77; Wiltshire 4.52, South Gloucestershire 2.63. Wiltshire with South Gloucestershire... gosh it's ugly. Can't think of anything better right now though.

Worcestershire 5.73, Warwickshire 5.37. Bit of a no-brainer, although there's the issue of p'raps putting part of rural west Worcestershire into one of the Herefordshire seats again: 1.84.
Shropshire 3.04 + Telford 1.58. This is impossible (Herefordshire doesn't help. Cheshire is the only alternative. Or Powys :) except the law rules that out. See below.)
West Midlands 25.33 : Coventry 2.89, Solihull 2.10 (so one Meriden ward is put into a Coventry constituency. Bearable.), Birmingham 9.57, Sandwell 2.91 (could stand alone), Dudley 3.17 (couldn't), Walsall 2.49, Wolves 2.22. The minimum destruction approach is still pairing Birmingham with Walsall and surreptitiously dropping part of Wolves into Staffordshire. Lol. And Sandwell with Dudley o/c.
Staffordshire 8.61 + Stoke 2.44. I don't want to drop part of Wolves into here. :(

Leicestershire 6.64 + Leicester 2.84 + Rutland .38. Super. A Leicester seat has to expand into the suburbs which is no biggie.
Lincolnshire 7.02
Derbyshire 7.87 + Derby 2.28
Nottinghamshire 7.82 + Nottingham 2.46. God, no.
NE Lincolnshire 1.52, N Lincolnshire 1.64 (just too large for three seats together, so the Isle of Axholme will be in an East Riding constituency), East Riding 3.50, Hull 2.38, so one seat really expanding out of town. Which frankly ought to have happened before (as also at Nottingham).
South Yorkshire 12.69 : Barnsley 2.32, Doncaster 2.88, Rotherham 2.51. You know what that means? It means pairing with Nottinghamshire. Oh, and Sheffield 4.99, as pointed out before.
West Yorkshire 20.60 : Kirklees 3.97 and Calderdale 1.95 are fine, but Bradford 4.24, Leeds 7.14, Wakefield 3.30... grouping them together for 15 undersized seats is going to mess with our England total.
York 1.96, North Yorkshire 6.04

Cheshire East 3.81, Cheshire West 3.32, Halton 1.21. It means taking the Wirral' surplus here and grouping with Shropshire.
Warrington 1.98
Merseyside 13.37 : Wirral 3.17, Liverpool 4.18, Knowsley 1.47, Saint Helens 4.18, Sefton 2.74. Greater Manchester 25.52 : Wigan 3.09, Bolton 2.59, Bury 1.87, Salford 2.15, Trafford 2.17, Manchester 4.43, Stockport 2.88, Tameside 2.17, Oldham 2.11, Rochdale 2.06
Lancashire 11.74 + Blackburn 1.34 + Blackpool 1.47 = 14.55
The huge obvious problems here are already being pondered by others, so I'll leave it for now.
Cumbria 5.15. Gonna be a bitch standing alone, but probably better than all the alternatives all things considered. (No seat can be more than 1500 above the county average.)
Cleveland 1.39, Middlesbrough 1.33, Stockton 1.86, Hartlepool 0.91, Darlington 1.05, County Durham 5.16. That's 11.70 all together. Cough.
Tyne & Wear 10.85: Sunderland 2.81, South Tyneside 1.52, Gateshead 1.94, Newcastle 2.54, North Tyneside 2.04
Northumberland 3.23

Counted it... twice... and (provided that West Midlands seats are a little oversized and that Lancs, Greater Manchester, and Merseyside sans Wirral are combined for 50) it works out to 503. Not actually sure why; seems to me the biggest roundings are all up?

You'll like this...

David  Boothroyd in "another place" has pointed out that allocations of seats this time round will NOT be simply county-by-county....


This is Section 9 of the Act:

""The allocation method
8 (1) The allocation method referred to in rule 3(2) is as follows.
(2) The first constituency shall be allocated to the part of the United
Kingdom with the greatest electorate.
(3) The second and subsequent constituencies shall be allocated in the
same way, except that the electorate of a part of the United Kingdom
to which one or more constituencies have already been allocated is to
be divided by—
where C is the number of constituencies already allocated to that
part.
(4) This rule does not apply to the constituencies mentioned in rule 6,
and accordingly the electorate of Scotland shall be treated for the
purposes of this rule as reduced by the electorate of those
constituencies."


So....that's the d'Hondt method......Confused? I certainly am......

— being C+1? That would be D'Hondt. — being C+0.5 would be Sainte-Lague except for an irregularity with the first seat that wouldn't have any practical effect.

Okay, rough South of Scotland and I have to say, the potential seats here make me less incensed than the current arrangment! Will change once I can work out what the legislation means :P I have a feeling it will be amended some what to establish a 'home nation' quota/


Borders/Mid Lothian/East Lothian - 3 seats

This works out rather well and is a bit of a 'blast from the past.' 1 seat can almost entirely be centred on East Lothian with the second centered on Midlothian and taking in Peeblesshire. The third contains the remainder of the Scottish Borders. Other than Berwickshire being detached from East lothian, this would be quite similar to how things were about fifty years ago.

Edinburgh/West Lothian - 6 seats (5.8)

Again, not too shabby. This combination means that Queensferry, Balerno, Cramond, Corstorphine etc to the west of Edinburgh get 'detached' to join 2 West Lothian centred seats, leaving 4 'city' seats. I don't think they will complain.

Dumfries and Galloway/South Ayrshire/East Ayrshire - 4 seats (3.9)

Not as horrid as it might look actually. The Kilmarnock seat would remain relatively similar, Ayr (detatched from Irvine) would be joined with much of the Kyle and some of the Ayrshire coast to form a second seat. Annandale can be combined with Nithsdale and Dumfries as well as well as some of the satellite communities to the west. The leaves the rump of Galloway to be combined with rural Ayrshire in a fourth seat. Need to work that one out on paper though, but it makes more sense than the current M74 monstrosity.

North Ayrshire/Inverclyde/Renfrewshire - 4 seats (3.8)

Interesting combination again. Paisley would be one seat (larger than the proposed Holyrood seat) taking in Renfrew. Greenock and Inverclyde can stretch along the Firth of Clyde towards Kilmalcolm/Erskine to form a second seat. The third seat is centred around Irvine and the surrounding area to the north (with or without Arran; depends if it takes in Troon and the ferry connection). The remainder of North Ayrshire and rural Renfrewshire makes the fourth seat.

Argyll and Bute/West Dumbartonshire/East Dumbartonshire plus Strathkelvin ward of North Lanarkshire- 3 seats.

Again, suprisingly simple. In order to being the arrangment up to quota it has to 'borrow' Strathkelvin ward (formerly Chyrston) from North Lanarkshire which was once part of Strathkelvin District Council. An Argyll seat leeches into West Dumbartonshire. The West Dumbarton seat nicks Milngavie (and probably a whack of Bearsden too) and East Dumbartonshire is made up of the remainder

Glasgow/East Renfrewshire/North Lanarkshire/South Lanarkshire - 12 or 13 seats

Yes, it's a big grouping taking in just under a million voters however it makes the most sense. East Renfrewshire will be up in arms (some of that council could go into the Renfrewshire grouping) being attached into a seat taking in much of Cathcart but well - haha. I'll need to look at this one more to get the potential seats right.

Yeah, the equation is an image so it didn't copy over.

This sort of upsets all our maths, doesn't it?

Not necessarily. This is only for the four Nations, is it?

calculated it, and even in that case it does: England gets a 504th seat, Wales is just 29.

3.8? Is that 3.80 or 3.84 or 3.79 or what? Because, you know, 5% deviation means 5% deviation means 3.80 is the absolute theoretical minimum that'll force you to slice right through addresses, American style, to build four seats out of.

Summed, all these quotas quoted make 502.48. Although from the England total it's 502.61, so I probably have an error in there somewhere - still explains why it's fine that I rounded up more.

By grouping the southern Tyne & Wear boroughs with Rump Durham and Teesside, I can draw the undersized seats in old Northumberland instead, and avoid the Tyne Bridge retread.

---

The ward electorate figures given on the Boundary Commission site for the new unitary authority of Northumberland are for the current interim wards. The map in the Boundary Commission's final report on the 2010 se of boundaries shows the abolished wards of the old district councils. The map to be found on the Local Boundary Committee's page (a very badly formatted pdf) is shows the new wards that will replace the interim wards in 2013. There are no maps on the Council's own website, of course. And the Local Committee's draft report for most areas is just "we followed the council's submission" - though they take a whole paragraph to say that, of course (or alternatively don't mention an area at all). That submission in turn is too amateurishly written to answer all my questions in itself, but together with some long hard staring at both maps it did.

So, yeah. You will need this (http://www.lgbce.org.uk/__documents/lgbce-documents/maps/2009/northumberland-draft-recs/northumberland-sheet-1-web.pdf) map to understand exactly what I'm saying. That's the post 2013 map.

My attempts to remove territory from North Tyneside haven't worked well, and in the end I've created hilariously finely balanced undersized constituencies (with multiply cut wards... but a logic to them!) elsewhere and just left

North Tyneside 78,389
As currently
Tynemouth 76,445
As currently

Part of the reason for that is that
Blyth Valley & Bedlington 75,372
Current Blyth Valley constituency and the three Bedlington wards
sums so very well.
Wansbeck & Amble 71,745+x
is where my comprehension problems were at, as the whole country around Morpeth and between Morpeth, Amble and Ashington is being extensively redrawn. The territory added is the current wards of Amble, Amble West with Warksworth, Chevington with Longhorsley, Lynemouth, Shilbottle, and the portion of the current ward of Ulgham not included in Wansbeck already. Add the old ward of Pegswood, which was already in Wansbeck, and this is identical to the proposed wards of Amble, Amble West with Warksworth (unchanged), Druridge Bay, Lynemouth, Pegswood, Shilbottle (unchanged), and four parishes of Longhorsley ward (the two by Morpeth and the two at the northeastern corner). To bring us across 72,069, the constituency will also include part of those 1410 residents of the current Ponteland North ward to be currently in Berwick constituency. These 1410 people live in seven parishes, of which four are proposed in the new Longhorsley, while two will remain in Ponteland North. I reasonably hope that the four northern parishes will do the trick, 'cause I need the southern ones elsewhere. :P Note that the proposed Longhorsley ward is still divided - the three northwesternmost parishes (Elsdon, Rothley and Nunnykirk) are currently in Rothbury ward, and have been left with it in the rural remnant
Berwick & Hexham 72,037+x
Yeah, I had the rest of that 1410 planned here before fully understanding which villages they were. Now they don't look quite so good but I'm using them anyways. That 72,037 figure is everywhere in Northumberland except the areas listed above, the two Prudhoe wards, Bywell, and the four Ponteland wards. That x is those two villages, Capheaton and Belbay, so the proposed Ponteland North will also be divided.
Newcastle West, Ponteland & Prudhoe 69,970+x
is the threatened rurban constituency. In Northumberland, it includes the two Prudhoe wards, Bywell, and the four Ponteland wards except the area currently in Berwick constituency. Within Newcastle, it includes the current Newcastle North constituency except Fawdon, East Gosforth, and part of Parklands (hence why I changed it to West).
Newcastle Central 67,691+x
is the current constituency, Fawdon, and part of Parklands; and
Newcastle East 71,837+x
is the current constituency, East Gosforth, and part of Parklands.
Of the 7549 inhabitants of Parklands, at least 232 have to go into East, at least 4378 into Central, and at least 2099 into North, leaving just 840 people of leeway to not have to split polling divisions. That figure might be increased (and the North figure decreased) by an unknown quantity if Belbay is included in the rurban rather than the rural remainder seat.
Ponteland and Prudhoe are really the only "suburban" bits to the northwest of Newcastle to be included in Northumberland that can't really complain about being drawn into Newkie... but that's referring to Ponteland the parish; Ponteland the wards cover a much larger and mostly (by surface, anyhow) rural area.

Is anybody still with me?

I hope the Boundary Commission are reading this...

The missing equation is 2C+1 as shown in the .pdf, not C+1.  The maths are Ste-Lague and as I posted.

[Incidentally the text of the pdf is in Palatino but the equations are in Times.  Clearly they don't use LaTeX.]

Yes, that is Ste Lague.

Incidentally, why would they write the "not for the first seat" part? That formula works for the first seat too.

Blaydon 74,136 or 74,977
Current constituency plus either Dunston & Teams or Chowdene
Gateshead 72,924 or 72,083
Current constituency plus the two eastern wards currently in Jarrow minus either Dunston & Teams or Chowdene.
I *think* I prefer the Dunston & Teams transfer since although it's deeper into Gateshead, at least the boundary in that area is running through continuously built-up territory anyways already, but I'd defer to those who know the area. There is also a third option of including both wards in Gateshead, which is then at the upper end of the allowable corridor, and adding bits of County Durham to the Blaydon seat.

Rough outline of things to come: South Shields, Sunderland N, Sunderland S, Jarrow & Washington (not sure how well that one will work out, exactly); Houghton to be included in a constituency mostly located in County Durham, four seats wholly in County Durham; Darlington either left alone or with one or two of the rural wards chopped off if that makes for better balance elsewhere, Hartlepool with very little rural territory added - just enough to get it across .95 of a seat; Redcar & East Cleveland, Middlesbrough N & Eston, Middlesbrough S & Thornaby (not sure how well that one will work out, exactly), Stockton Proper, and one seat of inevitable cruelty that's half in County Durham and half around Billington.

Progress Report:

I drew three different maps around Wearside, all passable but with obvious problem areas. Two of them left out only three of the four wards that I'd call the Houghton area, so I tentatively went with the third (even though that's the one with the split ward) because all the Houghton area plus the former Chester district is a nice constituency. Derwentside plus the empty bit of Weardale is a nice constituency. Bishop Auckland plus the rest of Weardale minus two little odds and ends in the former Sedgefield district that are now in Sedgefield-constituency dominated wards is a nice constituency. Randomly annexing Lower Spennymoor into City of Durham isn't all that pretty but it works. (Durham too is a new unitary with an interim warding arrangement that noone bothers to map, but I found the list that describes what old wards went into which interim wards. Who cares what the new wards the Local Boundary Commission is proposing are - unlike in Northumberland they're not even finalized yet.)
The former Easington district is a nice constituency, or alternatively Hartlepool plus the southernmost bits of the former Easington district - Blackhalls, Hutton Henry, no more - is a nice constituency. Can't have both, though, the combined area is too small for two seats.
I did draw reasonable Redcar & E Cleveland and Middlesbrough N & Eston seats, too, but that's where the troubles began - exactly where I expected them. :'(
Middlesbrough S & Thornaby turned out more Middlesbrough S & Ingoldsby Barwick, and Stockton Proper included much of Thornaby, but that still leaves two wards over in the southwest corner of Stockton that are too large to go into either of that. Worse, instead the two underpopulated rural wards of Stockton would be needed to make a fine Stockton constituency - but that leaves Billingham locked off. And if Darlington constituency is to include the whole of the unitary, then so are those two southwestern Stockton wards. While if I tenuously connect them through the rural eastern part of Darlington UA, the population in the area left is too large for two seats.

So... back to the drawing board in Stockton. And possibly the population numbers issue will force me to use one of the other two maps on Wearside, too, forcing me back to the drawing room in Chester and Durham in ways that won't look anywhere as good as what I have now.

Suggestions out of my conundrum?

If by the other bits of Weardale you mean Crook and Willington, that would work nicely. But doing Teeside with an absurdly tight quota-thingy-you-know was always likely to be hell, fwiw. You'll probably have to changes things elsewhere and hope that things fit when you get to the land of the chemical smog. I suppose you could try drawing a really tight Middlesbrough constituency and hoping that things will fall into place around it? Probably not, actually.

Yes. What areas would that be, approximately? All of Middlesbrough (within city limits, anyhow. Minus the furthermost southern extents. And actually plus much of the old Eston UD area) looks about equally central from broad overviews of street grid and population density...

I am to restart my Lancs/Gtr Manc attempt this afternoon, once the lasagne is done in the oven ;)

Washington & Jarrow (can this still be "Jarrow"? I guess Washington & Hebburn is more descriptive) 68,770+x
The Washington wards of Sunderland; Fellgate & Hedworth, Hebburn N, Hebburn S, Monkton and part of Primrose (6392) wards, South Tyneside
South Shields 69,921+x
Current constituency, Bede and part of Primrose wards
Sunderland North 72,185
City of Sunderland wards 2, 5, 9-11, 16, 20; Cleadon & East Boldon and Boldon Colliery wards, South Tyneside
Sunderland South 74,946
City of Sunderland wards 1, 4, 6, 12-15, 17, 19
Chester-le-Street & Houghton 78,898
Copt Hill, Hetton, Houghton and Shiney Row wards, Sunderland; former Chester-le-Street district, County Durham
Derwentside 76,382
Former Derwentside district and current interim Weardale ward, which is the former Wear Valley wards of Saint John's Chapel, Stanhope, and Wolsington & Witton-le-Wear (which makes for an odd-looking boundary just outside Tow Law - but is worth breaking an old-and-new ward boundary and having an imprecise population total just for the benefit of Witton residents? ;) Maybe it'll get kinked out with the new recommendations, I didn't check.)
Bishop Auckland 75,414
Current constituency, minus the Spennymoor area in Sedgefield district northeast of Bishop Auckland, plus the Crook/Willington/Tow Law area up to the boundary described above, plus the former Greenfield Middridge ward (which is now half of Shildon East ward, the other half being in Bishop Auckland already.)
City of Durham & Spennymoor 74,888
Former constituency (and district) except for the Sherburn ward aka the former Pittington & West Rainton and Shadforth & Sherburn wards; most of the abovementioned Spennymoor area (excluding "Cornforth parish and the Merrington parish ward of Spennymoor parish" - these 909 electors are now in Chilton ward with areas to the south, and I've let them go there rather than split a ward.)
Easington 74,529
Former district except for the new Blackhalls ward, which is the former Blackhalls ward, the former Hutton Henry ward except Castle Eden parish (which rightfully is with a Peterlee ward now) and the southern one or two parishes of the former Wingate ward; and the Sherburn ward (see above). Yeah, I moved a couple of areas here since the status update to make up numbers.
Hartlepool 75,378
Hartlepool UA, Blackhalls ward
Darlington 79,460
UA
Billingham & Sedgefield aka Necessary Evil 78,824
The remaining parts of County Durham (the area that used to be in both Sedgefield district and Sedgefield constituency, except Greenfield Middridge, plus some land on the southern outskirts of Spennymoor), and the Billingham wards, the Northern and Western Parishes, and also the Hardwick ward of Stockton. 52% of the seat is in County Durham.
Stockton-on-Tees 78,698
The remaining areas north of the river and the Mandale & Victoria, Parkfield & Oxbridge, Eaglescliffe, and Yarm wards. Not nearly as pretty as I once had it, but unavoidable and - apart from Hardwick - not bad. I just couldn't accomodate those southern areas with all of Stockton proper in one constituency, and the seats east of here are also full already as will be seen in a sec. Certainly better than some snaky tentacle east of Darlington. Or than splitting Darlington, or even Hartlepool, as I contemplated for fleeting moments. Of course the undersized constituencies in South Tyneside partly force these seats' tallies up, too, but geography would have implied it anyways. It's part of the reason I tried the undersized seats in Northumberland instead.
Middlesbrough South & Ingleby 76,978
Ingleby Barwick E and W, Village, and Stainsby Hill wards of Stockton; Middlesbrough areas currently in Middlesbrough S & East Cleveland, Acklam, Beechwood, Brookfield and Kader wards
Middlesbrough North & Eston 77,637
Remainder of Middlesbrough; Eston, Grangetown, Normanby, Ormesby, South Bank, Teesville wards of Redcar & Cleveland
Redcar & East Cleveland 76,337
Remainder

That is a very neat solution given the awkward geography and numbers. Think your two Middlesborougs are the best that can be done, sure a little tidying could be suggested but that's pretty good going.

Billingham and Sedgefield actually makes a fair bit of sense.  Sedgefield town is rather difficult to combine with anywhere else because (rather strangely) there are no north-south roads through it.


The Yorkshire wards of Stockton basically break down into three units:
Yarm ward, based on the small old town of Yarm;
Thornaby-on-Tees, a middle-class town made by the Industrial Revolution which covers Mandale/Victoria, Stainsby Hill and Village wards.  From 1974 to 1983 Thornaby had a constituency of its own, so it seems a bit of a shame to split it up now.
Ingleby Barwick, an enormous private housing estate which has been entirely built in the last thirty years and is still growing.

