Let the great boundary rejig commence

[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"

[YL]

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

As we knew.

However, the Yorkshire Assistant Commissioner seems quite interested in the idea, if you look at the Leeds transcripts.

Speaking of which, I've found a sensible proposal for West Yorkshire.  It's by someone called Dan Howard, who appears to have Labour connections in Kirklees, but it isn't an official Labour proposal.  (I found it because I was searching by organisation type and found a Colne Valley Labour submission endorsing it.)  It has 7 seats in Leeds without any border crossing, four in Kirklees, four in Bradford minus Queensbury, three in Wakefield excluding one ward which would go with Barnsley, and the same arrangement in Calderdale+Queensbury that the Lib Dems and Tories have.  A handful of wards are split to achieve this.  The reference number is 023075.

[doktorb]

I've found this classic rant in the Scottish Commission comments section

[Vasall des Midas]

Nice pun. "You don't move me".

[Leftbehind]

Class.

[Sibboleth]

Win.

[YL]

Another West and South Yorkshire proposal is from Shipley Labour Party, reference no. 023128.  Like the Tory map, it's a 33 seat proposal for the two counties with no split wards, and so perhaps unsurprisingly it has a lot in common with the Tory map.  Instead of linking central Leeds with Ossett they link it with Normanton (slightly better? even worse? not sure) and instead of the Tories' Bradford East/Horsforth link they have Bradford East and Bramley (this looks a bit less random on a map, at any rate).  For their own constituency their plan is to have a Shipley and Bradford North containing Shipley, Baildon, Bingley, Windhill & Wrose, Heaton, Manningham and Toller.

[Sibboleth]

For their own constituency their plan is to have a Shipley and Bradford North containing Shipley, Baildon, Bingley, Windhill & Wrose, Heaton, Manningham and Toller.

O.K, that deserves a

[Vasall des Midas]

So where's the Frankfurt map, Al?

[Sibboleth]

So where's the Frankfurt map, Al?

About half done. For some reason I've decided to do the top seven candidates.

[Vasall des Midas]

So where's the Frankfurt map, Al?

About half done. For some reason I've decided to do the top seven candidates.

Makes sense. Or would if the PARTEI, Pirate and Left map didn't all sort of look alike.

[YL]

For their own constituency their plan is to have a Shipley and Bradford North containing Shipley, Baildon, Bingley, Windhill & Wrose, Heaton, Manningham and Toller.

O.K, that deserves a

I thought you might like it...

[Pete Whitehead]

2010 Notional result for that Shipley & Bradford North

Lab    20455   38.1%
Con   20367   38.0%
LD       9513   17.7%
Grn     1822     3.4%
UKIP     364     0.7%
BNP      235     0.4%
oth       909     1.7%

[You kip if you want to...]

2010 Notional result for that Shipley & Bradford North

Lab    20455   38.1%
Con   20367   38.0%
LD       9513   17.7%
Grn     1822     3.4%
UKIP     364     0.7%
BNP      235     0.4%
oth       909     1.7%

If this was a genuine suggestion, I feel as though seats like this for MPs like this (Phil Davies) would cause many there to be government rebels to be honest.

[doktorb]

The Boundary Commission for England has produced an Excel spreadsheet in which every constituency has a refernence number associated with it, making it easier to look at opinions/submissions on a seat-by-seat basis.

In terms of Preston, there's only one topic of debate; Fishwick. Everyone who has written in wants Fishwick to stay in Preston (for some reasons more partisan than others), and as there is cross-Party support in all the counter submissions, I have no doubt that it will happen.

[YL]

The Boundary Commission for England has produced an Excel spreadsheet in which every constituency has a refernence number associated with it, making it easier to look at opinions/submissions on a seat-by-seat basis.

Thanks for pointing that out.

NB what it does is list submissions according to which existing constituency the respondent's address is in.

[Leftbehind]

Any chance of linking the aforementioned excel sheet here?

