The UUP and Alliance oppose the plan outright (one UUP member has claimed that Belfast has been gifted to nationalists under this plan)
Is Belfast to be changed at all under this plan? It doesn't look like it, although the model chosen might just mean that the greater part of all current council areas surrounding Belfast will be in new council areas not including Belfast, while some bordering areas in Castlereigh, Lisburn and Newtownabbey will join the new Belfast council (the closest parts of Lisburn would be nationalist I think, which is why some nationalists think they were added to West Belfast at the latest Westminster boundary review - to make retention of the nationalist (now Sinn Fein) seat in Lagan Valley more difficult while the nationalists often sweep West Belfast anyway). Environment Minister Arlene Foster was quoted on her department's site (
http://www.northernireland.gov.uk/news-doe-130308-foster-announces-the ) as saying "The current 26 local government districts will be rationalised to create 11 new local government districts, using the
model referred to as 11 b, which was canvassed in the March 2005 RPA consultation document" (emphasis mine). Perhaps that means some areas like western Dungannon, southeastern Banbridge and some of the aforementioned areas around Belfast could be severed from the remainder of their current council area.
Or perhaps the UUP crank just meant Belfast was gifted to the nationalists by virtue of it not being added to, as their percentage of Belfast (and Northern Ireland's) population seems to be gradually increasing over time. In the last local government elections in 2005, Belfast voters elected (according to Nicholas Whyte at
http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/lgbelfast.htm ) 25 unionists (DUP+UUP+PUP + the 1 Independent, a former UDPer - the UDP was/is linked to an organization similar to the UVF IIRC), 22 nationalists (SF+SDLP) and 4 Alliance party members to the Belfast City Council, but that unionist lead, while up from 25 to 23 (with 3 Alliance) in 2001, is down from 25 to 20 (with 6 Alliance) in 1997 and 27 to 19 (with 5 Alliance) in 1993, when the UUP had 15 councillors as opposed to 7 after the last general (council) election. Adding the bulk of (overall at least) heavily unionist Castlereigh to the Belfast council area as proposed in at least one seven-council model (but no 11-council models) could have reversed these nationalist gains and assauged unionist fears of a nationalist majority or even plurality or continued lack of a unionist majority on the Belfast City Council in the forseeable future.