It may be better in the long term to split up Ingleby Barwick rather than Thornaby given the population trends, as then the estate's population growth will hopefully be distributed between two constituencies rather than one.  That would also allow your "Middlesbrough South and Ingleby" to be renamed "Middlesbrough South and Thornaby", or even "Middlesbrough West" (haven't looked at the boundaries within Middlesbrough proper).  If you were to move Mandale and Victoria into Middlesbrough South, and Ingleby Barwick West into Stockton, would that take either seat out of tolerance?


"Middlesbrough East" and "Redcar and Cleveland" might be better names.

No, that would make virtually no difference at all and look nicer on an overview map. (I think Stockton gains 12 people net, or was it lose); the reason I used the other one was I was figuring that the one way I was splitting only Thornaby while the other way I was splitting them both; but I suppose Parkfield & Oxbridge is not Thornaby?

Yeah, I know, Eston the place is far smaller than Eston the former Urban District (which was very similar to the area described here, really just some warehousing land in Teesport missing), and I've no idea how well recognized that name still is. It's all continuously built up from Middlesbrough anyways. But was it ever in a Middlesbrough seat?
Only reason I used "East Cleveland" is because that's what the area is also called in the current Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland constituency name.

Sedgefield has about 5000 inhabitants, and I've never understood why it's a constituency name of such long standing. By far the largest place in the Durham part of the seat is actually Newton Aycliffe.

Meanwhile, a little tinkering has seen my "logjam" slightly shifted. Now I need to look at southern and eastern Lancs. Remember, I am NOT inlcuding Merseyside, which I appriciate causes a few issues in the West Lancs/Sefton area, but there you go.

For northern Lancashire, then, it looks like I'm pretty much sorted as follows:

South Ribble (76,429)
Regains Lostock Hall, Farington, Tardy Gate, a removal I never did agree with. Keeps only one ward from Chorley borough, and loses any links with West Lancs borough, so becomes far more compact than currently.

Preston (74,807)
The existing constituency, though it loses Ingol. I really wanted to Ingol, but its shape and size made other constructions very difficult. With Preston being so tiny (fewer than 55,000 voters I believe) I expand it to include the whole of Bamber Bridge, Walton-le-Dale, Salmlesbury and Coupe Green.  I know from my own experience that this is "commute to work" world so it's a feasable seat.

Wyre and Preston North (76,733)
It pains me to keep this seat, but I have no choice, the other combinations just would not work for me (I groaned out loud when I saw my Excel spreadsheet turn from "under quota blue" to "over quota red" when I tried adding Fylde to Preston).  Anyway, this is not quite the seat as we know it now, I've added Wyresdale ward, and the Pilling/Hambleton bits too, which I think are in Lancaster and Fleetwood now. Loses the connection with Poulton-le-Fylde, which wasn't really valid/legit anyway.

Blackpool (74,074)
The existing Blackpool South, this has been extended up the Golden Mile to just miss out Bispham. If I were a Scottish Boundary Commissioner, I would call this "Blackpool South and West", but I'm not, so I won't.

Fleetwood and Bispham (72,765)
JUST in quota, but good God am I glad to see the back of this. Fleetwood, Cleveleys, and the eastern suburbs of Blackpool all the way down to Stanley Park.  I could see no other way to undo the tangle here, this works very well.

Fylde (76,339)
The borough plus Poulton-le-Fylde and Carleton. This has been my idea from the start, stop Fylde from being tagged onto Preston (or the other way round).  Yes, Wyre is split three ways but THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE.

Valleys of Ribble and Lune (74,761)
The borough of Ribble Valley, plus everything that isn't in the Lancaster and Morecambe seat I discribe below. Yes, I've checked Street View and Google Earth to confirm that there IS a single track country lane linking adjoining wards, so all is well.

Lancaster and Morecambe (78,808)
The city of Lancaster, inc. its Uni, plus Morecambe and Heysham. Can't get more sensible than that.

===

Work now in progress = what to do with West Lancs (it's a bit high but I can't now go and carve up South Ribble. What to do with Wigan (currently paired with West Lancs, but at 82,000, something has to give. And I don't know how to find out specific population figures to enable split wards so it's all or nothing......

Thornaby was in the North Riding; Parkfield and Oxbridge was the other side of the Tees from Thornaby and therefore in County Durham.


East Cleveland in this context is an anachronism as it refers to the defunct Cleveland county.  Cleveland and Teesside are really two distinct places, with Cleveland proper referring to the coast east of Redcar with its cliffs, and arguably the area between there and the North York Moors national park (towns like Saltburn, Skelton/Brotton and arguably Guisborough).  The local council is called "Redcar and Cleveland" to reflect this.  (Before 1983 there was a constituency called "Cleveland and Whitby".)

Merseyside sans Wirral is 10.20 seats; I'd wonder if some wards on the Sefton outskirts can maybe be shifted into the W Lancs seat, but IIRC Andrew proposed something where Southport and Crosby (or whatever it was called) both expanded well outwards.[/quote]

Yeah, it happens. Something has got to give.
Lol.

Are you telling me I can't read maps!?
Apparently you are. And apparently you're right. Oh well. :)
So yeah, Middlesbrough S & Thornaby it is.

[/quote]

My dastardly plan was roughly (a) move Tarleton into Southport (b) draw a seat containing Crosby, Formby and the area that used to be Martin Mere (c) draw a seat containing Maghull and Skem (d) see where Ormskirk fits best.

doktorb, I'll be interested to see what constituencies you come up with crossing the Greater Manchester/Lancashire boundary.  There are a few possibilities that make sense, and some that don't; in particular, don't move Norden (the northernmost Heywood/Middleton ward) into Rossendale, it looks tempting on a map, but there's a large hill in the way.


If it's this single track country lane (http://www.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Marshaw,+TROUGH+OF+BOWLAND+Tower+Lodge+(E-bound),+Abbeystead,+Lancashire+LA2,+United+Kingdom&sll=53.582349,-2.365167&sspn=0.011541,0.027423&ie=UTF8&cd=2&geocode=FRKpNwMdzkDY_w&split=0&hq=&hnear=Marshaw,+TROUGH+OF+BOWLAND+Tower+Lodge+(E-bound),+United+Kingdom&ll=54.002926,-2.610626&spn=0.182817,0.438766&z=11), that's the Trough of Bowland which I warned you about.

LOL. But it IS a direct road! I tried adding Rural North but that messed the figures up. This is the only way I've been able to solve my Fleetwood issue =<

So what area should I try next?

I think it's mostly because this area of rural SE Durham has always ended up being the seat of bits left over once you take out the Pools, Stockton and Darlington.  Newton Aycliffe didn't exist before WW2 - it's a New Town - and there aren't many other large towns in the area.

Back in 1935 there were 11 county seats in Durham: Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, Blaydon, Chester-le-Street, Consett, Durham, Houghton-le-Spring, Jarrow, Seaham, Sedgefield and Spennymoor, plus Darlington, Gateshead, The Hartlepools, South Shields and Stockton-on-Tees which were borough seats, and Sunderland which was a two-member borough seat.

Don't think anyone's talked about Yorkshire yet.

[shudder]  I would not like to give Yorkshire a go. I'll stick with Lancs. And I will remember to look out for any mountains in the borderlands ;)

Just dynamite any obstructive hills away. :)

Hmmm... I'll get the easy parts out of the way first, give some preparative thought to the remainder.

Easy parts like York, that is:
York Central 74,013
No change
York Outer 74,797
No change

North Yorkshire will also retain its six seats, but of the current seats Richmond is too large, while Selby & Ainsty is barely legal and the others are somewhere in between. Preferrably I would have just transferred one or two Hambleton wards from Richmond to Thirsk & Malton but this was not as easy as it sounded because the area would have had to be right between 1659 and 2822 inhabitants, and Leeming ward (1880) is literally the only option, but that looks butt-ugly.
Looking whether I could get some wiggleroom by transferring territory out of Thirsk & Malton, I was stuck by the western boundary of that being a district boundary throughout, and by the unnatural position of Filey in it at the eastern end. However, Filey is far too large to just be added to Scarborough & Whitby; although a plausible solution would be to transfer those two southern wards from Thirsk & Malton to Scarborough & Whitby, move the three rural wards at the northwest end the other way, and then move two northeastern wards from Richmond to Thirsk & Malton. Not at all sure I prefer that; actually I probably don't.
Or you could at least make the butt-ugly bit look less ugly by moving the ward to Leeming's south, Tanfield (1434) into Skipton & Ripon. That works too (but means Skipton & Ripon includes one ward from another district.)

Just for the system's sake:
Richmond (Yorks) 79,434
As currently except without Leeming
Thirsk & Malton 78,713
As currently plus Leeming
Scarborough & Whitby 76,032
Skipton & Ripon 76,654
Harrogate & Knaresborough 74,560
Selby & Ainsty 72,532
all unchanged

Btw. You would drive through another constituency to get to Leeming from Thirsk, but you wouldn't drive far. I've never understood the obsession with road links, at least not in cases like this.

I wish there was a program like Dave's Redistricting App for the UK so I could join in on the fun :(

Kids these days. Don't know what a pdf and a pocket calculator are for.

:D

Where do I find the required information? That's my only problem.

In the former Humberside, as pointed out above the two North Lincolnshire UAs are too large to stand alone for three seats so I treated the Isle of Axholme with East Yorkshire and Hull (though removing the whole of the Isle meant that the North Lincolnshire seats would on average be smaller than the East Yorkshire seats). Also, wards are once again huge - both Beverley & Holderness and "East Yorkshire" are slightly above target as is with any whole ward removed taking them well below quota - and you can't remove a ward from East Yorkshire without splitting it in two anyways. Nor can you sensibly remove a whole ward from Beverley & Holderness.
Elsewhere though, the concept of basically splitting up Haltemprice & Howden, drawing the dense suburban parts into the currently undersized Hull seats, worked very well:
Beverley & Holderness 68,282+x
Loses the southwestern part of Beverley Rural ward (11,506)
East Yorkshire 68,319+x
Loses some southern parts of Wolds Weighton (12,194). Leaving that stupid name in is really just lazyness, and a sense that basically unchanged constituencies shouldn't be renamed.
Hull East 77,296
gains Myton
Hull North & Cottingham 78,176
gains Cottingham North and South
Hull West & Haltemprice 78,286
Hull West & Hessle, minus Myton, plus Tranby, Willerby & Kirk Ella, and South Hunsley
Howden, Goole & Axholme 69,695+x
The three Isle of Axholme wards in North Lincolnshire, and in East Yorkshire the Goole N, Goole S, and Snaith etc wards from the old Brigg & Goole, the Howden, Howdenshire, and Dale wards from the old Haltemprice & Howden, and parts of Beverley Rural and Wolds Weighton as described above.
Sc**nthorpe 75,398
Gains the wards of Burringham & Gunness and Burton upon Stather & Winterton. Bit odd boundary, but avoids a split ward.
Great Grimsby 69,991+x
While here a split ward couldn't be avoided, at least not without lopping off random parts of Grimsby (I didn't check all possible options, but I did check a few and found no solution). Current constituency plus Sidney Sussex and part of Croft Baker (8625) wards
whatever. Brigg & Immingham 68,174+x
Current constituency minus Sidney Sussex and part of Croft Baker; plus Brigg & Wolds and Broughton & Appleby.

The issue, of course, is that that splits Cleethorpes town right down the middle. There's a reason why Great Grimsby constituency isn't any larger than it is at current.
So... it's not cool, but... what if we split Grimsby down the middle instead of Cleethorpes? We can avoid the split ward that way.

Grimsby East & Cleethorpes 74,556
Sidney Sussex, Croft Baker, Haverstoe (ie Cleethorpes), Humberston & New Waltham, and in Grimsby East Marsh, Heneage, Park, Scartho and South wards
Grimsby West, Immingham & Brigg 72,234
West Marsh, Yarborough, and Freshney wards in Grimsby, and Waltham ward and points west of the Brigg & Immingham described above.

http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm70/7032/7032_iv.pdf
(And the same thing with iii instead of iv for the Metropolitan Areas) has maps. The current ward electorates we're working with are at http://www.boundarycommissionforengland.org.uk/electoral-figures/electoral-figures.htm
And in a few areas you'll need additional info for which you'll just have to shop around on the net. Wikipedia is sometimes quite helpful in explaining what area a place name belongs to exactly, though sometimes it's not. In some new unitaries, the wards listed in the lower document won't add up with those listed on the map.

In West Yorkshire, Calderdale and Kirklees will be minimum change maps. However, Halifax and Huddersfield are both too small and Colne Valley is marginally too large. And wards are, of course, huge - we're on metro territory after all.
Halifax 70,622+x
Calder Valley 68,425+x
The split ward is Hipperholme & Lightcliffe (8644, currently in Calder Valley). Though the wiki article claims that the two places (described as "villages", which I wouldn't call such places) run into each other, but from maps it doesn't look that way at all and it should be very easy to transfer only Hipperholme. Funny sounding name btw. There would appear to be a third, smaller settlement in the ward - Norwood Green. The map'll look better if that's also transferred, though one would have to check the population totals - if Lightcliffe has fewer than 3500 inhabitants, then Norwood Green will have to stay in Calder Valley.

A ward will also have to be split in Kirklees. They have 13,000 inhabitants on average (the usual boundary commission solution to such situations was, of course, to just have some constituencies include one fewer ward than others, as Huddersfield in this case, but the new narrow population targets rule that out.)

Huddersfield 66,206+x
Gains part of Lindley ward (13,678) which is part of the built-up Huddersfield area anyways - as is half (by population) of the current Colne Valley, so it's quite a misleading seat really.
Colne Valley 66,247+x
Loses part of Lindley yadda yadda yadda
Dewsbury 78,610
unchanged
Batley & Spen 76,619
unchanged

I use these figures - http://www.boundarycommissionforengland.org.uk/electoral-figures/electoral-figures.htm


www.election-maps.co.uk


and Google Earth and StreetView to make sure wards really do join up :)

Across Bradford, Leeds, and Wakefield, I intend to abolish one seat and have the resulting 15 seats still be 2% sub-quota on average (14.68 is the entitlement). Yet at current seats are undersized mostly on the western end of the area - after all, a seat was eliminated at the eastern end at the last review. In fact, the Normanton Pontefract & Castleford and (just barely so) Leeds Central seats are currently too large. Bradford must lose a seat and drop off territory into Leeds, elsewhere electorates just have to be brought into line (although that means most Leeds electorates, as most of them are too small right now). Wakefield is already shedding about the right amount into Leeds, though maybe I'll add another half-ward.

In Bradford, currently five constituencies are made up of 6 wards each, and it seems fairly obvious to draw four constituencies of 7 wards each and lob off two wards onto Leeds. It's also only commonsense not to use Bradford proper wards - the obvious candidates are Wharfedale and Ilkley. It's also fairly obvious that the "Shipley" constituency is destined for the drop. I also took the opportunity to mess with the uglyshaped Bradford South.
Below are two ward maps for the remainder, chose one.
Bradford West 71,521
Current constituency plus Queensbury ward.
Bradford South East 73,389
Current South, minus Queensbury, plus Little Horton and Bowling & Barkerend
Bradford North East 75,994
Current East, minus Little Horton and Bowling & Barkerend, plus Windhill & Wross, Shipley, Baildon
Keighley 80,382
Current constituency minus Ilkley plus Bingley and Bingley Rural.
Yes, I know that's mismatched - wards in Bradford proper are smaller on average than in the suburbs - so part of Bingley Rural would go into Bradford West.
Or we can avoid the ward split, but have a less sensible map, by amending to:
Bradford West 75,179
Current constituency plus Queensbury and Bingley Rural, minus City
Bradford North East 74,026
Current East, minus Little Horton and Bowling & Barkerend, plus Windhill & Wross, Shipley, City
Keighley 78,692
Current constituency minus Ilkley plus Bingley and Baildon.
Bradford South East is not affected.

Leeds constituencies are made up of four or five wards. That's stark barking insane. I haven't touched it yet. Although I will.

In Wakefield borough, currently Wakefield constituency has 71,111 inhabitants and includes Ossett and most of Wakefield city; Hemsworth has 73,195 inhabitants, a bit of Wakefield city and lots of old pit villages, and Normanton Pontefract & Castleford has 82,834 inhabitants and four towns of which Knottingley is not mentioned in the name, while Outwood (23,518) is in a mostly Leeds-based constituency.
We will have to split a ward or three here anyways, but we could either go the cautious reforming route, which means splitting off some old villages southwest of Normanton (in Normanton ward) and southeast of Pontefract (in Pontefract South ward) and hope the figures somewow magically add up. If the problem is with Wakefield only - and the areas by Normanton, which could go in there, look of lesser magnitude - then obviously that can be solved by splitting the Wakefield South ward currently in Hemsworth, or better yet move it wholly into Wakefield and split the Wakefield Rural ward currently in Wakefield instead (and then perhaps move the people by Normanton into Hemsworth instead - or possibly not at all if the Pontefract area alone is enough people, which I strongly doubt, however).
It's also possible that these areas are just not enough to get Normanton etc below the maximum, in which case we're well & truly fucked. Which all told is quite likely.

Or we could take a more radical approach. The two Ossett wards can go into Leeds instead of the Outwood seats - they have marginally more people to them (24,647), which is good coz we'll be treading a fine line in Leeds. All the Wakefield wards (Wakefield) plus the rural ward immediately east of them (Crofton, Ryhill & Walton) is too few people: 69,174. The remainder of the current Hemsworth constituency plus the two Pontefract wards (Pontefract & Hemsworth) is 74,581, and the remaining Normanton & Castleford seat, including Outwood (which was in Normanton til 2010), is still too large at 82,256 but here the solution to both this and Wakefield is now much more obvious: the Wrenthorpe part of Wrenthorpe & Outwood West ward should be large enough to put the two seats within the corridor, though possibly not by much.

I prefer the more radical approach. Anyone who knows the area and disagrees, speak now or be silent forever cause I'll need to know before I tackle Leeds. Which wont be today. I'm also putting the two Bradford proposals up for discussion, though that doesn't affect anything else.

This is really quite unnecessary. Better to breach the UA/Lincolnshire County Council borders.

Leeds.

Wharfedale (probably Wharfedale, Ilkesley & some other random place, if a boundary commission gets its way, but I don't care) 70,748+x
The Adel & Wharfedale and Otley & Yeadon wards currently in Leeds NW, the Guiseley & Rawdon ward currently in Pudsey, and in Bradford the Wharfedale and Ilkesley wards; and part of the Craven ward included in Keighley in the above description, pop. 12,159, to make up the numbers. (I strongly prefer the first description for Bradford above, btw. The portion of Bingley Rural in Bradford West could be fairly small.)
Leeds North West 64,698+x
Headingley and Weetwood from the current constituency of the same name, Kirkstall from the current Leeds West, and Horsforth and part of Calversley & Farsley (17,435) from the current Pudsey. The ward split would be broadly by the Farsley Ring Road.
Leeds West 68,443+x
The Armley, Bramley & Stanningley and Farnley & Wortley wards of the current constituency, and the Pudsey ward and the remainder of Calversley & Farsley from the abolished Pudsey constituency.

I tried to be similarly creative further east at first, but couldn't come up with anything looking this decent quickly so will be going with a minimum change approach instead.
Leeds North East 67,489+x
Current constituency and anywhere between 4580 and 5789 of the electors of Harewood (14,768), so expanding to the borough limits
Elmet & Rothwell 63,090+x
Current constituency except said portion of Harewood
Leeds East 64,479+x
Current constituency plus about the northern half of Burmantofts & Richmond Hill ward (14,822)
Leeds Central 64,874+x
Current constituency except the northern half of Burmantofts & Richmond Hill. As that would have to be ridiculously finely sliced (37 persons not spoken for, lol), the constituency will also expand southward to take in the eastern part of Ardsley & Robin Hood (16,625) - Robin Hood (the name made me think it's probably a late 20th century council estate, but apparently it's a pit village; wtf?) and possibly Ouzlewell Green (would look better on a map to include that too, but might take the next seat below target. It's not as if the area belonged in something called "Leeds Central", anyways.).
Morley & Ossett 58,991+x
The Morley North, Morley South, and the bulk of Ardsley & Robin Hood ward of Leeds; and the Ossett and Horbury & South Ossett wards of Wakefield.

EDIT: Hmm, by Ouzlewell Green I meant the separate cluster of houses south of Robin Hood, but apparently the suburban-gridded northern part of the cluster I called Robin Hood also uses the Ouzlewell Green name for its addresses. That area was certainly intended in Central.

Actually, no it's not. That results in a weird Gainsborough seat curving around Sc**nthorpe to the Humber, a Cleethorpes & Louth seat that's not so bad actually, and a perfectly weird South Lindsey seat snaking along from Mablethorpe all the way to the area between Lincoln and Gainsborough. To which I say "no. Just no." (I had a pretty Grimsby seat of the current constituency plus Immingham and Wolds wards. Sc**nthorpe had to stay as it was if I didn't want to split wards; I couldn't drop the Ridge ward like I would have liked to.)

