Let the great boundary rejig commence

[doktorb]

great response


My submission to John Loony's representation is number 000035, which suggests a lot.....

[minionofmidas]

You know, since nobody is going to protest against Blackburn staying whole, and all other alternatives including the commission's own are clearly even worse, Bolton N & Darwen is fairly likely going to come to pass.

Though that exact set of wards, maybe not.

[doktorb]

I disagree. My gut feeling is they'll accept the Conservative proposal for Lancs, but alter our/Labours "Rossendale and Ramsbottom".

[doktorb]

Wyre Borough Council's submission (number 002842) proposes a few changes to Blackpool/Wyre/Fylde

Wyre and Blackpool North would be Blackpool's northern suburbs, Fleetwood, and Poulton-le-Fylde

Fylde would be the borough of Fylde, Lea from Preston and some of the Blackpool eastern bits

Blackpool South would be all the remaining central and southern bits of Blackpool (the "Golden Mile Constituency", if you will).

[doktorb]

Sefton Borough Council (number 011458) has forwarded a motion passed at Council urging the Coalition to relax the upper electorate quota.

[YL]

Dok, have you seen the proposed names in submission 013694?

[doktorb]

Dok, have you seen the proposed names in submission 013694?

Oh my






Oh my

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Where can we see these submissions?

[doktorb]

Where can we see these submissions?

http://consultation.boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/have-your-say/


But be warned = it's slow work

If you know a reference number,you can just bung that in.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

You know, since nobody is going to protest against Blackburn staying whole, and all other alternatives including the commission's own are clearly even worse, Bolton N & Darwen is fairly likely going to come to pass.

Though that exact set of wards, maybe not.

Disagree for similar reasons to doktorb.  Bolton North and Darwen isn't even the craziest seat in the Labour counter-proposal (although it's up there).

For mathematical reasons there needs to be at least one seat crossing the Lancashire/Greater Manchester boundary.  The Commission have tied themselves in knots by trying to put it in the Whitworth area.  This isn't an unreasonable place to put a cross-county seat but the knock-on effects are tremendous (particularly because the two current Rochdale seats are pretty good and already within tolerance).  The Tories are supporting this - given the knock-on effects I can only assume they are supporting this for partisan reasons.

Labour, the Lib Dems and myself have all gone for a cross-county seat in the upper Irwell valley (Rossendale and Ramsbottom).  I haven't yet read the Lib Dem counterproposal in detail but I seem to recall that doktorb and his colleagues haven't gone for any other cross-county seats.

I should probably critique the other two parties' counterproposals for northern Greater Manchester for the sake of balance.

[doktorb]

And now for a submission in Cornish......


http://consultation.boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/themes/bce/assets/annex/BCE_Truro_day1_annex.pdf?9d7bd4

[YL]

Not much of interest in the Tory proposals for South Yorkshire.  They largely accept the Commission's map, except that they want to add Hemsworth (across the 1974 county border in Wakefield) to Barnsley North.  The modifications include changing the Commission's "Barnsley West and Ecclesfield" monstrosity so that it loses Darton West (its worst feature) but gains Dodworth and Kingstone.  The inclusion of Kingstone (a slice of Barnsley town proper) is pretty bad, though maybe not as bad as Darton West.

The Lib Dems are more radical.  They accept the Commission's Sheffield map (if they're not splitting wards, it's hard to do much better - but surely they should be prepared to split wards when their average size is nearly twice the width of the tolerance window) although they're not as keen as the Commission on boring compass point names, but elsewhere things are different.  They have three cross-county constituencies: a Wakefield South & Darton thing which rescues Darton West from the aformentioned monstrosity (which gains Rockingham as compensation - probably as good as it's going to get, but it still needs a new name), a Hemsworth & Royston seat, and a Goole & Thorne seat which includes the eastern end of Doncaster borough and stretches almost to Hull.  Ed Miliband's Doncaster North then gains the two Dearne wards of Barnsley borough (this is actually quite a neat seat), Doncaster "Central" gains Hatfield and Finningley (sic), and most of the rest of Doncaster borough joins parts of the current Rother Valley in a "Maltby and Don Valley" seat.  Rother Valley gets compensated with a few more wards east of Rotherham, and the Commission's Rawmarsh becomes "Mexborough and Wath" with a handful of Barnsley wards and one from Doncaster.  So they're pretty much ignoring borough boundaries: Barnsley gets 7 MPs, Sheffield 6 (as in the Commission's map), Doncaster 5 and Rotherham 4.

[Pete Whitehead]

If anyone is interested in my proposals they are 017720 (Eastern), 019603 (London), 019674 (South East) and 019675 (South West) plus the transcript of the public hearing at Luton where I gave a verbal submission (URN 30024)

[Pete Whitehead]

I don't know why the Conservatives bothered to produce a 52 page document which proposed no meaningful changes to the BC plans in the Eastern region. 

[minionofmidas]

I'll have to look at these things one of these days.

[doktorb]

Dok, have you seen the proposed names in submission 013694?

I recommend everyone checks this one - there's some belters

"Blackpool Tower", "Manchester Salford Quays", and my particular favourite "Port Solent and HMS Victory"

[minionofmidas]

"Port Solent and HMS Victory"

LOL!

[Pete Whitehead]

Dok, have you seen the proposed names in submission 013694?

I recommend everyone checks this one - there's some belters

"Blackpool Tower", "Manchester Salford Quays", and my particular favourite "Port Solent and HMS Victory"

Doktorb you must be related to this fruit!

[doktorb]

Haha

As it happens , he suggests "Liverpool Allerton", as do we, so there's one point on which we agree!