[YL]

Anyway, I looked through those for the six current Sheffield constituencies (i.e. the five with Sheffield in the name and Penistone & Stocksbridge).

- Hardly anyone is impressed.  Actually, I think no-one is impressed.
- A lot of people don't want seats crossing the City boundary.
- Further to the above, people in north Sheffield don't like the "Barnsley West & Ecclesfield" name.
- A number of people prefer traditional names to compass points.
- There aren't many actual counterproposals.

Leftbehind: see
http://consultation.boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/news/existing-constituencies-look-up-feature/
(The link is about halfway down.)

[Pete Whitehead]

The Boundary Commission for England has produced an Excel spreadsheet in which every constituency has a refernence number associated with it, making it easier to look at opinions/submissions on a seat-by-seat basis.

Thanks for pointing that out.

NB what it does is list submissions according to which existing constituency the respondent's address is in.

Indeed -  I suppose it would have been difficlut to do it any other way. What it does mean of course is that my several submissions covering various parts of London and Southern England all come under St Albans. I noticed there were no submissions from Hertsmere. although I did make representations about Hertsmere as part of my wider submission on the Eastern region.

[YL]

If you want to read some good rants try looking at some of the submissions from Ellesmere Port & Neston.  (Not the first one though: that actually votes "Agree"!)

And just how many submissions are there from Al's favourite West Midlands commuter town?

[doktorb]

Looking at the Lancashire submissions, it's certainly obvious that the western parts are going to be barely touched from the initial proposals.

Blackpool South - no submissions at all, the main parties don't touch anything at all, I think we move a couple of wards around
Blackpool North and Fleetwood - main parties don't do much with this, Wyre Borough Council seem to be the only group who want to change things (and "Wyre and Blackpool North" is utterly bonkers).
Fylde - most seem to support it, including some residents, and again it's only Wyre Borough Council who are against.
"Lancaster" is supported more or less by the Conservatives, who nibble around the edges and reintroduce "...and Wyre" to the constituency name. Labour and our lot go for something far more extreme ("Garstang and Carnforth" for the former, "Wyre and Preston North" and "Valleys of Ribble and Lune" for the latter).
Preston has submissions from members of the public dealing with just one ward rather than the whole seat, and with the Conservatives only dealing with the whole constituency it seems likely that Labour (adding bits of Fulwood and suburban outcrops) and our idea (cutting it through the middle and adding as much of South Ribble as we could get away with) won't convince anyone to change things.

[Leftbehind]

Cheers, YL.

Most of the ones I read for Redcar raise the ridiculous splitting of Normanby, but less than I expected for further lumping Greater Eston with Redcar, and not Middlesbrough.

[joevsimp]

What I am more interested in is, "Where did you get the Google Earth ward maps from?"

http://boundaryassistant.org/PlanBuilder.htm

I'd just like to say, that playing with that for a few hours really shows you what a difficult task the boundary commission have to do, and how awkward the ward population numbers are in some areas to build sensible constiuencies, (having said that, there's no excuse for Billericay and Dunmow)

[YL]

http://boundaryassistant.org/PlanBuilder.htm

I'd just like to say, that playing with that for a few hours really shows you what a difficult task the boundary commission have to do, and how awkward the ward population numbers are in some areas to build sensible constiuencies, (having said that, there's no excuse for Billericay and Dunmow)

Certainly, although:

- It was the English Commission's own decision to refuse to split wards.  The other three Commissions all have split at least one, and I'm sure the English Commission would have done a much better job in certain areas (South and West Yorkshire, north Cheshire, around Birmingham, maybe a few others) if they'd been prepared to do that.

- There's no excuse for the mess they made of Cumbria (for example), where the wards are quite small.

I think that either they basically rushed the job because they had 500 constituencies to draw in a short time using tight new rules, or they have an inexcusable lack of knowledge of the geography of certain parts of the country (see Copeland & Windermere or Consett & Barnard Castle).