So... to restore my sanity...
Great Grimsby 70,221+x
Current constituency plus Immingham and coastal part of Wolds (5714) ward.
Cleethorpes & Brigg 75,411+x
Remainder areas of North and North East Lincolnshire; Yarborough and Caistor wards of West Lindsey (4556 electors) just to connect the donut parts. Sigh. Using Kelsey too would make a nicer map, but I'm not sure how the population in Wolds is distributed, so...

In Lincolnshire... since I've been looking at it anyways now... the number of constituencies is alright, but Boston & Skegness needs to grow so I'm adding the current Louth & Horncastle wards of Spilsby and Halton Holgate for 75,241 inhabitants, reducing Louth to 72,942, and Sleaford & North Hykeham needs to get smaller while after removing those two wards Gainsborough needs to grow again. And Lincoln is also far at the low end. Besides, the rural parts of North Kesteven district have been rewarded (http://www.lgbce.org.uk/__documents/lgbce-documents/all-reviews/east-midlands/lincolnshire/north-kesteven/nkes_f_sh1_web_22387-14105__e__.pdf). I worked it out that if Lincoln gains all of North Hykeham and drops the non-Lincoln parts it currently includes, its population inches up to 73,924; if Gainsborough gains Skellingthorpe and the new enlarged Eagle, Swinderby & Witham St Hughs ward it's population momentarily rises to 74,688 - so I can drop off that single East Lindsey ward of Wragby and reduce it to 72,879 again while Louth rises back to 74,751; and the thus amended Sleaford is at 77,131.
I recommend no changes to Grantham & Stamford (77,694) and South Holland & the Deepings (76,529).

South Yorkshire... I have decided to try and avoid the ugly Nottinghamshire pairing. That means Nottinghamshire is the next project after this, just to see if I can do it there too. It's not going to be a stable map - it might work now but it probably won't be working next year. But hey, these are the relevant population totals.

Doncaster North at 72,040, this has dipped barely below the threshold.
Doncaster Central is at 73,189 and
Don Valley is 72,880... so using some minor northern or northwestern part of Edenthorpe, Kirk Sandall & Barnby Dun ward (10,688, currently in Central) to get Doncaster North into line. The area belongs there anyways - though the whole of the area that belongs there (the northern half or so of the ward) would be far too much, of course.

Rother Valley is currently fine at 72,168
Rotherham 72,178 gains Wickersley
Wentworth & Dearne 72,586 loses Wickersley and gains the North East ward in Barnsley. This is ugly on a map but more immediate choices like adding Darfield, or exchanging Dearne for Hoyland (Rockingham, Hoyland Milton, and either Wombwell or Worsbrough wards) fell short of the population target. And it doesn't change the constituency's character (of odds and ends between Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster) much, I should think.

My first map for two seats from the remainder was
Barnsley West & Penistone 74,104
Current Barnsley Central except Royston and Monk Bretton, plus Barnsley portion of Penistone & Stocksbridge
Barnsley East 74,851
Current constituency except North East, plus Royston and Monk Bretton
But that East constituency is really quite ugly.

So how about
Barnsley North & Penistone 74,924
Current Barnsley Central except the actually central parts of Barnsley in it, ie Central, Kingstone, and Old Town wards, plus Barnsley portion of Penistone & Stocksbridge, plus Cudworth ward currently in Barnsley East
Barnsley South 74,031
Current Barnsley East except North East and Cudworth, plus Central, Kingstone, and Old Town.

This turned out a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Sheffield Heeley 77,138
gains Manor Castle ward. Heeley is one of the smaller constituencies, and Manor Castle is an undersized ward and fits in well geographically, so that got that issue out of the way. Of course that means Central gets even more of a West Central than it already had at the last review.
Sheffield South East 67,559+x
gains the southern (Brightside) part of Shiregreen & Brightside ward (13,432)
Sheffield Central 67,864+x
loses Manor Castle, gains Hillsborough and the eastern (urban-gridded) part of Crookes ward (13,565)
Sheffield Hallam 67,002+x
loses part of Crookes, gains Stocksbridge & Upper Don ward
Sheffield North East 69,491+x
Loses Hillsborough and the southern part of Shiregreen & Brightside, gains West Ecclesfield and East Ecclesfield
I drew this from the map. How I laughed when I noticed that the areas I wanted to remove from Brightside & Hillsborough were, well, Brightside and Hillsborough (I'd actually kinda hoped they'd include one of them so I could use the other as the name!)

LOL.

I am now starting on east Lancs, where a lot of the mill towns from Gtr. Manchester could be joined. I may need to ask for your help :)

As someone who lives there, I think it's better to split west Sheffield north/south rather than east/west: a north-west seat with Stocksbridge, Stannington, Hillsborough, Walkley and enough bits of the wards to the south to get it up to quota, and a south-west seat based on Ecclesall, Dore and Nether Edge.

An east/west split makes the western seat a string of communities along the western edge of the city which aren't well connected to each other and don't really have that much in common.  (Putting Stannington in Hallam last time was a mistake IMO: the urban parts of that ward, where most of the population is, are a western extension of Hillsborough and don't really have anything to do with Hallam.)

Otherwise your thoughts are similar to mine.  I'd rename South-East back to Attercliffe (or "Attercliffe and Mosborough" if you want to give a better description of the area it covers), though, and I'd try to find a non-compass point name for what you've called "North East".

Ecclesfield?

The easiest way to do a ten-seat Nottinghamshire was to give Nottingham the Derby treatment... two city constituencies with some wards lopped off. The surrounding county could then be done in a minimum changey way. (Though Rushcliffe is quite redrawn. Ken Clarke won't like it.)

Bassetlaw 78,332
unchanged gains Rampton
Mansfield 79,415
Mansfield was too large, and the obvious solution was to lop off Warsop (the Birklands and Meden wards). That made it too small, though, and after experimenting with villages to the east I eventually just added Sutton in Ashfield North ward (8457) because what I decided to do with Broxtowe suggested that, and was done with it. Given the exact population tallies involved, it may be possible to use only part of the ward.
Ashfield 74,322
Loses Sutton in Ashfield North ward, gains Greasley (Guiltbrook & Newthorpe) ward. Greasley is already divided by the current boundary and remains so.
Broxtowe 78,259
Loses that G(G&N) ward, gains Bulwell ward in Nottingham. This was a fairly random ward to remove, unlike Clifton to the south.
Sherwood 77,241
Yeah, as I got to here I noticed an error; I still had an earlier pop. figure where this gains Warsop but lost a more rural ward to Mansfield instead, but the map I was trying to describe had it gaining Warsop but not otherwise changed. Which is above target. So I had to drop Broughton ward, and because that moved Newark above target I had to move another smaller ward from there to Bassetlaw... which I had previously described as unchanged.
So yeah, gains Warsop, loses Broughton.
Newark 78,385
In the north, loses Rampton, gains Broughton. In the south, gains Wiverton and Nevile from Rushcliffe.
Gedling 78,068
Gains Trent and Manvers from Rushcliffe
Rushcliffe 80,770-x
Loses Wiverton, Nevile, Trent and Manvers. Gains the huge Clifton estate which is across the Trent from Nottingham but included in the city limits. I was stuck at this point for a while because this Rushcliffe was too big - I had dropped Cotgrave (itself a very interesting place; the things you learn on wikipedia when you do redistricting projects...) but it couldn't go into either Gedling or Newark. I could have dropped the rural Wolds ward but that would have looked stone cold ugly (and after catching my Sherwood mistake, the alterations I made to Newark in the north mean it's no longer possible population wise now, either). Cotgrave was obviously not a place suitable for dividing.
Then I notice that Clifton North ward (9681) also includes a quite distinct neighborhood called Wilford, by the banks of the Trent in the northeast part of the ward. And I'm reasonably confident it has between 1105 and 2633 electors and thus fits my bill here nicely.
Nottingham South West 77,022+x
Current Nottingham South except Clifton South and most of Clifton North plus Dales ward from Nottingham East and Aspley and Bilborough wards from Nottingham North.
Nottingham North East 79,488
Current Nottingham East except Dales ward, plus the Basford, Bestwood, and Bulwell Forest wards of the dissolved Nottingham North.

Burngreave is hardly "Ecclesfield".  I don't mind using two names, so I'd go for "Burngreave and Ecclesfield"; that way the whole constituency is either in one of them (as long as Ecclesfield is taken to mean the parish rather than the place) or clearly between them.

The SW seat I suggested could be "Ecclesall", reviving a name used in the first half of the 20th century.

I noticed the obvious transportation issues, but as someone who doesn't live there I got the impression that they (the populated bits anyhow, I guess there must be some very outlying bits that are quite different) had a lot in common structurewise - basically affluent inner suburbs along the edge of the city and along the edge of the Pennines.

But I'll try and see what your suggestion will end up looking like.

Remind me why they changed that, again. I seem to dimly recall there's an area called Attercliffe that isn't in it anymore, but I'm not at all sure of it.
Certainly has to be done if Southeast's renamed, yeah. (Ecclesfield is probably the best you can do if you want to go with just one word, but it's the outer edge of the seat and people in Burngreave may not like it.)

On my way through East Lancs, now.  Don't all shout at once, but I think this could be done WITHOUT crossing into Gtr Manchester after all...

Pendle and Burnley North (78,931)
I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW. Just hold on. I didn't want to split Ribble Valley, the wards are too awkward, so I looked at the boroughs of the East, realised they were all fairly undersized, so have tried to work out what best to do by taking wards in-and-out, and this was the best result I could draw (for now). This takes three Burnley wards - Lanehead, Queensgate, and Daneshouse. I didn't go for Briercliffe, my first option, because that closed down options for other seats.

Burnley and Accrington (77,316)
The rest of the Burnley borough, all of it, plus Accrington ('cept Church ward, which I will assume looks towards Clayton-le-Moors........doesn't it?)


So no......rest of Hyndburn, do your worst.......

Sheffield Hillsborough
69,230 for the four wards you listed plus Crookes; plus the northern parts of Broomhill (12,347)
Sheffield Ecclesall
69,640 for the three wards you listed plus Fulwood and Central; plus the southern parts of Broomhill.
The graphically most pleasing solution would probably be to split both Broomhill and Central wards, with the southern two thirds of both going into Ecclesall.
Yet another option would be to leave Crookes in the southern constituency (which would then be quite similar to the pre-2010 Hallam and should probably retain that name), put the Central ward in Hillsborough, and split Broomhill east-west.

We seem to be making rapid progress. These are based on the 598 seat electorate calculations correct? And don't forget that for me to calculate these seats, express them as %ages o the old seat (for instance 65% of Leicester South, 17% of Leicester East)

Harry, I'll message you what I have for western Lancashire later on, see if I can work out that sort of thing, get all the prep done for 2011 !

Well, they have some similarities (except Stocksbridge, which is really a separate town) but in practice Sheffield's geography makes it a very "radial" city: if you look at services people use (things like schools, shops, buses) Ecclesall and Nether Edge have more in common with each other than they do with Stannington and Hillsborough respectively.  The ideal boundaries would run along the valleys, but I don't think you can get anywhere near the quota that way.


Attercliffe is in Darnall ward, which they were going to take out at the last review before there was a fuss about splitting Handsworth.  So they had to come up with a new name, and stuck with it even when Darnall was put back in, presumably on the grounds that the southern part of the seat (Mosborough et al) is nowhere near Attercliffe.  (Those areas have been in the seat since 1983, I think.)  I think of Darnall as more NE than SE, though.

The bit I've bolded is what I'd do.

Yes.
Given the problems with that simplistic method of calculating, which I could anyways do just as easily myself anyways :P I think I'll pass. Now... if you could calculate notional general election results for each ward in the areas that held local elections on the day of the general election... that would be a worthwhile enterprise!

Ah. Yeah, that's just the way they roll. The renaming was probably just not made an issue of in the local hearing because the issue wasn't actually Sheffield Attercliffe people complaining about what had happened to their constituency, so the provisional recommendation remained unchallenged on this point, and thus passed into the final recommendations even as the reason for it evaporated.

Cumbria is the only northern area still missing. Cumbria needs to lose a seat and have quite oversized seats as a result, so this ought to be a lot of work for five seats. We'll see how it goes. All six constituencies are currently undersized, Workington worst of all.

Yeah, I had an earlier idea to combine Cumbria with Lancashire, but it doesn't seem to work. I'm not sure of the extent of Westmorland or Lonsdale, so an attempted Lonsdale/Lunesdale tie-in to maintain Lancaster & Morecambe was a non-starter....

Hmmm... either I could try to include Ulverston in Westmorland & Lonsdale, the emptyish stretch of coast in southern Copeland in Barrow, and built a relative tight Whitehaven & Workington seat... or I could try to restore the old northern boundaries of Westmorland, expand Barrow eastwards, Copeland northwards and eastwards... pretty much no matter what I do Penrith will probably end up in a huge and disparate constituency with beachfront. Whether that's just randomly including the coast between Carlisle and Workington (or worse part of it) in the Penrith seat, or eating off so much of Penrith & the Borders that there'll be a Workington & Penrith Leftovers constituency in the end.

Yeah, I'm far too lazy to work out where Westmorland used to end.

Westmorland & Lonsdale 76,005
South Lakeland District except for the new Broughton, Conistoke & Crake Valley, and Ambleside & Grasmere wards, which is identical in territory to the old Broughton, Coniston, Lakes Grasmere, western (ie, the side on which the town is) half of Lakes Ambleside, and northernmost parish (Lowick) of Crake Valley wards. Yeah, this is not just shifting Ulverston in  but also shifting a considerable bit of Lake District out - figures wouldn't add up otherwise. Not if the Mid Furness ward (rough equivalent of the old Crake Valley, but shifted south) was to move along with it.
Barrow-in-Furness 77,473 (yeah well, the "and Furness" part was a reference to Ulverston, wasn't it?)
Remainder of district, whole of Barrow borough, and the five southernmost wards of Copeland as far as Bootle.
Whitehaven & Workington 78,214
Remainder of Copeland district, southern coastal parts of Allerdale district as far as Dalston inclusive, Broughton St Bridget's exclusive, Ellen inclusive.
Carlisle and the Border 79,535
All of Carlisle district except Great Corby & Geltsdale and Hayton wards
Penrith & Solway Firth 79,133
Remainder of Allerdale, all of Eden, two wards of Carlisle

Greater Manchester coming up, piecemeal like Lewis is doing it.

First up, Botchdale with 3.93 quotas.  Rochdale could stand alone, but Bury is too small for 2 seats now.  The main problem here is that Bury North is too small while Heywood/Middleton is right at the top of the allowable range.

Bury North 67421+x.  Bury North needs to take half a ward out of Heywood/Middleton to bring it within tolerance.  I was going to suggest Norden, but in fact all of Norden ward's population is concentrated in the eastern bulge north of Bamford ward, with the rest being moorland.  So I'm going to move in half of West Heywood ward instead - Heap Bridge and the Darn Hill area should be enough.
Bury South 74313.  Unchanged.
Heywood and Middleton 79031-x.  As above.
Rochdale 77471.  Unchanged.

I'm stuck in Blackburn now. If I keep Burnley and Accrington, which I want to keep because Pendle is such a nightmare, then that leaves chunks of Hyndburn in need of a partner. Rossendale is just too.....Daley......and I have plans to involve Bury.....so I'm stumped. How much of "Blackburn"  IS "Blackburn" ?

Everything that isn't Darwen AFAIK.

:)

doktorb - split Blackburn up.  It's the solution to all your problems.

Bolton, Salford and Wigan.  7.82 quotas.

First, the easy bit:
Wigan 75035.
Makerfield 73447.
Leigh 75330.  All unchanged.

The problem here is what to do with Bolton.  It's fairly clear to move the sink estate of Little Hulton into Bolton SE, but Bolton + Atherton + Little Hulton still isn't quite big enough for three seats.  Another 3000 voters have to be found from somewhere.  The options are:
(a) Move some more Salford territory into Bolton South East.  You can either draw a line through Walkden North ward (which is continuously built up) or chip off the area of Pendlebury ward outside the M60 (Clifton, although that's probably not large enough).  Or
(b) Cross the county boundary and move North Turton into Bolton North East.  I like this idea better; the county boundary between North and South Turton (Bromley Cross and Bradshaw wards) is pretty arbitrary, and North Turton is the other side of the moors from Darwen and Blackburn so it was a bit of a strange choice to throw it in with them administratively.  Also the Lancashire seat I had North Turton in (Blackburn and Darwen) can cope with having North Turton taken out.

Taking option (b) we have
Salford 81275-x.  Takes Broughton and Kersal back from Blackley and Broughton and loses Eccles and the western half of Swinton North (Wardley).
Eccles and Worsley 72728+x.  Gains Eccles and Wardley, reunifying Eccles in one seat.  Loses the sink estate of Little Hulton to Bolton SE.

Twenty wards in Bolton + Atherton + Little Hulton gives us 22 wards to divide between three seats, so two wards within Bolton will have to be split.

Bolton North East 70208+x.  Gains North Turton and 2000 voters from the northern part of Great Lever ward, which brings the whole of Bolton town centre into one seat.
Bolton West 71061+x.  Has to take about 2000 voters and no more out of Hulton ward.  Over Hulton is probably the best bet; if that's too large then draw a line through the built-up area south of Deane Road (which would mean that Deane is no longer split between seats).
Bolton South East 77942-x.  The rest, including Little Hulton.

You see, I have caused myself no end of bother with Wigan.  I have a perfectly sized West Lancashire....but only if two wards are taken out and put into Wigan (this was when I thought the new Electoral Quota was going to be closer to 80,000).

So now I will have to cross Wigan with Bolton, using whole wards (I really am not confident or comfortable with splitting wards when I don't have the data). At the mo, Wigan, Makerfield, and Leigh, all have around 80,000 (Makerfield 82!)

If I find splitting wards unavoidable, then it opens up the question "Why didn't I split wards before".... I am not looking forward to sorting Gtr Manchester out at all!

The rest of Greater Manchester (Trafford, Manchester, Oldham, Tameside and Stockport) was the difficult bit to do.  This is the area that has to lose a seat and I was real trouble deciding what to do about Manchester Blackley in particular.

Oldham East and Saddleworth 72307-x.
Oldham West and Royton 72066+x.
I would have left these two alone, but Oldham West and Royton is a whole three voters outside tolerance.  Only a very small transfer is needed here; moving the boundary to the other side of a terrace or two should do it.

Hazel Grove 73150.
Takes Manor ward out of Stockport.

Stockport 82533-x.
Cheadle 71927+x.
Stockport moves north to take in the southern half of Denton and Reddish (the two Reddish wards plus Denton West).  This enables it to lose the western half of Davenport and Cale Green (the Adswood area) to Cheadle.  Apart from that Cheadle is unchanged.

Stalybridge and Hyde 78337.  Gains Dukinfield ward from Denton and Reddish, otherwise unchanged.
Ashton-under-Lyne 77338.  Ashton tends to get knocked about at boundary review time and this is no exception.  This Ashton gains the remainder of Denton and Audenshaw from Denton and Reddish.  To compensate for this, it loses Failsworth to...
Blackley and Failsworth 79748-x.  Charlestown, Cheetham, Crumpsall, Higher Blackley, Hulme, Moston, Failsworth East and Failsworth West.  This is slightly too large so the southern half of Cheetham ward (the area around Victoria Station and Strangeways Prison) will be shifted into Manchester Central.
Manchester Central 64542+x.  Ancoats/Clayton, Ardwick, Bradford, City Centre, Harpurhey, Miles Platting/Newton Heath and southern Cheetham as above.
Manchester Gorton 72891.  Fallowfield, the Gortons, Longsight, Moss Side, Rusholme, Whalley Range.
Manchester Withington 72685+x.  Burnage, Chorlton, Chorlton Park, Didsbury West, Levenshulme, Old Moat, Withington and the northern half of Didsbury East.

Unfortunately Sale has to be divided between three seats because of the numbers and geography of Trafford.

Wythenshawe and Sale East 77513-x.  Gains the southern half of Didsbury East; loses Brooklands.
Altrincham and Sale South 71845+x.  Gains Brooklands, loses half of Ashton upon Mersey.
Stretford and Urmston 77295-x.  The current seat plus the northern half of Ashton upon Mersey.

Worth pointing out that rigidity to a quota produces seats similar to those originally proposed at the first Holyrood review where that Rule was taken to extremes (over that of community links, continuity etc). Indeed the Assistant Commissioner slammed the Commission for confering (on the need to have seats 'on quota') an importance that it did not have and that the legislation did not intend it to have.

Now of course, this legislation is being amended for Westminster reviews. I expect smug faces at the Boundary Comission for Scotland :(

Which leaves you with just 152 persons' leeway. Better to see if you can identify some area in a neighboring seat that can also be put into one of these two.