[YL]

Now to West Yorkshire, and the Lib Dem proposal.  I'll do this roughly by borough, though as with South Yorkshire they have a lot of cross-borough seats.  Wards from both South and North Yorkshire feature too.

As already mentioned they have two seats (Wakefield South & Darton, Hemsworth & Royston) which are mostly in Wakefield but cross into Barnsley.  They then have a Pontefract seat which includes both Pontefract and Castleford towns plus the Whitley ward from Selby district.  The core of Wakefield proper (North, West, East wards) is linked to the southern part of Leeds (Ardsley, Middleton Park) via Outwood West (but not Outwood East).

One Wakefield ward, Ossett, goes into a Dewsbury seat which is otherwise in Kirklees, and keeps the thre Dewsbury wards together with Mirfield and Kirkburton.  Their Huddersfield and Colne Valley seats are identical to the Commission's except that they sadly fail to mention Skelmanthorpe.  Most of the rest of Kirklees (excluding Batley) is in a Spen Valley seat with Wyke and Royds wards from Bradford.

In Calderdale they simply add Queensbury to Halifax and leave Calder Valley unchanged.  (This is an incredibly obvious thing to do, so of course the Commission didn't do it.)

Their Bradford is quite neat.  They have a Central seat based on the inner city parts of the current West, keeping Clayton as well and adding the two Hortons and Wibsey, and an East seat which extends northwards to add Baildon.  Then they have a Keighley which is just the current seat plus Wharfedale ward, and a Guiseley & Shipley which contains the Shipley and Bingley areas (including Heaton and Thornton & Allerton) plus the one Leeds ward which is obvious from the name.

Their Leeds, on the other hand, is not so good.  First the OK points: they have OK Pudsey and Batley & Morley seats in the south-west, and two all Leeds seats covering the inner city (Central extending east to Seacroft, and North Central stretching from Armley to Chapel Allerton).  Then the not so good: the south-east of the council area is combined with Stanley & Outwood East from Wakefield.  Then the awful: the north of the city is split into NE and NW seats both of which extend from parts of the city proper out to include swathes of rural territory either side of Harrogate.  (And neither seat acknowledges the non-Leeds components in the proposed names.)  The one thing I'd say for the LD map here is that the Commission's is even worse.

Finally, Wetherby is included with Selby (all of the latter district except that one ward which went with Pontefract).

(The Lib Dem submission for Yorkshire is reference no. 025338.)

[YL]

Now for the Tories (reference no. 025308) in West Yorkshire.

Unlike the Lib Dems and the Commission, the Tories have North Yorkshire totally unchanged; the only place the West Yorkshire boundary is crossed is Hemsworth, which they include in a Barnsley seat as already mentioned.

In the west of West Yorkshire, the Tory map is similar to the Lib Dem one.  They agree on Keighley, Calder Valley, Halifax, Huddersfield and Spen Valley, and the only difference to the Lib Dems' Bradford Central and Colne Valley is the names.  Their Dewsbury includes Wakefield Rural instead of Ossett, and their Shipley stays entirely in Bradford, taking in the northern end of the Lib Dems' Bradford East.

They have a reasonable Wakefield seat including the four Wakefield (compass point) wards, the two Outwood wards, and Crofton et al.  To the east of this they have a Normanton & Pontefract seat, while Castleford goes with two Leeds wards (Kippax, Rothwell).  Elsewhere in Leeds they have an Elmet seat stretching from Temple Newsam out to Wetherby, and fairly reasonable Leeds East and Leeds North seats.  The north-west of Leeds borough is in an Otley seat which also contains Idle & Thackley from Bradford, then there's a Pudsey seat which also includes Tong from Bradford, and a Batley & Morley seat which includes Beeston & Holbeck.

You'll notice that I haven't said where Ossett or Leeds city centre go yet.  This is because the Tories, ludicrously, have them in the same seat, which is by far the worst of their proposals.  To be fair, they do realise that it's awful, and have an alternative, which they don't seem convinced by, and which accepts the Commission's link between Leeds city centre and Outwood, and puts Ossett into Dewsbury (as per the Lib Dems), with Horbury and Hemsworth going into Wakefield.  Presumably Wakefield Rural is then put in a Barnsley seat, but I can't find details in the submission.

Neither the Lib Dems or the Tories manage to convince me that it's possible to do a decent Leeds map withouth splitting wards.  This is hardly surprising: Leeds wards are even bigger than Sheffield ones, averaging around 17,000, which is just far too big to use as building blocks when you have a tolerance interval less than half that.

The reason I haven't mentioned Labour's proposals is because they don't exist: they make a few comments on the Commission's proposals (some positive, some not so positive) but don't actually make any of their own.

[dadge]

Where can we see these submissions?

But be warned = it's slow work

If you know a reference number,you can just bung that in.

Using a fusker might help a bit. For example, go to urlscan.hierzo.be and enter consultation.boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/ip/000001/

Then click on Refresh and Autonext

Then sit back and read for a week!

It would be nice if a freindly geek would invent a less clunky way of searching the documents than the one the Commission provides. Google search doesn't even work - I've made a site crawl request but no joy.

[doktorb]

Dadge - that's very useful!

I'm not going to get any work done for the next week, but thanks!

[YL]

Sheffield City Council have a submission, no. 023091, with five seats wholly within the City and two three split wards.  For two alternative schemes which do the same thing (but with only two splits), see Jonathan Harston's submission, no. 002920.

[doktorb]

Somewhere in the London transcript is a quote from the Assistant Commissioner who says "It is not the Commission's policy to split wards"