Since we now have 26 seats for Greater Manchester (plus North Turton), we'll need just 14 seats for Lancaster (minus North Turton). Good luck.

3.93 4 Bury & Rochdale
3.09 3 Wigan (except your excluding one ward as at current, taking you to 2.95)
5.05 5 Stockport & Tameside
2.11 2 Oldham (except you treated part with Manchester, dropping this to just 1.90)
6.60 7 Manchester & Trafford (and part of Oldham, taking you to 6.81)
4.74 5 Bolton & Salford (and a wigan ward and a tiny part of Lancashire, taking you to 4.93 and your Lancashire total to 14.50)

Is Doktorb on track to 14 seats? If not, this may have be reworked, seeing as not only have we a 5% corridor, but we also have a fixed total of England-wide seats. (Or else I have to revisit London, see if I can eliminate a seat somewhere somehow. That's the third option.) But just off these figures... what I'd suggest trying for is finding some other, smaller Oldham area to drop into Manchester - although this part is optional; treat Salford with Manchester/Trafford instead of Bolton; draw some kind of Bolton N & Darwen monstrosity. [Actually looks at a map] Or possibly Bolton W and Bits of Chorley is actually slightly less monstrous? The reason I'm suggesting Bolton as the place to breach the county line is just that it's the only Greater Manchester Borough by it to need a partner; I understand it's geography doesn't really lend itself to the suggestion. So maybe breach both the Bolton-Wigan line (to a larger extent than it is now) and the Wigan-West Lancs line just as Doktorb said (or since the area he was saying is also apparently to small in and of itself, use that and North Turton, leaving you with 14 slightly less oversized, and thus now more obtainable, seats in Lancashire?

I have not looked at my proposals today, but I may well need to cross Wigan-Bolton to sustain Wigan-West Lancs.

As it goes, my current state of play in Lancs is:

1) Lancaster and Morecambe
2) Valleys of Ribble and Lune
3) Fleetwood and Bispham
4) Blackpool
5) Fylde
6) Preston
7) South Ribble
8) West Lancashire
9) Chorley
10) Pendle and Burnley North
11) Burnley and Accrington

Which leaves me with

1) The whole of Blackburn borough
2) The whole of Rossendale borough
3) Most of Hyndburn borough

Out of which to get....3....seats? Or 4? I will begin again tomorrow....

Actually looking through this thing on the detailed map now (will finally do the same with the proposed Lancs seats right after, I promise!), and
1) I understand the reasoning around Oldham / Failsworth. Consider that suggestion withdrawn.
You got Hulme and Harpurhey mixed up. As a result the populations are actually 80,420 and 63,870; although as the two constituencies share a ward anyways it doesn't actually change the game in any relevant ways.

Are you sure that's* all that's left? Even with the whole of Hyndburn, that's actually slightly too small for three seats.

*well that and a bit of W Lancs, we know that.

Notes in teletype because too many quotes look messy.

Valleys of Ribble and Lune (74,761)
The borough of Ribble Valley, plus everything that isn't in the Lancaster and Morecambe seat I discribe below. Yes, I've checked Street View and Google Earth to confirm that there IS a single track country lane linking adjoining wards, so all is well.
74,671, actually; not that it matters in the slightest (or else we both have the same suming error for Lancaster... no wait, I never summed Lancaster, I summed the wards removed just to get an exact listing of which they were. All of the at all territorial wards 'cept Overton, btw, in case anyone's wondering. And it looks much prettier if you keep Overton ward with Lancaster & Morecambe.)

Lancaster and Morecambe (78,808)
The city of Lancaster, inc. its Uni, plus Morecambe and Heysham. Can't get more sensible than that.

Blackpool (74,074)
The existing Blackpool South, this has been extended up the Golden Mile to just miss out Bispham. If I were a Scottish Boundary Commissioner, I would call this "Blackpool South and West", but I'm not, so I won't.
Claremont and Warbreck added (what the description sounds like) is 74,283. As none of the other possible combos give 74,074, I have no idea what happened. Doesn't really matter, though.

Fleetwood and Bispham (72,765)
JUST in quota, but good God am I glad to see the back of this. Fleetwood, Cleveleys, and the eastern suburbs of Blackpool all the way down to Stanley Park.  I could see no other way to undo the tangle here, this works very well.
Yeah, maybe these kinds of errors just happen a lot with the way you work this? Maybe rely less on excel and more on scrap paper, it's what I swear by. :) (do smileys even work in teletype? I'll find out when I hit post.) I work it out at 74,673, defining Cleveleys as the part of Wyre in the current Blackpool N & Cleveleys and Fleetwood as the part of Wyre in the current Lancaster & Wyre 'cept the three rural wards. Very nicely drawn constituency, btw; I like it.

Fylde (76,339)
The borough plus Poulton-le-Fylde and Carleton. This has been my idea from the start, stop Fylde from being tagged onto Preston (or the other way round).  Yes, Wyre is split three ways but THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE.
76,335... without Staina and Norcross wards. Much too large with them.

Wyre and Preston North (76,733)
It pains me to keep this seat, but I have no choice, the other combinations just would not work for me (I groaned out loud when I saw my Excel spreadsheet turn from "under quota blue" to "over quota red" when I tried adding Fylde to Preston).  Anyway, this is not quite the seat as we know it now, I've added Wyresdale ward, and the Pilling/Hambleton bits too, which I think are in Lancaster and Fleetwood now. Loses the connection with Poulton-le-Fylde, which wasn't really valid/legit anyway.
74,408 on my maths. I've assumed Lea (which you didn't list) and Ingol are here. (Hambleton is part of the ward called Preesall, which basically includes the two and some much smaller hamlets.) See also below at Fylde (figure includes Staina and Norcross). Now that I think of it... I guess that's what you meant by the ugly threeway split of Wyre, cause if it was just the rural parts I couldn't see what the problem was. I would suggest moving the four eastern rural Fylde wards (Newton, Medlar, Elswick, Singleton) here and Staina and Norcross to Fylde, giving 74,274 here and 76,469 in Fylde. And without any part of the urban part of Wyre, it might then be better called Preston N & Garstang (after the former RD). Though the Valley of the Wyre is still here, of course.

Preston (74,807)
The existing constituency, though it loses Ingol. I really wanted to Ingol, but its shape and size made other constructions very difficult. With Preston being so tiny (fewer than 55,000 voters I believe) I expand it to include the whole of Bamber Bridge, Walton-le-Dale, Salmlesbury and Coupe Green.  I know from my own experience that this is "commute to work" world so it's a feasable seat.
75,015. Should probably be renamed Preston South & Bamber Bridge.

South Ribble (76,429)
Regains Lostock Hall, Farington, Tardy Gate, a removal I never did agree with. Keeps only one ward from Chorley borough, and loses any links with West Lancs borough, so becomes far more compact than currently.
I have this as just 69,386, what am I doing wrong?

Pendle and Burnley North (78,931)
I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW. Just hold on. I didn't want to split Ribble Valley, the wards are too awkward, so I looked at the boroughs of the East, realised they were all fairly undersized, so have tried to work out what best to do by taking wards in-and-out, and this was the best result I could draw (for now). This takes three Burnley wards - Lanehead, Queensgate, and Daneshouse. I didn't go for Briercliffe, my first option, because that closed down options for other seats.

Burnley and Accrington (77,316)
The rest of the Burnley borough, all of it, plus Accrington ('cept Church ward, which I will assume looks towards Clayton-le-Moors........doesn't it?)
As far as Spring Hill and Baxenden, inclusive? That gives your pop. total.
I see the reasoning for the strange boundary in Burnley now; since Briercliffe is oversized, you could have used only two wards, and that would have forced a stranger split in Accrington as a knock-on.

I have a perfectly sized West Lancashire....but only if two wards are taken out and put into Wigan (this was when I thought the new Electoral Quota was going to be closer to 80,000).
Upholland and Brightington? That gives 76,497 for the resulting West Lancashire seat.

To which your reply is that there usually should be no need to split wards in a county/district council area because their wards are smaller, but that it is unavoidable in the Metros and some UAs.

Ah, I've missed out Wyre and Preston North, so that's 12 with 3 bits left to play with

First off:

Bolton North and Darwen: HELL NO.  No way do I want my town to be associated with Darreners.

Bolton West and bits of Chorley is certainly plausible; the pre-1983 Westhoughton seat basically covered that sort of area.

Treating Salford with Manchester is already done.  Trafford can only be paired with Manchester because the boundary between Trafford and Salford is the Manchester Ship Canal, and the only fixed bridge over the canal here is the M60 one (the Barton High Level Bridge).

Oh, and you already have a proposal for Lancashire of course...


The only real problem with those proposals now is that Bootle is too small, so I'll have to throw half a Liverpool ward in.  Liverpool is something like 4.18 quotas so something has to give anyway.

Ah, you also list a Chorley. And since one ward (which I assumed to mean Lostock) is in your undersized South Ribble already, Chorley is just 67,806.

I have Chorley at 76,046 - using December figures?

Rossendale & Darwen is a legal population currently; seems a waste to throw it away. My first idea (before even noticing it was legal already, lol) was to add the two Rossendale wards currently in Hyndburn constituency and maybe drop that one Blackburn with Darwen ward that looks from the overview map like it belongs with Blackburn, not Darwen. This is still legal - and makes Blackburn legal, too!
Alas, that one ward only looks like that from the overview map; that area is Lower Darwen (though it has a different name as a ward). And further, that leaves 35,051 people on the western side of Hyndburn locked off.
So no go that way, then. Yes, but the error was mine. I accidentally subtracted from the constituency rather than the borough figure.

Incidentally... Rossendale & the Hyndburn remnants is also a legal district, at 78,611.

Ah, heh, no probs. I couldn't possibly use scraps of paper, Excel is cluttered enough as it is !

Cheshire/Wirral will have to be paired with Shropshire (I hate it but... there is nothing else that could possibly be done about Shropshire.)
You could pair Saint Helens with Wigan I guess... could you write this thingy up in a detailed format? Oh, and see if you can't throw a ward or half-a-ward to Bootle to the northward.

EDIT: Actually, I know just the area. The Molyneux ward is a rotten disgrace, consisting of a bit of Ragnull, a bit of Kirkby, all of Netherton which is built-up continuously to Liverpool through Litherland and Bootle, and empty land in between the three and to the north. So Netherton would go into Bootle, the rest would not.

The part of Westmorland in Eden district seems to be Long Marton, Kirkby Thore, Eamont and Askham wards, the part of Ullswater ward around the head of the lake (Glenridding and Patterdale), and everything in Eden to the south of those.

Sefton wards are just daft generally (although Netherton is a separate ward).  However, Molyneux, Park and Sudell wards basically constitute the town of Maghull and are worth keeping together.

Merseyside entitlements are 4.18 seats for Liverpool, 1.47 for Knowsley, 1.82 for St Helens, 2.74 for Sefton and 3.17 for the Wirral.

I've just had a look at this now and I've had a brainwave - the town of Widnes (everything in Halton north of the Mersey) is 0.61 quotas.  This quite neatly solves the problem of Liverpool + Knowsley + St Helens coming out to an impossible number; Liverpool + Knowsley + St Helens + Widnes is 8.08 quotas, and we can then form a new Runcorn constituency in Cheshire.

For the rest of Cheshire, Cheshire East is 3.81 quotas so could form 4 seats of its own but it would be very tight.  Cheshire West and Chester is 3.32, Runcorn 0.60, Warrington 1.98 so the two Warrington seats I will probably leave as they are.

So...

Bootle 83145-x.  The current seat plus half of Kirkdale ward from Liverpool.
Liverpool Walton 71246+x.  The current seat plus Kensington and Fairfield and the other half of Kirkdale ward.
Liverpool Central and Wavertree 72249.  Central, Greenbank, Picton, Princes Park, Riverside, St Michael's, Wavertree.  If this seems a bit small you could split Kirkdale three ways...
Liverpool West Derby 74356.  The current seat plus Old Swan.
Liverpool Garston 77468.  Allerton/Hunts Cross, Childwall, Church, Cressington, Mossley Hill, Speke/Garston, Woolton.
Knowsley 79271.
St Helens North 75866.
St Helens South and Whiston 78705.
All unchanged.
Widnes and Halewood 72208.  All the Halton wards north of the Mersey, plus the Halewood wards from Knowsley and Belle Vale ward from Liverpool.

Comments on Liverpool welcome as it's not a city I know that well.  Will write up my Lancashire proposals in detail tomorrow.

Pretty much the only thing Rossendale and Darwen have in common is that they are small towns in deep valleys.  However, Rossendale looks south down the Irwell valley to Bury and Manchester (except for Bacup which hasn't yet realised there's a world outside Bacup), while Darwen looks north down its own valley to Blackburrn.  The seat as currently drawn doesn't have a road connection between the two towns, and doesn't even include the whole of Rossendale (part of Haslingden is in the Hyndburn seat).  It was a bad idea to combine the two in the first place, it's an abomination of a seat and I'm trying to get rid of it.

Just to add emphasis... the constituency as it was 1997-2010:

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I will look at this today. What's the figures for the borough of Blackburn with Darwen? If I can combine Rossendale with the  bits of Hyndburn left over, and create two seats out of BwD, I won't have to move into Gtr Manchester at all....

Sadly not: Warrington North is too small and Warrington South right at the top of the range.

Annoyingly, most of Warrington's wards are in the 7000-8000 electorate range, with a few smaller wards, so transferring one of those larger wards from one seat to another will cause one seat to go out of tolerance.  The only smaller ward which can be transferred from South to North is Latchford East, so that's what I'll do.

Warrington North 76714.  The current seat plus Latchford East.
Warrington South 73872.  The current seat minus Latchford East.

I am a bit stuck with East Lancs. This what I've done, any advice would be great. I am particularly in need of some guidance on the geography of the areas at the north of Bury and Rochdale, to see how I can match up Darwen or Rossendale.

I am sticking with Pendle and Burnley North, it in the quota, and as I refuse to split Ribble Valley, it's all I can do.

Burnley and Accrington seemed to be a good idea, but now I am stuck. Blackburn is of an awkward size and shape, especially the huge rectangle of a ward at the west. I have tried "Blackburn and Rishton" (well, it was either that or "Blackburn and Clayton-le-Moors") but that forces me to go down "Rest of Blackburn and Darwen" and "Rossendale plus Rochdale or Bury" and I don't know how further go down that route.

Got the figures for the North of Scotland

Highland/Moray 3.18 or 3- Just a tad over the quota, but geography makes other groupings different. If accepted this would give a Moray and Nairn, and a 'north' and 'south' Highland seat...but it all depends on the geography given the clause in the bill.

Aberdeen City 2.06 or 2 -  Extended Aberdeen North and Aberdeen South

Aberdeenshire/Angus/Dundee - 4.95 or 5 - Expanded Dundee West and Dundee East, rest of Angus with part of Mearns, two Aberdeenshire seats

Perth and Kinross/Fife - 5.23 or 5 seats - Quite tight here. Also breaking the Fife border has not been done yet.

Stirling/Clackmannan/Falkirk - 2.96 or 3 seats - Something like Clackmannan and East Stirling (taking in Stirling), Falkirk and a huge left over seat. Need to look at this one.

No. In and of itself Blackburn is not of an awkward size or shape at all - it's just in an awkward part of the map. If you combine Rossendale with the bits of Hyndburn, you're pretty likely to be also drawing a very pretty Blackburn constituency and then the thing that Andrew screamed in bold caps about recently because no way does he want his town associated with Darreners.

Or you could try some Blackburn S & Darwen / Blackburn N & Northern Parts of Chorley (but not all of them; your South Ribble is too small) / Westhoughton Blast from the Past.

Or you rework areas wholly elsewhere extensively.

Basically it's a shame to split Blackburn, but if it is understood that Blackburn is really the only place Darwen could possibly be linked to, that will force it. Which is probably how Rossendale & Darwen came about - well that, and at the time it made the map work elsewhere (Hyndburn, Burnley, Pendle) work too. And that second argument is now gone, so fire away. Split Blackburn for all I care. :)

There were a lot of deeply horrible constituencies drawn in 1983; most of the worst went in the 1995 review.

Think you might be right about my South Ribble - I have it as 76,429.....but I fear that may be worked out with JUST Bamber Bridge North, not the whole of Brig.

DAMN DAMN BLAST BUGGER!

Highland is 30,600 square km... or about 30,000 without Nairn. Too large to be two seats.
The clause is so precise that I think it was probably formulated with a specific setup in mind that alone (with minor alterations) satisfies it, possibly the current one.

I am sorry, the ~half of Molyneux Ward (far larger than the Maghull part) that is mismatched with Sefton Central and geographically "belongs" in Bootle is not Netherton, which is indeed in Bootle already, but its eastern neighbor of Aintree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aintree).

"No constituencies with an area of more than 13000 km^2.  Constituencies with an area of more than 12000 km^2 are allowed to be more than 5% below quota."

Doesn't give a figure on how far below quota a seat between 12,000 and 13,000 can go (or maybe the law does but the blurb Doktorb quoted doesn't). I can't find totals by area for constituencies... but judging by the look of the Highland map that sounds about right for the two non-Inverness seats.

Plans for tomorrow then  :

Scrap West Lancs, Wigan/Makerfield/Leigh, Chorley, South Ribble

Re work the Lancs bits, consider Blackburn+Chorley as way out of current log-jam.

Praise Allah we have until December to fathom all this out.

Right, here goes:

South Ribble (76,190)[/b ]
The borough of South Ribble, minus Brig, Walton-le-Dale, Salmlesbury, Coupe Green
Plus Lostock, and Euxton wards from Chorley
Possible alternative name - South Ribble and West Chorley (which is UGLY as sin)

West Lancashire (76,704)
The borough of West Lancashire minus Parbold, Wrightington, Newburgh

Chorley and Wrightington (75,692)
Borough of Chorley minus Lostock and Euxton
Plus Parbold, Wrightington, Newburgh.
Possible different name - Chorley and South West Lancashire?

Finishing the East Midlands

Derbyshire 10 (-1)

Leicestershire 10 (no change, but expanded Leicester seats)

Northamptonshire + Milton Keynes 9 (-1, odd grouping but both need a partner and anyways the area between Northampton and MK is London Commuterland really)

---

This is approximately based on 97-10, when the county also had 10 seats, though some constituencies had to be shifted somewhat. Not in Derby, though.
Chesterfield 72,077
I ended up leaving this unchanged because I couldn't decide which one of the two city wards currently not in should be included (the whole borough is too large), and the way I worked it out elsewhere it happened to fit this way.
North East Derybshire 77,550
gains the wards of Sutton and Holmewood & Heath, just south of Chesterfield, from Bolsover.
Bolsover 78,028
The other seat (besides Chesterfield) to currently have a legal population, this one was nonetheless redrawn. Loses Sutton and Holmewood & Heath; gains Alfreton and Somercotes from Amber Valley
High Peak 78,021
Gains Bradwell, Hathersage & Eyam and Tideswell - ie minimum change compared to the 97-10 map.
Derbyshire Dales 78,585
Loses these but gains back all of Belper. Throw in Duffield and this too is minimum change compared to 97-10... but that makes problems elsewhere (Amber Valley and/or Erewash have to migrate too far southwards or into the city) so instead I added the North West and Hatton wards from South Derbyshire.
Amber Valley 77,060
Loses Alfreton and Somercotes, gains Duffield, Little Eaton & Bradsall, and (I know, I know) the Derby ward of Oakwood
Erewash 79,226
Gains Ockbrook & Borrowash, West Hallam & Dale Abbey
Derby North West 72,246
Compared to North, gains Allestree, loses Chaddesden
Derby South East 79,634
Compared to South, gains Chaddesden, Spondon, loses Chellaston which used to be in South Derbyshire til 2010.
I had S gain Spondon, lose Chellaston and N gain Allestree and was looking for which ward to split... when I noticed that Chaddesden could be transferred whole and save me the split.
Derbyshire South 77,878
Gains back Chellaston (but not Boulton which used to be here as well), loses two westernmost wards of North West and Hatton.

Two constituencies in Leicestershire are too small, and none are too large. I recommend no changes to Leicester East 73,320, Leicester South 77,156, Rutland & Melton 77,096, Charnwood 74,734 or Loughborough 77,464 - though in the case of the latter two, I had at first intended to.
Leicestershire North West 75,760 gains the Markfield, Stanton & Fieldhead ward from Bosworth 72,699.
Leicester West 72,479 gains the Ravenhurst & Fosse and Millfield wards from South Leicestershire. I had at first intended to also add Winstanley, but it creates problems down the line.

And then I have two maps for the remaining territory. The minor change one:
Leicestershire South 73,360
Loses Ravenhurst & Fosse, Millfield; gains Bosworth, Lubenham (confusingly, there are two places called Bosworth in Leicestershire)
Harborough 74,375
Loses Bosworth, Lubenham.

But those two city line to county line constituencies are walking abortions anyways, and with these losses the misnamed Harborough (it's dominated by the northern, suburban part, not by Market Harborough) gets ever narrower.
Blaby, Oadby & Wigston 73,360
The Oadby & Wigston district from the Harborough constituency, and the Blaby district parts of South Leicestershire, excluding Ravenhurst & Fosse, Millfield (which are of course in Leicester West) and the five relatively rural wards of Countesthorpe, Cosby with South Whetstone, Stanton & Flamville, Croft Hill, and Normanton. The way it reaches around Leicester to include Winstanley is somewhat ugly, and a better map could probably be devised, but only by breaching the city line in a second place.
Harborough 73,257
The five wards listed above and all of Harborough district except the parts in Rutland & Melton.

Yeah, of course Northamptonshire + MK is not a seat loss at all.

Corby 78,275 and Wellingborough 76,797 are left unchanged.

Kettering 73,336 gains the wards along the A14 - Clipston, Welford, and Yelvertoft.
In exchange, Daventry 74,737 gets the wards of Danvers & Wardoun, Middleton Cheney and Kings Sutton to the south. While it doesn't affect any of these wards, compared to the Atlas, South Northamptonshire district has been rewarded - and this was done so early that the constituency boundary was amended as well. Compared to what's shown in the Atlas, Cote ward is in South Northamptonshire but Milton Malbor parish is in Daventry. I'm not proposing to change the boundary in that area.

Northampton North 73,362 gains Billing, Ecton Brook, and Weston, but loses Delapre for a smoother outline.
Northampton South 74,198 is all the remainder of the town including the wards currently in South Northamptonshire.

Milton Keynes South 73,653 cedes Walton Park and Danesborough.
Milton Keynes North 73,569 gains these but cedes the two Newport Pagnell wards, Sherington and Olney.

That leaves us with Northamptonshire South & Newport Pagnell 73,085 current Northamptonshire South minus Northampton town areas, Danvers & Wardoun, Middleton Cheney and Kings Sutton, plus the abovementioned portion of MK. Map would look smoother if Hanslope Park could also be included here, but that takes the MK seats below target (unless you split Newport Pagnell instead.)

Corby has no community of interest with east Northants. Is there any way it could be paired in the other direction, or do the figures not allow for that?

I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure a Corby & Kettering seat is too large no matter how tightly drawn and the donut around it would be ugly. One could check if it's possible to exchange the whole of Corby proper for the whole of Kettering proper... but wouldn't that lead to just the same complaint?
"East Northamptonshire has to go somewhere" being the crux of the argument, though yes, it's possible that it's possible. :P

I suggest that we just deport all the rich idiots from the Home Counties who have been ruining Northants for decades back to where they came from. That's what my late Grandma would have argued for, anyway.

But, yeah, any constituency would be ugly. But as ugly as the current one? Alright, it doesn't look so bad, but it's dreadful, almost as good an argument against single-member districts as Rossendale & Darwen (though for different reasons).

I still haven't found a solution to East Lancs =<  I have been looking at Google Earth to see how hilly and mountainy neighbouring wards are, I'm going to give it one more go, before plumping for....Maybe Darwen + bits below - Bolton or Bury?

Some pointers for you doktorb.  In Rossendale, Ramsbottom would go quite well with Eden ward in Rossendale (Edenfield) as it's part of the same valley - I think Edenfield was once part of Ramsbottom Urban District.  Whitworth is basically a Rochdale suburb that doesn't want to be part of Rochdale.

North Turton has very strong links with Bolton - it's the same side of the moors and has Bolton (BL7) postcodes and (01204) telephone numbers.  There are a couple of Bolton quiz league teams who play in North Turton.  South Turton is Bromley Cross and Bradshaw wards in Bolton.  The only problem is that North Turton is in the same ward as Tockholes, which is a Blackburn commuter village (with one of the worst traffic calming schemes on the planet).

Rivington and Adlington have quite strong links with Horwich and Blackrod - Rivington and Blackrod share the same high school, which is located at the west end of Horwich.

Other than those - no links.  In particular, I may have to post something uncomplimentary in bold capitals if you combine Darwen and Bolton.

LOL.  Okay, I will try to avoid that. I remember being told that Whitworth wants out of Rochdale, maybe the Big Society could organise a binding referendum ;)

Possibly worse.

Corby + anything in Kettering borough west of Kettering proper (Desborough etc) + those three Daventry wards listed above + the fairly empty northernmore bits of East Northants to just north of Oundle (73,031) vs
Kettering proper + the central and south central bits of East Northants from Irthlingborough north to Oundle (78,580)?

I've put the 15 seat Lancashire in the gallery.....So  here, at last, is what I've done for a 15 seat Lancashire. I'll prepare to hide from any brickbats!

I will try to upload a map with labels, but I am sure the more attentive of you will work out what is what...

Darwen, Egerton and Pleasington   77,488
Blackpool North and Fleetwood   72,765
Blackpool South   74,074
Burnley and Accrington   76,827
Chorley and Wrightington   75,692
Blackburn and Rishton   78,881
Fylde   76,339
Lancaster and Morecambe   78,808
Pendle and Burnley North   78,931
Preston   74,807
Rossendale and Ramsbottom   77,638
South Ribble   76,190
Valleys of Ribble and Lune   74,671
West Lancashire   76,704
Wyre and Preston North   76,733

I'd rename a few of these seats. And maybe replace those two urban Wyre wards with rural Fylde ones. I think Blackpool N can take one of them, too.
Darwen, Egerton and Pleasington   Darwen, Turton & Blackburn West
Chorley and Wrightington
Blackburn and Rishton Blackburn East & Oswaldtwistle (or incorporating two place names in Hyndburn - BE, O & either Rishton or Clayton-le-Moors)
Preston South & Bamber Bridge
Wyre and Preston North (is barely retainable with the current map, although it's still better to rotate them round. If those last two urban Wyre precincts go out, though, as I think they should...)

Now all that remains to be done is amend Andrew's Greater Manchester map to accomodate the ward losses and drop one seat. ;D

Like those names better.  We absolutely have to put Oswaldtwistle in a constituency name just to annoy everyone who can't pronounce it.

Darwen, Turton and Blackburn West is very similar to the Darwen seat of years gone by.

Rossendale and Ramsbottom might be better as "Irwell Valley".

Consequences for Greater Manchester: well obviously I still prefer my version but...
(a) leave Heywood and Middleton as is. 
(b) the seat disappears in the Bury and Bolton area.  My proposals were for Bury North, Bury South, Bolton NE, Bolton SE and Bolton W roughly as now; you'll probably be ending up with something like Bury and Prestwich, Bolton E and Radcliffe, Bolton N and Bolton W.

Yep - Bourne ward is in Blackpool N & Cleveleys at current, and raises the pop. there to 77,863 (I'm taking Doktorbs figures at face value, not doublechecking. :P)
Adding Staina to Fylde brings that to 81,204 and Preston N & Wyre down to 66,770... moving those four eastern Fylde rural precincts in instead (really the maximum that's feasible, too) brings it to 74,482 and the other down to 73,492. Three of the four would be enough numbers-wise but makes an ugly map. Two is not enough numbers-wise.

 

I'm liking "Irwell Valley" a LOT, and yeah, think if I'm going to have "...Burnley North" in one seat and "Burnley and..." in another, there's nothing against having "Blackburn and..." with "....and West Blackburn"..... So I'll accept those changes ;)

(Though I have just written my blog with my original names, so once I've played with Gtr Manchester, I'll update the names :) )

Bolton bits transferred are 0.26, Bury bits transferred are 0.33.

Three Wigan seats
Two Rochdale seats as they are currently
Five Stockport/Tameside seats as layed out previously by Andrew
Two current Oldham seats
A Bury Proper seat
Remainder of Bury + Failsworth + Manchester + Trafford + Salford + remainder of Bolton + possibly that one Wigan ward, if that helps to keep the map tidy = 12 seats

Brilliant, cheers for that. I really hope to keep Wigan together without crossing boundaries.

Meanwhile in Merseyside... (outside the Wirral) 10.20 seats and I intend to draw 10. Possibly dropping a ward into Cheshire if it has to be done, but I'll be trying to avoid it. That means crossing all the borough boundaries.
Two Seats in Sefton, one seat mostly in Sefton with a bit in Liverpool, three seats in Liverpool, one seat mostly in Liverpool with a bit in Knowsley, one seat wholly in Knowsley, one seat mostly in St Helens with a bit in Knowsley, one seat wholly in Saint Helens.

Would be simpler to say Bury + Bolton + Salford + Wigan - bits removed by doktorb = 9.11 seats.  I'm not doing the rest of the county again unless I have to.  Bury + Bolton - bits removed by doktorb = 3.87 so there should be no change to the Salford and Wigan proposals.

Bury proper is Church, East, Elton, Moorside, Redvales and Unsworth wards so it needs three more wards to bring it up to quota.  The obvious three are the Radcliffe wards - but that leaves the five Prestwich and Whitefield wards with nowhere to go.  So you'll have to divide the town up.

Here's a quick-and-dirty proposal:
Bury and Prestwich East, Moorside, Redvales and Unsworth from Bury; Besses and Pilkington Park from Whitefield; Holyrood, St Mary's and Sedgley from Prestwich; the half of Radcliffe West ward south of the Irwell.  Comes to 73957+x.
Radcliffe-cum-Farnworth 82512-x.  Church and Elton from Bury (the two wards west of the Irwell); the two-and-a-half remaining Radcliffe wards; Little Lever, Farnworth, Harper Green and Kearsley.
Bolton 76903.  Almost all the old County Borough except Heaton; Astley Bridge, Breightmet, Crompton, Halliwell, Smithills, Tonge/The Haulgh, Great Lever, Rumworth.
Westhoughton 79801.  The current Bolton West minus Smithills plus Over and Little Hulton.  This is slightly over quota, so move the boundary between Heaton and Smithills a couple of streets further west.

Yeah, I figured that. Except with Failsworth and bits of Manchester? (I'm still a little unhappy with your very low pop. Manchester seats... :) ) Though yeah, as what you're saying is feasible too, why not. Least work for us. 3.87+ whatever that one Wigan ward you have in there (and the boundary commission currently has in there, too) comes down to, that is. Probably something like 3.98.

So yeah, Merseyside. The only thing I'm unhappy with is the splitting of Formby, but that was unavoidable once we don't cross the Merseyside-West Lancs border. Walton constituency is abolished.

Southport 77,512
Current constituency plus Harington (really Formby West) ward
Crosby & Magnull 77,203
Sefton Central minus Harington plus Victoria and Church wards
Bootle & Walton 73,755
Bootle minus Victoria and Church wards, plus County and Warbreck wards in Liverpool
Liverpool West Derby 75,353+x
Current constituency plus Clubmoor and Fazakerley wards minus western part of Tuebrook & Stoneycroft ward (10,291). It is hoped that either the railway or Green Lane would do the trick.
Liverpool Wavertree 70,712+x
Current constituency minus Church ward - that's Church ward in Liverpool, not Church ward in Sefton - plus Anfield and Everton. EDIT: Plus remainder of Tuebrook & Stoneycroft o/c, forgot to mention that.
Liverpool Riverside 73,310+x
Current constituency plus western part of Church ward (10,688)
Garston & Halewood 71,346+x
Current constituency plus remainder of Church ward
Knowsley 79,271
Saint Helens North 75,866
Saint Helens South & Whiston 78,705
all unchanged.

No "cross-mersey" required?

A cross-Mersey doesn't make sense numberswise as the areas on either side are overquota for the number of seats they're going to get. Wirral will be paired with Cheshire.

The closest approximation to Westmorland using whole wards has an electorate of 73,554 according to my calculations, which is within the target range, but given that Cumbria as a whole is a bit over five quotas it's not going to be possible to do the rest of the county, so it's going to need a bit more territory from somewhere.  Here's what I ended up with:

1. Westmorland and Alston (77831): from South Lakeland Ambleside and Grasmere, Arnside and Beetham, Burneside, Burton and Holme, Crooklands, all the Kendal wards, Lyth Valley, Milnthorpe, Sedbergh and Kirkby Lonsdale, both Staveleys, Whinfell, the Windermere wards; from Eden Alston Moor, the Appleby wards, Askham, Brough, Crosby Ravensworth, Eamont, Hartside, Kirkby Stephen, Kirkby Thore, Long Marton, Morland, Orton with Tebay, Ravenstonedale, Shap, Ullswater, Warcop.  [Staveley-in-Cartmel is Lancashire, but has to go here to get the numbers right.  Sedbergh is Yorkshire of course.]

2. Barrow and Furness (78432): the rest of South Lakeland; all of Barrow district.

3. Whitehaven and Workington (79542): all of Copeland; from Allerdale Clifton, Harrington, Moorclose, Moss Bay, St. John's, St. Michaels, Seaton, Stainburn.

4. Penrith, Keswick and Maryport (78152): rest of Allerdale; rest of Eden; from Carlisle Burgh, Dalston.

5. Carlisle and North Cumberland (76421): rest of Carlisle.

(I hope I haven't made any blunders here.)

fyp

Yeah, I meant "not even numbers-wise". We all know it doesn't make sense in any other respect. :P

What do you say, Al? Best I can do.

It would make more sense than keeping the current division, yeah.

Warrington North 70,953+x
While there is a ward along the constituency boundary that could be transferred whole (Latchford East), doing so makes little sense, and splitting Bewsey & Whitecross (7716) ward in the centre of Warrington proper is far more reasonable.
Warrington South 71,917+x
Remainder

Clearly better than my map. I salute you.
Though I disagree with most of your names. >:D 1 could be simply Westmorland. The bits and pieces added are just too tiny and anyways situated in all directions. With all of Copeland in, I think 3 should be Copeland & Workington. And Keswick is tiny and sort of redundant as a naming component (the third largest settlement would be Cockermouth... or if the name's supposed to be geographically descriptive we'd need some place in the northern part of Allerdale, but there don't seem to be any of relevance. Anyways there's not really anythign wrong with Penrith & Maryport). And I want 5 to be called Carlisle & the Border >:( (it's not just a pretty name - Border was also the name of the rural district in the area from the 30s to the 70s.)

Wirral 240,390
Cheshire West & Chester 251,933
Halton 91,631
Cheshire East 288,796
Shropshire 230,844
Telford & the Wrekin 119,968

All of these have been grouped together. Cheshire E can actually (barely) stand alone for four seats, but doing so forces all sorts of weird little territorial transfers. Shropshire (UA) could, too, but that creates problems north and south. In addition, I tried to also pair Herefordshire with this but that created even worse horrors than I now have. (The issue with Herefordshire is that it can essentially stay as is but some non-Herefordshire territory - either in Shropshire or in Worcestershire - needs to be slapped onto the N Herefordshire constituency to bring it up to quota. Depending on the size of the territory used, maybe some wards near Hereford may be shifted to the S constituency, which is barely large enough as is. So yeah. I've settled on Worcestershire for now.)

New ward maps for Cheshire (http://maps.cheshire.gov.uk/cheshirecc.interactivemapping.web.internet/Default.aspx) and Shropshire (http://www.lgbce.org.uk/__documents/lgbce-documents/maps/2008/shropshire-map1.pdf).

Wallasey 76,427
gains Hoylake & Meols
Birkenhead 75,220
gains Upton
That was the easy part (well, the first one of the easy parts).
For suburban Wirral and Ellesmere Port & Neston, I could either randomly slap one Wirral ward onto EPN - but after I had moved the non-former-EPN-district parts of that constituency into Chester, this left EPN undersized - or draw one seat along the Mersey and one seat along the Dee. Alas, that didn't work out too well either as there's more people along the Mersey:
Wirral West & Neston 76,027
West Cheshire wards of Neston & Parkgate and Ledsham & Willaston; three remaining Wirral West wards of West Kirkby & Thurstaston, Greasby, Frankby & Irby and Pensby & Thingwall; Wirral South wards of Heswall and (sigh :( ) Clatterbridge.
Ellesmere Port & Bebington 73,374
Remainder of Wirral and the four Ellesmere Port wards

City of Chester 75,446
Current constituency and remainder of Mickle Trafford ward (which is currently split between City of Chester, Ellesmere Port & Neston, and Eddisbury). This leaves Gowy ward split.
Halton 79,349
Gains Ditton and Halton Lea wards
Northwich & Wilmslow 84,234-x
Current Tatton constituency plus Northwich West and Northwich part of Northwich E & Shakerley (the part outside Northwich town is in Tatton already)
Macclesfield 74,595+x
Population is the current constituency. The current constituency boundaries split Alderley ward.
Slicing these two to be both within quota is going to be a challenge. The former ward of Alderley Edge and that (major) part of the former ward of Chelford currently in Alderley might just be the right size, though. (That still leaves the current Alderley ward split - the former ward of Fulshaw, which really belongs with Wilmslow, is left with Northwich & Wilmslow.) Total population of Alderley ward 10,556, of which 1994 are in Macclesfield already.

Now to the other easy part:
Congleton 74,806
unchanged
Crewe & Nantwich 78,469
unchanged

And for some comic relief, we cut to my inept attempts at drawing Shropshire:
Telford 74,734
Current constituency and Muxton and Donnington wards
Wellington, Newport & Market Drayton 73,234
Remainder of Telford & Wrekin; in northern Shropshire, Shawbury, Wem, and points east.
Ludlow 77,157
All of the former Bridgnorth and South Shropshire districts, ie gaining the Shifnal area from Wrekin
Shrewsbury & Atcham 75,076
Unchanged
Oswestry 79,500
The remaining wards in northwestern Shropshire (a somewhat larger area than the former Oswestry district), and from the abolished Eddisbury constituency the East Cheshire ward of Cholmondesley and the Cheshire West & Chester ward of Broxton and most of Gowy (see above, City of Chester).

Ooh, I forgot to list one of the Cheshire seats:
75,914
Remainder of Halton; Frodsham & Halston, Weaver, Eddisbury, Abbey, Winsford
Broadly a successor seat to Weaver Vale, but exchanging Northwich (and a bit of Halton) for the northern part of Eddisbury constituency. I haven't named it yet. Vale Royal & Halton East?

Damn, you got to Cheshire before me.

Vale Royal and Halton East would probably be better as just Vale Royal.

Alrighty then.

Adding Donnington to Telford makes a lot of sense, adding Muxton less so. Part of the problem with Telford is that it doesn't have anything like a normal urban structure; thus Donnington might belong in the Telford constituency and Muxton might belong with Donnington, but Muxton does not really belong in the Telford constituency.
An alternative would be add the Hadley part of Hadley & Leegomery into Telford instead of Muxton. Hadley is very much part of Telford proper (insofar as there is such a thing) and Muxton isn't.
Actually, if I were drawing the boundaries I'd also split the Wrockwardine ward to include Little Wenlock (and thus the summit of the Wrekin) in the constituency, and cross the river to include Broseley and unite the Gorge in one constituency. Broseley ought to be in Telford & Wrekin UA anyway. Or you could base a constituency on the former Liberty of Great Wenlock ;D

Wellington, Newport & Market Drayton is a horror. You might be better off scrapping the current order of constituencies and trying to unite Shrewsbury and Wellington and working things out around that. Figures might not work though. So maybe not.

That thought out of the way... you're combining with Cheshire in the wrong places, I think. If Oswestry isn't Shropshire its Welsh; it doesn't have much to do with anywhere in Cheshire. The area around Whitchurch and Market Drayton however... yeah. That would be a better way of going about things. Hope that doesn't wreck the Cheshire map, though.

Never mind what it does in Cheshire (whichever part of Cheshire goes into a Shropshire-dominated seat won't be happy. I think. Though yeah, it'd do strange things to the Crewe & Nantwich constituency) that means either extending the current Wrekin seat southward, adding the rural bits of Shrewsbury & Atcham to Ludlow, and trying to draw a Shewsbury & Oswestry seat; or else going with that Shrewsbury & Wellington idea, another seat from Newport to Ludlow, and a third all along the Welsh border. Either way it's possible that you're slicing by Shrewsbury so finely that you need to exclude some areas that really belong with the town.
Either could be tried, for all that.

Hmm... how far south would the East Shropshire seat have to go? Because the whole of the eastern fringe of the county has a lot in common, so that might not be so bad. And the current boundary between Shrewsbury & Atcham and Ludlow makes no sense on the ground, fwiw. You could probably extend as far north as Hanwood without too many problems if it was necessary.

The former North Shropshire district, plus St Martin's parish (formerly of Oswestry, but united in a ward with areas to the east) minus Ruyton & Baschurch ward, is 47,520 electors and actually fits quite nicely with my cutoff bits of Cheshire. I seem to recall having actually calculated that earlier, then shied away from what it meant for Shrewsbury.
Former Oswestry district, minus St Martin's, is 28,172. Ruyton & Baschurch is 2919.
The rural parts of Shrewsbury & Atcham have only 19,195 electors - 15,789 outside of Tern ward which for obvious graphical reasons needs to stay with Shrewsbury.
Shrewsbury town (and Bayston Hill parish which is included in a Shrewsbury ward) is 55,881, plus 3406 in Tern, so Shrewsbury & Oswestry is certainly going to be too large.

Will get back to you on the merits of the Shrewsbury & Wellington idea in a minute.

Actually, those are the current Cheshire wards - the two Cheshire councils are having new wards drawn up.  I think the relevant Boundary Commission has finalised its recommendations and the report is on Eric Pickles' desk waiting to be signed off.

Market Drayton & other naming particles 76,409
Shawbury, The Meres, Saint Martin's and points east, two and a half random rural Cheshire wards as described earlier
Shrewsbury & Wellington 79,350
All Shrewsbury town wards, Tern, Shropshire; all the wards west of Whitchurch Drive (including the rural Wrockwardine ward), Telford & Wrekin
Telford 77,292
Current constituency plus Donnington and Hadley & Leegomery
Bridgnorth & Newport 72,565
Remainder of Telford & Wrekin, all of the former Bridgnorth district, and also the Cleobury Mortimer ward spanning the former Bridgnorth - South Shropshire boundary and the Clee ward formerly in S Shropshire, thus bringing us to right outside of Ludlow (or alternatively the Severn Valley ward formerly in Shrewsbury & Atcham, for 341 fewer inhabitants)
Oswestry & Ludlow (or maybe just Shropshire West) 74,085
Everything else

I know. These are the wards currently in force - the ones we have populations for. (Yes, for Shropshire these are not the interim wards but the Commission-drawn ones - but that's because they're already in use.)

Next project:

"Worcestershire 5.73, Warwickshire 5.37. Bit of a no-brainer, although there's the issue of p'raps putting part of rural west Worcestershire into one of the Herefordshire seats again: 1.84.
West Midlands 25.33 : Coventry 2.89, Solihull 2.10 (so one Meriden ward is put into a Coventry constituency. Bearable.), Birmingham 9.57, Sandwell 2.91 (could stand alone), Dudley 3.17 (couldn't), Walsall 2.49, Wolves 2.22. The minimum destruction approach is still pairing Birmingham with Walsall and surreptitiously dropping part of Wolves into Staffordshire. Lol. And Sandwell with Dudley o/c.
Staffordshire 8.61 + Stoke 2.44. I don't want to drop part of Wolves into here. :( "

Whether I will really put part of Wolves with Staffordshire remains to be seen. Might also be linked with Walsall and Brum. Of course, previous commissions would have wanted to keep 10 seats in Birmingham and create 5 seats in Walsall and Wolves, but we have a fixed national target now and besides, the Birmingham seats would be barely on target on average and the Walsall and Wolves seats not even that.

Can I just say how great it is that we three have managed to keep this thread going for nearly 18 pages? This is before the Bill is even debated, how longer will it get by December? :)

Turns out all three Coventry seats are barely within tolerance at 72,490 Northeast, 73,030 Northwest, 73,346 South. So we might instead transfer anything between 2745 and 3017 of the voters of Blythe ward (10,047) from Meriden (currently 82,400) to Solihull (76,638) - perhaps Monkspath (which has a hilarious wiki page, check out the notable residents section!), or else Dickens Heath + some random rural residents if Monkspath is too large.

No. Shut up. [/postpad]

=<

Dudley and Sandwell might conceivably go

Dudley North 70,594+x
Gains the Coseley East ward currently in a Wolves constituency, and part of Brockmoor & Pensnett (9732) from Dudley S
Dudley South 71,788+x
Loses part of Brockmoor & Pensnett, gains Amblecote and Quarry Bank & Dudley Wood from Stourbridge
Stourbridge (& Cradley?) 78,649
loses Amblecote and Quarry Bank & Dudley Wood, gains Belle Vale, Hayley Green & Cradley South, and Cradley Heath & Old Hill. All three are currently in Halesowen & Rowley Regis, but the last is in Sandwell while the other two are in Dudley like the remainder of the constituency.
West Bromwich East 74,015
gains Wednesbury North and South from West Brom W but loses Greets Green & Lyng in exchange.
West Bromwich West & Rowley Regis 73,153+x
loses Wednesbury, gains Greets Green & Lyng, Rowley, Blackheath, and part of Langley (9109)
Warley & Halesowen 73,549+x
gains Halesowen N and S in Dudley; loses part of Langley

I would rename the West Brom seats. Isn't it the case that WBW (as is) doesn't cover any of Brom itself?

I'd been wondering that. Not sure how much exactly of Sandwell is West Brom proper? Part of the problem is that the Black Country went through so many amalgamations of local government units even before 1974...

WBW could be "Tipton" or "Tipton and Wednesbury" at the moment.

Where does that leave Oldbury? :)

Birmingham has 40 wards with an average population of 18,000. Until and unless they decide to split each ward in three and go single-member, every redistricting in Birminham is bound to produce nothing but horrors. Especially if done by someone with a map and next to no knowledge of the city - I think the best historical parallel to what I'm trying to do here is with the partitition of Punjab.

Six of the ten constituencies are currently legal, actually, but usually not by much, and I'm trying to draw seats somewhat above quota.
I've decided to go with what looks neat and can be done while remaining clueless. I've identified two 13 ward clusters consisting of a central ward that will be split three ways, and 3x4 wards around it. In a third similar cluster, one of the constituencies is actually one Brum ward + most of Aldridge-Brownhills. Sutton Coldfield has been left alone (involving it would have meant splitting it in two or three.) West of that I have two alternative versions for two Wolves Proper seats - either e and w or n and s - a seat of the numerous towns between Walsall and Wolves (Edgefield, Willenhall, Darlaston - I had to include a bit of Walsall itself though), a Walsall seat. I still need to see what those Brum seats I have in mind actually come out as pop.-wise.

Birmingham Selly Oak 73,548+x
Minus most of Selly Oak (18,297), plus Kings Norton. The other wards are Billesley, Bournville, and Brandwood.
Birmingham Northfield 72,809+x
minus Kings Norton, plus Bartley Green and western parts of Selly Oak
Birmingham Edgbaston 68,905+x
minus Bartley Green, plus Ladywood and central/northeastern portions of Selly Oak
77,853 on average.

The Eastern cluster (Hodge Hill, Yardley, Hall Green, and Nechells ward) doesn't work though - too many people.

More or less the southern half (geographically) of the West Brom East constituency. Though it depends how you define West Brom; I think the old county borough may have gone further north than that.


To an extent, yes (even the stupid name 'Sandwell' hints at the dominance of West Brom, btw). But also, I think West Brom West of 1983-1997 did contain a small part of West Brom proper.

No it couldn't. Oldbury is pretty big, and they'd lynch you if you included those places and left them out.

Heh, I get criticised for inventing too long names, too short names, I can't win :)

I've been quite hungover throughout the day, so not been in the mood for looking at Gtr Manchester. Will look tomorrow. I have some ideas which could mean massive surgery in the Manchester area....

Birmingham Hodge Hill Hall Green. I meant to say Hall Green. 76,620
minus Sparkbrook, plus Acocks Green, this is now the four ward constituency.
Birmingham Yardley 71,968+x
minus Acocks Green, plus Shard End and part of Bordesley Green (19,690)
Birmingham Perry Barr 70,133+x
minus Oscott, plus Soho and part of Aston (19,252)
Birmingham Central(?) 57,575+x
Washwood Heath, Nechells, Sparkbrook and remainder of Aston and Bordesley Green
79,539 on average - this would have to be very finely sliced, or alternatively yet another ward split with a portion going to Hodge Hill Hall Green.

Birmingham Erdington 67,342+x
Plus Hodge Hill, minus part of Kingstanding (17,109)
Birmingham Sutton 74,877+x
Plus part of Kingstanding (which means it's not identical to the old UD anymore which means there's a pretext to give it a Brummie name, yay! >:D )
Aldridge, Brownhills & Oscott 68,015+x
Loses Pelsall and Rushall-Shelfield, gains Pheasey Park Farm in Walsall and Oscott and part of Kingstanding in Birmingham
75,781 on average.

Walsall 73,410+x
Birchalls Leamore and Blakenall from Walsall N, Pelsall and Rushall-Shelfield from Aldridge-Brownhills, Paddock, Palfrey, Pleck and St Matthews from Walsall S.
Darlaston, Willenhall, Wednesfield & Bloxwich 82,739-x
Also includes Short Heath ward. Bloxwich East would be divided between this and Walsall. Suggestions for a shorter name welcome - this sounds Scottish.

Wolverhampton South 77,485
Current SE constituency minus the bit in Dudley plus Graiseley, Merry Hill and Penn
Wolverhampton North 73,658
remainder

or alternatively
Wolverhampton West 74,863
Current SW constituency plus Blakenhall and Oxley
Wolverhampton East 76,280
remainder

You will be hunted down and killed for "Birmingham Sutton" you know ;) :)

More serious comment later, maybe.


LOL
 

Birmingham Handsworth


Constituencies in Birmingham are traditionally named for wards. Sparkbrook is a nice name and an important one (at least as regards constituency names) in Birmingham's history.


haha

But if you're going to do that, part of Erdington ward (which has community of interest with Slutton) rather than part of Kingstanding (which... erm... doesn't).


Yo-Yo with Yam-Yam?

What's so funny?
Suggestion accepted.

Suggestion certainly not accepted. Especially as I don't get the reference.

Now that I think about it... it's perfectly unnecessary to involve Sutton Coldfield. And if I'm leaving the constituency unchanged, I'm leaving the name unchanged too.

There was a Kings Norton constituency until the early 50s. Sort of like current Northfield, but bigger. Surprisingly, was actually the first part of Birmingham to elect a Labour MP and in 1924 of all years. Herbert Austin (yes, that one) was the Tory incumbent and his defeat was entirely his own making.


Hahahaha... oh... dear Lord... I mean, there's a certain logic there but... LOL. The reaction would be something to see!

Also, pro-German gerrymandering obviously.

Had to be done. Lest that bitch comes back and messes up our politics.

Many, many things, thus the bolding. The most blatant white-flight territory in Birmingham itself (most of the Sheldon ward, parts of the Stechford & Yardley North ward) in the same constituency as the Small Heath area? Epic. And there's screwing incumbents and there's screwing incumbents ;D. And this one happens to be quite a whiner. 'twud be fun to watch.


Ever heard anyone from the Black Country talk?

Remind me, what's John Hemming's majority these days?

3,002 (7.3). Which turns into a small Labour lead if you swap Acocks Green for Shard End. And anything coming in from Bordesley Green would be extremely bad for him, though hard to calculate.

Hereford & South Herefordshire 72,245
unchanged. Horribly redundant name, though. I can see why they changed it from "Hereford", but given what they did to "Leominster" why didn't they just go with "South Herefordshire"? I didn't transfer enough of Worcs into the other seat to have any leeway to change this one.
North Herefordshire 73,647
gains the Tenbury, Teme Valley, and Lindridge wards from Worcestershire West - an area similar to (but somewhat smaller than) the one it included until 2010. 9% of the district is in Worcs, but I'm not going to call it N Herefordshire & Tenbury.
Worcester 72,965
Wyre Forest 76,774
Bromsgrove 73,430
all of these are constituencies that are not only of legal population already but also coterminous with districts of the same name. Which makes changes hard to envisage unless it really messed up the figures elsewhere.
Worcestershire West 74,392
Loses Tenbury, Teme Valley, Lindridge; gains Hartlebury, Ombersley, Drakes Broughton, Norton & Whittington in a strip north and south of Worcester.
Worcestershire East 72,952
This was always somewhat misnamed as Worcestershire Mid - it includes the southeast corner for god's sake - and getting more so with my changes. Loses the four wards listed just above, gains Inkberrow and the Redditch district ward of Astwood Bank & Feckenham.

If I wanted to neither split Redditch nor wholly redraw rural Worcestershire nor have more than one constituency cross into Warwickshire, I had no choice but to draw these districts somewhat undersized, which forced large and sometimes somewhat unfortunate districts in Warwickshire. Broadly it's a return to the pre 2010 map, including the oddball Rugby & Kenilworth pairing.

Redditch 79,087
Loses the more rural wards in Worcestershire, but gains a larger rural territory in Warwickshire instead: Tanworth, Studley, Sambourne, Alcester, Kinwarton, and Bidford & Salford wards. 73% of the seat are in Worcestershire.
Stratford on Avon 74,711
Remainder of district, Leam Valley ward in Rugby
Warwick & Leamington 78,037
Regains all the Warwick district wards it lost in 2010 (but not the bit of Stratford district that it used to include as well): Lapworth, Leek Wootton, Cubbington, Radford Semele (however you pronounce that)
North Warwickshire 77,541
Regains the Arley & Whitacre and Hartshill wards, and thus exactly as in 97-10.
Nuneaton 77,378
Loses these, gains Bulkington, Wolvey, Fosse, Avon & Swift, and even Earl Craven & Wolston wards from Rugby
Rugby & Kenilworth 78,657
The motheaten ugly remainders of Rugby and Warwick districts.

The one alternative I could try is pairing Kenilworth with Stratford, tossing a lot rural country southeast of Warwick into the Rugby seat (and a bit into the Warwick seat too.)

Bear with me. The "least hassle, keep 10 out of 12 seats (or I guess nine out of 12) perfectly in character, abolish a seat in the middle/where there are low pop. totals" approach spells Stoke South & Stone. I can hear the howls of derision already.
I'm just posting it as a basis for discussion (and speaking of bases for discussion, Al, you haven't commented on my second Shropshire plan yet.)

Tamworth 74,761
gains Hammerwich ward
Lichfield 76,413
loses Hammerwich, gains Stafford borough wards of Chartley and Haywood & Hixon.
Cannock Chase 74,828
Unchanged. Based on district, too.
South Staffordshire 73,630
Unchanged. But somewhat misnamed.
Stafford 77,559
Loses Haywood & Hixon, gains Church Eaton, Gnosall & Woodseaves, Eccleshall
Burton 75,081
Unchanged
Newcastle-under-Lyme 77,883
gains the more rural wards currently in the Stone constituency, Madeley and Loggerheads & Whitmore (there is a place called "Loggerheads"? Seriously?)
Staffordshire Moorlands 77,952
Whole district. This is the seat I meant when I said one seat's character was changed.
Stoke-on-Trent North 75,029
Gains Newchapel ward currently in Moorlands constituency (though it was of legal population before).
Stoke-on-Trent Central 79,229
Gains Fenton and Weston & Meir Park wards. Odd looking additions, I know - there's a ward between them - but a) this saved us a ward split b) the ward between them is Longton North. To the south of which lays Longton South. Which sounded like they ought to remain together. Just as both Burslem wards are in N and both Hanley wards are in C.
Stoke-on-Trent South & Stone 75,842
Eh, yeah. What's left really. Stoke South minus Fenton and Weston & Meir Park, and seven Stafford wards: Stonefield & Christchurch, Saint Michael's, Walton (these three wards are the town of Stone), Forebridge, Barlaston & Oulton, Swynnerton, and Milwich

Right, got Wigan (c75k), Makerfield (c73k) and Leigh (c75k)

This leaves Bolton minus bits (c176k) and Atherton ward. I fear that it would be impossible to create seats with just the left over bits and Atherton. I'll report back!

Fair enough on the Cumbrian names.

I thought I'd have a look at the can of worms that is Northern Ireland.  As I mentioned before, Nicholas Whyte has a post on his blog (http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1471864.html) on the subject, and some of my thoughts are similar to those there (including in the comments).

The first question is how many Belfast seats:
(a) 2, covering most of the city council area, with the rest of the urban area distributed between the surrounding seats.  I'm not convinced by this, given Belfast's tightly drawn boundary.
(b) 3, covering a similar area to the 4 seats now.  The trouble with this is that you end up with a controversial South-West Belfast seat; apparently this was proposed before and there was an outcry.
(c) 4, extending the existing seats even further into the surrounding area.  The trouble with this is that the urban area doesn't go much further in most directions.

Anyway, I had a go with (c).  The electorate numbers I used were July 2010, which is clearly somewhat higher overall than December 2009, so I couldn't keep all 15 seats below 79,655.  Some of this may need adjustment.

1. East Belfast and Newtownards.  Gains the Newtownards and Comber areas of Ards DC, loses a couple of wards in inner Belfast.  I don't think you can do (c) without doing something like this.

2. South Belfast.  Gains a couple of wards from East Belfast (I used Ballymacarrett and The Mount), the Dunmurry area transferred from Lagan Valley to West Belfast in the last review, and the remaining part of the Dunmurry area that stayed in Lagan Valley.  Probably also needs the rural Moneyreagh ward of Castlereagh.

3. West Belfast.  Loses Dunmurry, gains the rest of the Shankill and about 5 more wards from the south of North Belfast.

4. North Belfast and Newtownabbey.  Loses its southern areas, gains the parts of Newtownabbey district it doesn't already contain.

5. North Down.  Gains the Ards peninsula.

6. East Antrim (possibly needs a new name).  Loses the Newtownabbey bit, gains eastern wards from Ballymena district and most of Antrim district.  This is pretty ugly; maybe it'd be easier if North Belfast went towards Carrickfergus rather than Ballyclare?

7. North Antrim.  Loses areas east of Ballymena, gains Portrush and Portstewart (otherwise the western seats are in danger of being oversized) and probably also a handful of wards in the NW of Antrim district.

8. Lagan Valley.  Extends both north, to take southernmost three or so wards from Antrim district, and east, taking the parts of Strangford I haven't put anywhere else.  Has to lose the Dromore area.  I don't like this one much.

9. South Down.  Extends back north, taking in the four southernmost wards of Strangford.

10. Upper Bann.  Largely unchanged, but gains Dromore and thus may need to lose a couple of fringe wards to Newry and Armagh.

11. Newry and Armagh.  See Upper Bann

12. Fermanagh and South Tyrone.  Regains the Coalisland area lost in 1997.

13. West Tyrone (or possibly Mid-Ulster, or possibly something else).  Loses northern fringe of Strabane district, gains Cookstown district.

14. Foyle.  Gains northern four wards of Strabane district, regains Banagher and Claudy lost in 2010.

15. East Stroke County.  Loses Banagher and Claudy and the Portrush/Portstewart area, gains Magherafelt district.

Mid-Ulster, Strangford and South Antrim are abolished.

I'm sure there'll be some better ideas!

Edit: I tried to do this "blind" to the effects on the sectarian divide, and haven't calculated them, but I suspect Unionists won't like what I've done to East 'Derry, and it's not clear that they get much compensation elsewhere.

Bolton is driving me mad. I'm only 900 votes short of quota, but I can't get Bolton West redrawn :(

How do you want to redraw Bolton West anyway?

I do think you may be starting with the wrong place in just trying to do Bolton (or something) and hoping everything else will fall into place.  Bolton is so far away from the quota that there will be knock-on effects with the neighbouring boroughs (Salford and Bury).

I used to live in Stratford constituency and my personal feelings are that residents in Warwickshire would strongly object to being clumped in with Redditch.

I am working west-->east, so now the borough of Wigan is done (Atherton missing out), I was hoping it would all work out.....I could create a JUST under Bolton West and hope the December 2010 electorate tips it over ;)

Right, progress.....


Bolton West
Unchanged. It is under quota, but I will argue that the stability is surely a selling point? Unless we're going to start splitting wards, this is the best solution all round

Bolton Central
Oh you'd love to know what I almost called this ;)  This takes wards from top to bottom of Bolton borough, south and north.

Bolton East and Radcliffe
Okay, the shape of this is AWFUL, but as long as you accept that the A667 is a valid link between Kearsley and the western bits of Bury, all is well, no?

Yeah, I think it might be better to expand Redditch southwestward, which will force a remap of the rural seats - which might also allow to make the seats in northern Warwickshire smaller and avoid Rugby & Kenilworth (though that would mean Stratford & Kenilworth. Kenilworth, Warwick and Leamington will not go into one seat).

Going to bed with these...

Worsley - 72,808
Salford and Eccles - 75,678

Blackley and Broughton - 71,977
Manchester Central and Ordsall - 71,028

Would like a ward list in order to critique.  What are you proposing to do with Bury - something like my Bury and Prestwich?

The A667 only really links Whitefield (Besses and Pilkington Park wards) and Farnworth/Kearsley.  It doesn't go to Radcliffe.  Logically Little Lever would be a better fit with Radcliffe.

I remember getting negative feedback from Iain Lindley on the Vote UK forum after proposing something similar.  The centre of Salford proper is (or was) in Ordsall and Irwell Riverside wards, so "Manchester Central and Ordsall" would probably be better as "Cities of Salford and Manchester".  That order - Salford came first.  What do you do with "Salford and Eccles" then though?

Does Salford proper really need to be split into three?

My fear is, if Manchester/Salford is under quota, or just impossible to fashion, then my entire proposal falls down. I don't fancy going all the way back to Garstang just to solve Salford.

Bolton West
Bolton West      71,061
Atherton   00BWGG   10,618
Westhoughton North and Chew Moor   00BLGR   10,932
Westhoughton South   00BLGS   9,581
Horwich and Blackrod   00BLGH   9,629
Horwich North East   00BLGJ   9,760
Smithills   00BLGP   9,902
Heaton and Lostock   00BLGG   10,639

Bolton Central      75,966
Astley Bridge   00BLFX   10,035
Crompton   00BLGB   9,939
Halliwell   00BLGE   8,827
Rumworth   00BLGN   9,742
Hulton   00BLGK   9,777
Great Lever   00BLGD   9,223
Tonge with the Haulgh   00BLGQ   8,944
Breightmet   00BLFZ   9,479

Bolton East and Radcliffe       73,814
Farnworth   00BLGC   10,708
Harper Green   00BLGF   9,506
Kearsley   00BLGL   10,345
Radcliffe East   00BMGB   8,468
Radcliffe North   00BMGC   8,839
Radcliffe West   00BMGD   8,395
Pilkington Park   00BMGA   7,777
Little Lever and Darcy Lever   00BLGM   9,776

Hmm, not as bad as it could have been.  I'd assumed from the name "Bolton East and Radcliffe" that it had Breightmet in it, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

The only part of your "Bolton East and Radcliffe" which is in Bolton proper is the village of Darcy Lever, so I think you should resurrect a very old constituency name and call it "Radcliffe-cum-Farnworth".  The split of Whitefield isn't very elegant though.  Your "Bolton Central" being as much of Bolton proper as will fit in one seat makes a lot of sense.

I'm still worried about what you're going to do with Bury - I think you've left yourself short in Botchdale.

No, it can be included in one. It does mean largeish seats in Bolton and Bury and very small ones in Manchester (and Oldham, but we're all counting on that) though.

We have clearly come with a substantial number of ideas, however it is now difficult to tell what are proposals, what are actual committed constituencies and how those committed constituencies would turn out.

Therefore could I suggest that people who have made committed constituenciues (i.e constituencies that they are happy with and make electoral sense) to pm me with their constituencies (and how similar they are to old constituencies (i.e constituency name = 55% of 2010 constituency, 32% of 2010 constituency)) and I will post in a new thread entitled "US Atlas Forum Notionals 2010", how these new constituencies would rack up.

West Worcestershire (or Malvern & Droitwich) 78,918
Malvern Hills district except for the three wards ceded to the N Herefordshire seat; Droitwich and three rural wards west of it
Bromsgrove 75,334
gains Dodderhill. Which won't go into West and looks really, really wrong in Redditch where I wanted to place it at first.
Redditch 73,553
gains Bowbrook, Pinvin and Upton Snodsbury wards
Evesham 79,279
Remaining southern half of Whichavon district (64% of constituency); the whole southwestern tier of Warwickshire from Alcester to Long Compton plus Kinwarton, Aston Cantlow and Bardon (mostly because a different arrangement looks even odder on the map)
Warwick & Leamington 73,240
gains Radford Semele and Cubbington
Stratford & Kenilworth 76,452
Remainder of Warwick district, Stratford and eleven further wards. Difficult to explain otherwise so I'll list: Sambourne, Studley, Tanworth, Henley, Claverdon, Snitterfield, Wellesbourne, Ettington, Vale of the Red Horse, Kineton, Burton Dassett.If the two wards I added to Warwick & Leamington were here instead it'd make a perfect donut.
Alternatives include exchanging the three western wards around Studley for the four wards in the far southern corner of the county now included in Evesham (for a net gain of 230 persons here); or even Warwick & Stratford and Leamington & Kenilworth districts (though we'd need to find some two thousand extra persons to put into the latter.)
North Warwickshire 77,541
Regains the Arley & Whitacre and Hartshill wards, and thus exactly as in 97-10
Nuneaton 75,232
loses these, gains Bulkington, Wolvey, Fosse, and Earl Craven & Wolston from Rugby
Rugby 76,655
Remainder of borough, Long Itchington, Southam, Stockton & Napton, Fenny Compton and Harbury wards of Stratford district.

No discussion has occurred >:( but I've been thinking about it.

The Potteries (defined as Stoke and Newcastle-under-Lyme) will not go into three seats and will not fill four; there's no way to avoid that. But rather than clap on some completely different area maybe they can be padded out with Biddulph and odds and ends elsewhere? As a straight swap that means a just as bizarre Stone & Leek seat... but maybe I can exchange some wards here and there, involving the Burton and Lichfield seats, and come out with a presentable result. I'll go try in a minute.

There's two unrelated mini-errors with Stoke S & Stone anyways. "Forebridge" should read "Fulton" (Forebridge ward is in Stafford town), and the pop. is 75,847.

I'll be commenting later today :)

Tamworth 74,761
gains Hammerwich ward
Lichfield 79,546
loses Hammerwich, Needwood, gains Stafford borough wards of Chartley, Haywood & Hixon, and Milford and the Cannock Chase ward of Rawnsley.
Cannock Chase 77,132
Loses Rawnsley, Norton Canes, gains Huntington & Hatherton and the three Penkridge wards.
South Staffordshire 79,164
Loses Huntington & Hatherton, gains Norton Canes and Wheaton Aston etc.
Stafford & Stone 79,206
Loses Haywood & Hixon, Milford, South Staffordshire parts, gains Church Eaton, Gnosall & Woodseaves, Eccleshall, Milwich, Barlaston & Oulton, Stone town wards (compared to current Stafford seat)
Burton 75,725
Loses Weaver, Churnet; gains Needwood
Newcastle-under-Lyme 73,150
gains the more rural wards currently in the Stone constituency, Madeley and Loggerheads & Whitmore (there is a place called "Loggerheads"? Seriously?); loses Audley & Bignall End
Staffordshire Moorlands 73,731
Whole district except for the Brown Edge & Endon, Bagnall & Stanley, and Werrington wards; Weaver and Churnet from Burton.
Stoke-on-Trent North 73,595
Gains Audley & Bignall End, Newchapel, and Brown Edge & Endon outside of the city, loses East Valley within it.
Stoke-on-Trent Central 75,340
Gains East Valley and (outside the city limits) Bagnall & Stanley and Werrington
Stoke-on-Trent South 76,862
Gains some extensions into northernmost Stafford district: Fulford and Swynnerton wards.

Adding Biddulph to Stoke N would have meant adding Uttoxeter to Burton Moorlands, which would have meant adding all the remaining territory just outside of Lichfield (that's not in Tamworth already) to Burton and a bizarre stretch of a Lichfield-to-Stone constituency. A prospect I balked at (though I since found out that a similar constituency, named Mid Staffordshire, existed from 1983 to 1997. And provided a memorable by-election in 1990.) So that got me to thinking... where do I want to put Stone? And the answer was Stafford, if it couldn't be the center of its own constituency anymore. (A Stone & Uttoxeter constituency might have looked okay too, except that the populations north and south of it were totally wrong - it didn't actually solve anything.) 'Kay then - what do I need to drop from Stafford to make that work? And the answer was Penkridge. Which wouldn't go into South Staffordshire... but with some alterations might go into Cannock Chase (though I dare say it doesn't belong there). And hence what I drew...

Alternative version to do less violence to Cannock Chase:

Tamworth 74,761
gains Hammerwich ward
Lichfield 76,928
loses Hammerwich, Needwood, gains Stafford borough wards of Chartley, and Haywood & Hixon, and the Cannock Chase ward of Brereton & Ravenhill.
Cannock Chase 78,493
Loses Brereton & Ravenhill, gains the two Great Wyrley wards.
South Staffordshire 78,347
District excluding Great Wyrley; Church Eaton ward in Stafford district
Stafford & Stone 78,046
Loses Haywood & Hixon, South Staffordshire parts, gains Gnosall & Woodseaves, Eccleshall, Milwich, Stone town wards (compared to current Stafford seat)
Burton 75,725
Loses Weaver, Churnet; gains Needwood
Newcastle-under-Lyme 73,150
gains the more rural wards currently in the Stone constituency, Madeley and Loggerheads & Whitmore (there is a place called "Loggerheads"? Seriously?); loses Audley & Bignall End
Staffordshire Moorlands 78,622
Whole district except for the Brown Edge & Endon, Bagnall & Stanley, and Werrington wards; Weaver and Churnet from Burton, Fulford from Stafford Borough.
Stoke-on-Trent North 73,595
Gains Audley & Bignall End, Newchapel, and Brown Edge & Endon outside of the city, loses East Valley within it.
Stoke-on-Trent Central 75,340
Gains East Valley and (outside the city limits) Bagnall & Stanley and Werrington
Stoke-on-Trent South 75,202
Gains an extension into northern Stafford district: Barlaston & Oulton and Swynnerton wards.

Would it wreck the figures to reunite St Martins with Weston Rhyn? Or, alternatively, add them to whatever constituency Chirk is in ;D

No, but, seriously... the splitting of the two was an extremely stupid decision made by the boundary commissars. They don't belong in different constituencies.


Severn Valley would be a much better fit than Clee; the latter should probably not be in a different constituency to Ludlow. But, yeah, this seems like a pretty logical constituency on the whole. What are you doing about the Corvedale ward? It also includes the Apedale, which was in South Shropshire district, not Bridgnorth.


Given that 'Derbyshire Dales' managed to become a constituency name at the last review, I get the impression that some tool would nominate 'Shropshire Hills'. But I think Shropshire West (the name of a pre-1918 constituency) would the name the commission would prefer, though there might be demands to preserve the name of Ludlow.

Anyway, it's pretty absurd but no more absurd than the existing Ludlow constituency, tbh. Does Clun have much to do (or in common) with Oswestry? No. But it doesn't have anything to do with Bridgnorth either. And arguments about historical continuity (something I'm generally favourably disposed towards) obviously don't count when you decide to impose 5% limits on things and go for a big cut in the number of MPs.

One alternative would be to create three totally Potteries seats (say (just examples as I've not played with the figures) a NuL extending to Kidsgrove, a Stoke North extending as far as Bentilee and a Stoke South (a name that I'd like kept as it was for many years represented by one of the best people ever elected to the Commons) that's sort of Hanley-to-Longton) and then put the less 'pure' Potteries bits in with some other Staffordshire constituency.

Presumably not; it would just mean needlessly splitting a ward. Which I tend to avoid, esp. if it also means being inable to provide exact pop. figures. And the St Martin's ward also includes part of Ellesmere Rural Parish, so, yeah. Besides, it looks pleasing graphically that-a-way. :P

Is included here. It's not as if we can go any lower here, either.
I'd much prefer "Shropshire March". :D
The draft legislation agrees with you - historical continuity is expressly struck from the list of things the Commission is to take into account, for one review only.

Are you proposing to remove some Stoke wards here? Filling up three constituencies to the brim (w/o ward splits) and starting from the southern end of Stoke gives you
Stoke South 77,935
Gains Stoke & Trent Vale
Stoke North or Central or whatever 79,543
Loses that; gains Burslem wards, East Valley
Newcastle-under-Lyme 78,559
Three northernmost Stoke wards, parts of NuL currently in Stoke N, eight quite urban wards from Chesterton to Town incl. points east. That's right, Town ward would be the southern tip of such a Newcastle-under-Lyme seat, nine wards of the current constituency of which six are  quite dense would be left out.

Uh, yeah. I meant to add that bit, yeah. More genuinely suburban wards like Trentham & Hanford.

South of England here I come...

You'll have to provide a graded list of what parts of the city might be left out. :P Mind you, this approach will leave us coming out with a slightly sanitized version of Stoke South & Stone.

A NuL minus Keele and Halmerend plus the parts currently in Stoke N is 78,699. It has an oddlooking western boundary though, but I don't think the graphically appealing solution (removing Silverdale & Parksite) is going to be popular with anybody.
Stoke N plus Northwood & Beeches Head, Abbey Green, Bentilee & Townend is too large at 82,661. Stoke S consisting of C minus those three plus Fenton and the Longton wards is 63,436, to which could be added Blurton and half a ward from N... or alternatively we could put the Bentilee ward back into S for two very small (but legal) constituencies.
That leaves Trentham & Hanford, the two wards with Meir Park in their name, and optionally Blurton to go into a Stone seat, along with the rural fringe of NuL.

EDIT: Leaving the southern boundary untouched, that is 69,984 excluding Blurton. As Moorlands would need to take in Newchapel it needs to drop a ward in the southwest - using Forsbrook works nicely at 76,554 in Moorlands and 74,166 in Stone & Meir Park (or whatever we call it). Which thus excludes Blurton.

The far Southeast has hellish little pitfalls. Surrey has only two seats that are below quota - Reigate (which can be fixed easily enough, if not very elegantly, by adding Chaldon ward from East Surrey), and Spelthorne. Which of course is a constituency unchanged since 1945 or somesuch, is not historically in Surrey, is across the Thames from the remainder of Surrey, and is exclusively fronted across the Thames by towns of the kind of size I hate to split. I thought of adding Colnbrook with Poyle ward - the suburban Slough borough ward in Windsor constituency - which works fine, just fine - except that Windsor is undersized as is and I really don't know where to expand it, except maybe deeper into Slough or across the Thames in Oxfordshire at which I haven't looked yet. (It cuts very finely by Bracknell town as is, Maidenhead is just barely legal right now). Reading W is undersized too, no issues there though.
East Sussex which I looked at first is fine, just fine, except that everything around Brighton is undersized. Which is an obvious problem at Hove. It's not undersized by much, either. I actually tried going through West Sussex but that doesn't seem to work out either.
I'm leaving it at that for now.

Gee. Quite possibly the only solution to Windsor and Spelthorne that doesn't involve marginally redrawing two dozen seats (I gave up after unintentionally drawing the necessary minor corrections for stand-alone Oxfordshire and Bucks maps in the one direction, then again halfway through Surrey after deciding to cross the Berkshire-Surrey border twice. This isn't going to lead anywhere) is slapping half of Hampton (that's Hampton, Twickenham, Greater London) onto Spelthorne and a random central Slough ward onto Windsor... that would solve the issue, mind.

Love the cat box thing, fwiw.

That's very nice and all, but I need some guidance on the southeast. Sussex is quite as much of a bitch as those Windsory/Spelthorney parts.

Righto, I've worked it out that I can put a bit of Oxfordshire (rural parts near Bicester - the Banbury seat is too large at current, and an ugly map would have ensued with or without the county line cross) into Buckingham and a bit of Buckinghamshire (Burnham) into Slough and make ends meet.
Of course I could have crossed from Oxfordshire into Berkshire instead... that county line is fake anyways... but the problem is that there wasn't a problem in that region, if that makes sense.

Sussex will be bad too... :(

Surrey East 75,456
loses Chaldon ward
Reigate 72,624
gains Chaldon ward

No changes to
Epsom & Ewell 76,052
Esher & Walton 75,716
Guildford 76,836
Mole Valley 72,110
Runnymede & Weybridge 72,455
Surrey Heath 77,342
Surrey South West 76,719
Woking 73,064

Spelthorne 74,642
gains Horton & Wraysbury ward from Windsor, Berkshire

Newbury78,468
unchanged
Reading West 78,187
gains Sulhamstead and Burghfield
Reading East 74,855
unchanged
Wokingham 78,508
loses Sulhamstead and Burghfield, gains Finchampstead North and South
Bracknell 73,860
loses Finchampstead, gains (as it really, really should) the ward with the strange name of "Warfield Harvest Ride". Which is in Bracknell, but currently included in the Windsor constituency.
Maidenhead 72,568
unchanged
Windsor & Slough East 76,248
loses Warfield Harvest Ride and Horton & Wraysbury (see above, Spelthorne); gains three wards in Slough in addition to the one it already holds, ie Foxborough, Kederminster, Langley Saint Mary's, and has been renamed according.
Slough West (and Burnham, but I don't think it's really important enough. I mean, look at Reading.) 72,548
Loses three Slough wards, gains five South Bucks wards with a population about equal to two of those three lost ones: Dorney & Burnham S, Burnham Lent Rise, Burnham Church, Burnham Beeches, Taplow

Beaconsfield 73,224
Loses these five, gains the Chiltern wards of Austenwood, Gold Hill, Central, and Chalfont Common. "Central" seems to mean Chalfont Saint Peter Central, btw, which is the area these wards describe.
Wycombe 73,306
unchanged
Chesham & Amersham 75,271
Loses Chalfont St Peter, gains the Wycombe district wards currently in the oddly-shaped Aylesbury constituency. (Chesham & Amersham is undersized on current boundaries.)
Aylesbury 73,320
Loses these, gains the two Wycombe wards in Buckingham constituency instead, and the ward of Bierton just outside of Aylesbury town. There have been three minimal transfers of territory between Buckingham and Aylesbury wards, two of which affect single-digit numbers of electors while the third does not affect any voters, and I've corrected for these, too.
Buckingham 75,366
Loses three wards as described, gains the Northeastern Oxfordshire wards of Fringford, Launton, Ambrosden & Chesterton, Otmoor, and Kirtlington.
Banbury 77,598
Loses Fringford, Launton, and Ambrosden & Chesterton (the last of which was transferred for the sake of this constituency rather than Buckingham). Moving Bicester out would have involved far too many people.
Henley 74,770
Loses Otmoor and Kirtlington; gains Radley and Kennington & South Hinksey. This was a hard decision; it meant crossing the Thames. I didn't much like the alternatives of splitting the towns of Kidlington or Wallingford (which is across the Thames too, anyways). Or putting one Oxford ward in. There is a road link, strictly speaking - in one direction. (The eastern half of the bridge, and the access road to it, form the Oxford city limit and thus the constituency boundary too.) The next bridge is at Abingdon, of course, and thus not far off either.
Oxford East 76,177
Loses the Carfax ward. I would have liked to lose Hinksey Park and Holywell as well and thus put the line at the Cherwell river, but it doesn't work that way. No builtup territory just outside the city limit to put in; no more than there's quasi-rural territory within the city. Really rather remarkable how the city and the conurbation are identical on the east side of Oxford. Constituency was oversized previously.
Oxford West & Abingdon 76,332
Gains Carfax, loses Radley and Kennington & South Hinksey
Witney 78,141
unchanged
Wantage 78,777
unchanged

Yeah, I've finally taken my own advice, and also "cheated" by advocating multiple wardsplitting in Brighton. After that it's perfectly easy (well, Kent wasn't, but that was a given. One seat abolished and just too damn many options. Let's see if I can even recreate what I drew, my notes are very cryptic this time... )
Of the current 17 constituencies in Kent, 6 are on target (of which two had to be redrawn on account of their neighbors, two were redrawn just because, and two were left unchanged), 10 are undersized, and Ashford is oversized.

Graves"ham" 74,807
District (= current, undersized constituency) and that one Sevenoaks ward currently in Dartford constituency, Hartley & Hodsoll Street
Dartford 73,716 (or 77,093)
District, Sevenoaks ward of Farningham, Horton Kirby & South Darenth. And optionally Hextable as well.
Sevenoaks 78,400 (or 75,023)
Remainder of district, including a sizable portion currently in Tonbridge & Malling.
Tonbridge & Malling 76,421
District excluding Aylesford; Blue Bell Hill & Walderslade, and Burham, Eccles & Wouldham wards. (So loses the Sevenoaks bit but gains Snodland and Larkfield. Which I thinks rather changes its character. And Ditton.)
Tunbridge Wells 79,183
Whole district
Rochester & Strood 74,269
unchanged
Gillingham & Chatham 78,463
Medway part of Chatham & Aylesford constituency, Gillingham N and S, Twydall, Watling wards
Rainham & Mid Kent 78,204
This is ugly. four remaining Medway wards (Rainham N, C, S and Hempstead & Wigmore), three Tonbridge & Malling wards, and eight of the thirteen Maidstone wards in the abolished Faversham & Mid Kent constituency (see below for list of the other five). Exchanging Rainham North for Lordswood & Capstone makes for a nicer mapshape (and 96 more persons here and 96 fewer in Gillingham & Chatham) but there's the name issue. Also seems to cut right through built-up territory in worse ways.
Maidstone 78,208
Loses the two Tunbridge Wells wards (and thus a considerably bit of Weald, not sure it ought to be excised from the name. Maidstone & Low Weald might also work.), gains Park Wood, Boughton Monchelsea & Chart Sutton, Sutton Valence & Langley, Leeds, and Headcorn.
Sittingbourne & Sheppey 75,509
unchanged
Canterbury (& Faversham, though I prefer the simpler form) 75,088
Loses Chestfield & Swalecliffe, Gorrell, Harbour, and Tankerton; gains Faversham part of Swale district / Faversham & Mid Kent constituency
Whitstable, Herne Bay & Thanet West 75,205
Open for suggestions on name. Compared to current Thanet N, gains abovelisted Whitstable area from Canterbury, loses Margate Central, Dane Valley, and Salmestone. Now just 34% of the constituency in Thanet district (even on current boundaries it's just 55%).
Thanet East 77,282
Compared to current Thanet South, gains three wards in Margate, loses Little Stour & Ashstone
Dover 76,970
Gains Little Stour & Ashstone. (So whole district except Sandwich.)
Folkestone & Hythe 73,479
Shepway district (loses that one Ashford ward, Saxon Shore. Which is not on the shore.)
Ashford 75,453
Gains Saxon Shore, loses the Tenterden area: Saint Michael's, Rolverden & Tenterden W, Tenterden N, S, Isle of Oxney.

Yes, yes I could.

Bexhill, Battle & Tenterden 75,624
Loses Frant/Withyham, Heathfield E, Heathfield N & C (odd cardinal points caused by the fact that Frant/Withyham extends into Heathfield), and Herstmonceaux; gains the Tenterden area. Tenterden's actually rather smaller than Heathfield. Then again, so is Battle. 13% of the constituency is in Kent. Oh yeah, and there's been a minor ward change that affects three electors, which have been moved into Lewes to realign with ward boundaries.
Hastings & Rye 77,022
Eastbourne 77,272
unchanged
Wealden 74,012
Gains the Heathfield area, loses Hailsham C&N, E, S&W, Hellingly
Lewes 74,549 (or 76,168)
Gains the Hailsham area, loses the two Newhaven wards and probably Kingston ward. Of course this is somewhat misnamed as "Lewes", but that's nothing new - the largest settlement is and remains Seaford.
Hove 70,598+x
Gains a minor part of Withdean (10,568) ward. The Regency ward would have fit in whole, but, well, the nomenclatural problem with that should be obvious. :) And it doesn't stop there - I needed to remove as little from Kemptown as possible in order not to force it to expand out all the way to Lewes town (or split Seaford). Which would also have obvious knock-on effects further east.
Brighton Pavilion 72,234-x+x
Loses a minor part of Withdean, gains a minor part of Moulsecoomb & Bevendean (11,412)
Brighton Kemptown 75,634-x (or 74,015-x)
Gains the Newhaven wards and probably Kingston ward, loses a minor part of Moulsecoomb & Bevendean. If the split-off ward bits are kept to a bare minimum the transfer of Kingston can be avoided, which would be a good thing. (It's quite rural and obviously looks to Lewes.) But that depends on how reasonable the ward splits within Brighton can be - it comes down to a question of "what's the price and is it worth paying", and I cant answer the second part without being able to answer the first part first.

Crawley 75,726
Gains Copthorne & Worth ward
Horsham 72,522
Loses said ward
Mid Sussex 73,836 (or 75,954)
For purely cosmetic reasons, loses the Bolney ward. (Bracketed figure is unchanged.)
Arundel & South Downs 75,025 (or 72,907)
Loses Barnham at the southwest corner, gains Plaistow in the northwest and, for purely cosmetic reasons, Bolney in the northeast.
Chichester 77,450
Loses Plaistow
Bognor Regis & Littlehampton 76,976
Gains Barnham
Worthing West 73,784
Worthing East & Shoreham 72,524
unchanged

My magnum opus... Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex.

Bedford 75,189
Gains Wilshamstead and Eastcotts wards
North East Bedfordshire 78,322
Loses Eastcotts wards in Bedford, gains the parishes of Old Warden, Southill and Clifton included in NE Beds dominated wards in the interim ward map (http://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/images/A4%20CBC%20thematic%20Ward%20and%20Parish%20with%20key%202010_tcm5-15532.pdf).
Mid Bedfordshire 75,528
Loses these and Wilshamstead, gains Chalgrave, Hockliffe and Eggington parishes now similarly included in a Mid Beds dominated ward, and also (sigh) Plantation ward.
South Bedfordshire 73,684
Compared to current SW: Loses these areas, gains the part of SE Bedfordshire Ward currently in Luton S (all but Kensworth)
Luton North West 77,174
Compared to North, gains Biscot and Dallow but loses Barnfield.
Luton South East & Hitchin 76,232
Remainder of city; Hitchin part of current Hitchin & Harpenden constituency except Ermine, "Hitchwood, Offa & Hoo", and Knebworth wards. 36% of electorate in Hertfordshire.

Stevenage 77,654
Gains the latter two
North East Hertfordshire 72,089
Gains Ermine, loses Hertford Rural South
Hertford & Hatfield 78,202
Compared to Hertford & Stortford, loses Stortford town, gains Hertford Rural South ward and Welham Green and all the Hatfield wards of Welwyn Hatfield
Broxbourne 75,765
Gains Brookmans Park & Little Heath ward
Welwyn & Harpenden 76,735
Remainder of Welwyn Hatfield and Hitchin & Harpenden constituencies
Hemel Hempstead 72,682
unchanged
South West Hertfordshire 75,634
loses Hayling ward
Watford 74,931
In the north, loses Abbots Langley. In the south, gains Hayling but loses Carpenders Park. Only current constituency in the whole area to be oversized, btw.
Saint Albans 73,481
Gains Abbots Langley
Hertsmere 73,285
Gains Carpenders Park.

Stortford & Walden 78,089
Compared to current Saffron Walden, gains all of Stortford town in Hertfordshire (35% of new constituency), loses parts in Chelmsford district and Thaxted, Stebbing, and Felsted wards along the eastern edge
Braintree 77,168
Gains said three wards
Witham 76,310
In Chelmsford district, gains Saffron Walden portion and Little Baddow, Danbury & Sandon ward from Maldon. In Colchester district, loses everything but Tiptree. No change to Braintree and Maldon district portions.
Chelmsford 77,607
Colchester 73,501
unchanged
Essex North 76,055
A donut around Colchester, as existed until 2010; compared to current Harwich & Essex N it loses the six coastal wards in and around Harwich but gains four wards from Witham and (to make up the numbers) the St Osyth & Point Clear and Little Clacton & Weeley wards from Clacton
Harwich & Clacton 76,270
Should be self-evident. A very similar seat used to be named Harwich, but now that Clacton (which is larger) has been elevated to constituency name status I see no turning back.
Harlow 75,783
Gains Moreton & Fyfield, High Ongar etc, Shelley, and Chipping Ongar etc. Do I have to rename it Harlow & Ongar? I don't think I do.
Epping Forest 78,848
Gains the other three Epping Forest District wards currently in Brentwood & Ongar, ie Lambourne, North Weald Bassett, and Passingford
Brentwood & Billericay 78,297
Brentwood district, Billericay E and W wards of Basildon, and (had to be done. Worse horrors are yet to come, too) Orsett ward in Thurrock
Rayleigh & Wickford 77,142
More Wickford & Rayleigh actually, as this has travelled quite a bit. Gains the Crouch and Burstead wards in Basildon and the Saint Peter's, Cedar Hall, and Victoria wards in Castle Point; loses Hullbridge, Hockley, and points east.
Yeah. I finally found that I could draw a slightly less obnoxious map if I butchered Castle Point instead of the Basildon part of Basildon. I have no regrets about that, but I do have some regrets that I couldn't make it fit town lines. (Well, Canvey Island and Benfleet are still united - with each other, too - , but the smaller towns of Thundersley and Hadleigh are both split. This includes part of both. Mind you, it's all fairly continuously built up anyways; I guess only Canvey Island seriously has a separate identity.)
Thurrock 77,723
unchanged
Basildon 76,763
All of the borough south of the river, Saint George's ward in Castle Point
Canvey Island, Benfleet & Thurrock East 76,069
Remainder of Castle Point, remainder of Basildon S & Thurrock E. Stanford-le-Hope might be used instead of "Thurrock East".
Maldon & Hockley 76,177
Maldon constituency except for Little Baddow etc ward (see under Witham); Hullbridge and three Hockley wards.
Southend West 74,180
Gains Milton ward
Rochford & Southend East 77,999
Loses Milton; gains Ashingdon & Canewdon and the Hawkwell wards from Rayleigh & Wickford.

Suffolk... just move three wards and you're set.

The Saints is moved from Waveney (77,227) to Suffolk Coastal (78,950). Bury St Edmunds (78,862) cedes Gislingham to Suffolk C & Ipswich N (78,204) and Rickinghall & Walsham to West Suffolk (77,815) and now doesn't border Norfolk anymore. No change to Ipswich (76,530) or Suffolk S (72,641). Despite that latter being the smallest in the county. Just didn't suggest itself.

Cambridgeshire districts are very large, and some Norfolk constituencies are too small - guess which county narrowly gained a seat at the last review, and which narrowly didn't while posting the higher growth rates. This isn't actually abolishing a seat, just a giant trek westward.

Great Yarmouth 78,965
Gains Waxham, Waterside, Stalham & Sutton. Yeah, more than was needed, I know. Made a prettier map that way. Of course I don't see anything wrong with leaving it alone at just over 70k electors, but whatever Mr Cameron.
Norfolk North 72,597
Loses these three but gains the wards it just lost to the new "Broadland" seat introduced at the last review (southwestern portion of the district)
Norwich North 75,852
Regains Drayton N and S and Taverham N and S, also lost at the last review. Really an odd constituency (less than half is in Norwich actually), but I guess it's more the definition of the city limits and the shape of the conurbation that are odd.
Norwich South72,538
unchanged
Norfolk South 76,010
unchanged. Misnamed, strictly geographically speaking. But broadly based on district of same name. It wasn't really an issue before my proposals for a seat west of it that could otherwise bear the name. Oh yeah, moved one elector in response to a minor ward boundary alteration.
Norfolk Mid 78,280
Quite like the pre2010 seat of the same name (and unlike the current one): remainder of Broadland district; Two Rivers, Dereham town, Springvale & Scarning, Launditch and points north in Breckland
Breckland (for want of a better name, Norfolk S being taken. Though Thetford & Wymondham might do.) 78,292
Remaining portions of Norfolk S and Breckland districts
Norfolk North West 73,397
unchanged
Wisbech & Downham 73,553
This is the transcounty constituency. Parts of King's Lynn & West Norfolk district previously in Norfolk SW constituency (53%), Elm & Christchurch ward and all points north in NE Cambridgeshire, and the Peterborough wards of Eye & Thorney and Newborough to the northeast of the city which used to be in NE Cambs until the last review.
Peterborough 72,612
Drops these two, gains the three wards to the northwest of the city instead: Glinton & Wittering, Northborough, Barnack
Cambridgeshire North West 73,895
Loses these three and also Ramsey, gains Alconbury & The Stukeleys
Huntingdon 73,718
Loses Alconbury & The Stukeleys, Gransden & The Offords
Cambridgeshire North East (if that's still the right name. Kind of tempted to call it "Ely". ;D ) 75,637
Loses Elm & Christchurch and points north, gains Ely town wards, Ramsey
Cambridgeshire South East 76,532
Loses Ely town and also Linton at the southern end; gains a string of four wards northwest of Cambridge: Girton, Cottenham, Longstanton, Swavesey
Cambridgeshire South 73,274
Gains Linton, Gransden & The Offords, loses aforementioned string of four. Still contains that one random Cambridge ward. Can't be helped.
Cambridge 75,612
Unchanged

I'd quite like to revive the old "Isle of Ely" name, which would make slightly more sense if Haddenham were in it too.  "Ely" is better than "Cambridgeshire North East", though.

Hmmm... at the time I drew that, I would very much have liked to drop that ward even without knowing that it's historically in the Isle of Ely, just on account of what looked nice. But as it stood then - and also as it stands now - that reduced my SE to below quota.

However, the issue can be addressed with a series of five transfers:

Cambridgeshire North West 77,883
Loses these three [to Peterborough] and also Ramsey, gains Alconbury & The Stukeleys
Huntingdon 73,855
Loses Alconbury & The Stukeleys Fenstanton, Gransden & The Offords
Isle of Ely 73,638
Loses Elm & Christchurch and points north, gains Ely town wards, Ramsey Haddenham
Cambridgeshire South East 75,586
Loses Ely town and also Linton at the southern end Haddenham; gains a string of four wards northwest of Cambridge: Girton, Cottenham, Longstanton, Swavesey
Cambridgeshire South 74,454
Gains Linton Fenstanton, Gransden & The Offords, loses aforementioned string of four. Still contains that one random Cambridge ward. Can't be helped.

Better, I think. Unless you now go spoil my fun and teach me that Ramsey is historical Isle of Ely too and a big reason why you suggested it. That would be not cool if that were the case. (Yes, yes, I know Wisbech is Isle of Ely.)

Incidentally... here's an overview of where in England seats are being cut:
10 in Southern England: West London, North Central London, South Central London, South East London, Kent, Southern Essex, Northern Essex/Hertfordshire/Luton, Wiltshire/South Gloucestershire, Hampshire/Dorset, Devon/Cornwall
8 in the Midlands (more or less): Nottingham, Derbyshire, Warwickshire/Worcestershire, Birmingham/Walsall, Walsall/Wolverhampton, Dudley/"Sandwell", Staffordshire, Shropshire/Rural Cheshire
12 Up North: Wirral, Liverpool/Sefton, Stockport/Tameside, Bolton/Bury/South East Lancashire, Northern Lancashire, Cumbria, Sheffield/Barnsley, Leeds/Bradford, Humberside, Teesside/Southern Durham, Northern Durham (traditionally defined), Northumberland (traditionally defined)

Of course several of these seats (in Essex, Hampshire, Derbyshire, Warwickshire, and Northern Lancashire) had been gained at the last review... and Devon and Cornwall, Wiltshire and Bristol/South Gloucestershire had gained a seat each at the last review and are giving up one of the two now. Since Norfolk and Northamptonshire were forced to share the wealth with places that missed out, none of the eleven seat gains of the last review wholly held.

North Somerset... no changes to N Somerset (77,150) or Weston-super-Mare (78,516).

Bristol... no changes to S (78,148) or NW (73,104). W is only just barely not oversized and E is undersized by a healthy margin, but only one ward in W is small enough to not push W below target, and it's not anywhere near E. So we'll be splitting the Easton ward (8232) between W (71,401+x) and E (68,999+x).

Gloucestershire County Council... Gloucester is oversized and Forest of Dean is undersized. They are very different constituencies but they border each other. And the Westgate ward in Gloucester is situated on two islands in the Severn, actually. (Though east of the main floodway. Forest of Dean constituency is identical to Gloucestershire west of the Severn as of now) and makes more sense to remove than the one random Gloucester ward currently in Tewkesbury. Which will however have to remain there. Being larger than Westgate and all. All the other constituencies are fine as they are:
Forest of Dean 72,852
Gloucester 75,959
Tewkesbury 76,406
Cheltenham 78,469
The Cotswolds 77,138
Stroud 78,261

Swindon: Quite apart but on target at 78,583 N and 72,803 S. To be perfectly honest I didn't even glance at the map.

Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. All eight constituencies are currently below target.

Besides, both have new ward maps. South Gloucestershire (http://www.lgbce.org.uk/__documents/lgbce-documents/all-reviews/south-west/gloucestershire/south-gloucestershire-unitary-authority-ua/southgloucester_f_sht1_web_21307-15761__e__.pdf)'s 2006 rewarding managed to respect the current constituency boundaries. Wiltshire (http://www.lgbce.org.uk/__documents/lgbce-documents/maps/2008/wiltshire-map1.pdf) is one of these large new unitaries, but it's already got new commission-drawn wards. (Hate those huge badly programmed pdf's the LGBCE is doing for the past two years. Even though the level of detail is nice, or would be if it were better done.)

Okay, I've got a map now. The cross-unitary seat is phenomenally ugly, and I may think it over again, but for now I'm presenting it. Additional constraints due to seats being two percent over on average.

Kingswood 77,826
Gains Staple Hill and Downend but loses Siston
Filton & Thornbury 78,452
Compared to Filton & Bradley Stoke, loses Staple Hill, Downend, gains Severn, Thornbury N, S, Charfield, Frampton Cotterell
Melksham & Yate 79,434
At first I had united the far north of Wiltshire with eastern S Gloucestershire, but that just didn't work out - was too large with Wootton Bassett and too small without. So this now has the remaining areas of South Gloucestershire, and the following strip of Wiltshire (north to south): Malmesbury, Sherston, By Brook, Box & Colerne, Holt & Staverton, Meksham (incl. Melksham Without) wards. Doing it with Corsham instead of Malmesbury/Sherston is also too large. I didn't try Corsham instead of Melksham because that didn't fit the map I'd already drawn elsewhere... will try that in a minute.
Chippenham (or Wiltshire North?) 73,716
Chippenham wards, Corsham (incl. Without) wards, Kington, Calne Rural, Lyneham, Wootton Bassett wards, Purton, Brinkworth, Minety, Cricklade & Latton
Wiltshire South West 79,099
Summerham & Seend, Ethandune, Warminster wards, Mere, and points west (consisting mostly of Westbury, Trowbridge, and Bradford-on-Avon). This is a fairly marginally redrawn (expanded and shifted slightly northward) version of the old seat. Might be West rather than SW. Might, of course, also go back to its fantastically undescriptive old name of Westbury.
Salisbury 78,087
Till & Wylye Valley, Bulford, Allington & Figheldean, and remaining points south. This is expanded to include all wards it currently includes parts of - though in most of the split ward cases the larger part used to be elsewhere - and Tisbury ward.
Devizes 76,534
Remainder. Has some southern and western corners chopped off but gains Calne.

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The alternate version has the Corsham wards moved from Chippenham to Melksham and Yate, the Calne wards moved from Devizes to Chippenham, and the Melksham wards to Devizes. For logical reasons, It followed that Summerham & Seend also should be in Devizes but Holt & Staverton might be in SW, leading to a new tally of 78,963 there. This left Devizes oversized and ? & Yate undersized, so we'd also have to move Marlborough and the donut West Selkley around it into Chippenham and Minety and Brinkworth into ? & Yate (76,668). This version of Chippenham is 77,773 and this version of Devizes is 75,107, so populations are better balanced, anyways. Though it's still just as ugly if not worse.

Devizes, Devizes, Devizes.  Memories of Latin classes "devize, devizii, divesu...."

"Westbury" would nobody any favours, keep is Wiltshire South West

Somerset with B&NES.

The five Somerset seats are too large, except for Wells which is barely on target. The Banes seats are much too small. The size and geographic position of Frome forced changes onto the Wells seat too (adding some thin appendage onto North Somerset's southeastern end down to Frome would have been just to effing weird. Besided, that would have meant adding the northern end of that constituency to Bath, instead of part of Bathavon. Bath & Frome would obviously have been far too large.)

Bath 73,938
gains Bathavon North, Bathavon South (but not West. That would have isolated Peasedown, and including that too would have made the seat too large.)
North Somerset 76,464
Loses these two, gains a triangular portion of rural Mendip district, which has been rewarded (http://www.lgbce.org.uk/__documents/lgbce-documents/all-reviews/south-west/somerset/mendip/men_f_sh1_web_23055-17207__e__.pdf): Chewton Mendip & Ston Easton and Ashwick etc pp come from the Wells seat, Rode & Norton St Philip, Ammerdown, Coleford & Holcombe, Cranmore etc and Creech from the Somerton & Frome seat.
Wells 79,569
Loses two wards mentioned above, gains East and West Poldens from Bridgwater & West Somerset, the Pennards & Ditcheat from Somerton & Frome
Bridgwater & West Somerset 78,052
Loses these
Taunton 76,485
Loses North Curry & Stoke Saint Gregory, Ruishton & Creech. Has been rewarded, but compared to the atlas Ruishton & Creech is unchanged and the other is a merger of two wards by the names on the tin. The newly achieved exact identity with the district was cited at the review as the reason for the inane namechange. Hence, I'm undoing it now.
Yeovil 78,730
Loses South Peterton (it was the right population.)
Somerton & Frome 78,382
Gains the territory ceded by Taunton and Yeovil, loses the territory annexed by North Somerset and Wells.
The ward changes in Mendip affected the constituency boundary, and if the 2010 figures are to be trusted, they happened soon enough for the constituency boundary to be amended according. This means that the territory of the former Avalon ward, shown in Wells in the Atlas, is now in Somerton & Frome. It has now been divided, with the ward transferred to Wells including the northern part of it. (The ward of Butleigh & Baltonsborough now doesn't border the other Mendip parts in Somerton & Frome... still better than using that one instead of the Pennards from an overall mapshape view.)