Boundary Reviews : Should wards be split or be smaller?

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Boundary Reviews : Everything to do with wards

Should wards be split?

Should wards be smaller (particularly Scotland, West & South Yorkshire especially)

Please discuss

[iain]

Although they may be used for it, the job of wards is not to act as building blocks, so whether the size is convenient or not is irrelevant.

Not splitting wards is something to take into consideration, but something rather minor IMO.

[islington]

I vote 'NO/NO' because I'm fine for ward sizes to vary (although I like single member wards (and all-off elections) so this implies that they should generally be smaller.

And although I voted 'NO' to splitting, I do accept that it may sometimes be done where there is no reasonable alternative or where it results in a far better plan than can be achieved without it. My proposals include five ward splits across the whole UK, which I think is reasonable. So it's really a 'hardly ever' rather than a strict 'no'.

[greenchristian]

The poll is asking three different questions, but only giving you two different sets of answers.

Should wards be split in Parliamentary boundary reviews? Yes, if it improves the boundaries.
Should wards be smaller? In general, probably so. We've got fewer elected representatives than almost any other democracy, so there's plenty of room for having a few more councillors around the place (though, ideally, this should come with powers being repatriated from Westminster to councils).
Should wards be a set size? No. Whilst it is possible to have a single size of ward for both Birmingham City Council and Highlands council, it would be a very silly idea to try out.

[Foggy]

I think we should go back to using civil parishes and Community Council areas as the building blocks in rural areas (which I suppose would be 'County Constituencies' rather than 'Borough Constituencies' if that distinction is to have any meaning). My Parish consists of two distinct towns, so even in that case, there could be circumstances in which a split could be justified.

In cities, there needs to be some statistical or administrative layer separate from electoral wards that is based on recognised neighbourhoods (whose populations could diverge a lot more than those of wards do at the moment). These could be used as building blocks for parliamentary seats, and would result in much more coherent urban constituencies than we have at present.

Multi-member wards (above Parish/Community level) and election by thirds or halves are a load of rubbish as well, but ideally that should be a separate issue. The way we do it in this country at the moment means this topic will always be conflated with what form of local government we'd like to see.

[greatkingrat]

Jul 22, 2016 16:47:14 GMT Foggy said:

I think we should go back to using civil parishes and Community Council areas as the building blocks in rural areas (which I suppose would be 'County Constituencies' rather than 'Borough Constituencies' if that distinction is to have any meaning). My Parish consists of two distinct towns, so even in that case, there could be circumstances in which a split could be justified.

Rural areas aren't the problem though, their wards are generally small enough that there is no advantage in splitting wards.

[myth11]

we are still going to use fptp system for locals so i would like to see the end of mult-member wards which has the side effect of making Constituencies simpler to create but its not a top of the list issue.

[YL]

As someone who lives in one of the areas with big wards...

I don't think the problems of Parliamentary boundary reviews should force a change in local government elections. That said, I do sometimes feel that wards with electorates of 14,000 are a bit large for the lowest level of representation; especially in the parts of these districts outside the city proper (like Stocksbridge and Bradfield in Sheffield) the wards can be really big, contain a lot of different communities and not be very satisfactory. J.G.Harston has suggested 2-member wards for these areas, and I wonder whether the Oxford solution of 2-member wards and elections by halves might work better for Sheffield.

I definitely don't think that the fact that our wards are large should mean that we have to put up with rubbish parliamentary boundaries, and so I'm definitely an advocate of limited ward splitting to allow other criteria for good constituency design to be applied. [In fact, though, it's often the neighbouring areas which suffer most, as their wards need to be tacked on to make the numbers up. In the zombie review, the boundaries in Sheffield itself weren't brilliant but weren't that atrocious either; it was the carve-up of west Barnsley to add bits on to the Sheffield seats which was really nasty, and similarly Ossett found itself needed to make up the numbers for central Leeds.] You don't generally need to split more than one or two in each of the districts with large wards to get things to work much better.

[J.G.Harston]

Jul 22, 2016 21:27:18 GMT YL said:

 That said, I do sometimes feel that wards with electorates of 14,000 are a bit large for the lowest level of representation; especially in the parts of these districts outside the city proper (like Stocksbridge and Bradfield in Sheffield) the wards can be really big, contain a lot of different communities and not be very satisfactory. J.G.Harston has suggested 2-member wards for these areas, and I wonder whether the Oxford solution of 2-member wards and elections by halves might work better for Sheffield.

I'd forgotten where I'd put that, but found it here: Rural.gif (6M).

Some of the older bits of my website need restructuring, I never thought I'd deal with more than one ward review.

[Foggy]

Jul 22, 2016 17:22:34 GMT greatkingrat said:

Jul 22, 2016 16:47:14 GMT Foggy said:

I think we should go back to using civil parishes and Community Council areas as the building blocks in rural areas (which I suppose would be 'County Constituencies' rather than 'Borough Constituencies' if that distinction is to have any meaning). My Parish consists of two distinct towns, so even in that case, there could be circumstances in which a split could be justified.

Rural areas aren't the problem though, their wards are generally small enough that there is no advantage in splitting wards.

What if I don't think Cheddar and Shipham or Wedmore and Mark should be in the same seat, to take two examples of dual-town wards in my current constituency?

[East Anglian Lefty]

Jul 22, 2016 16:47:14 GMT Foggy said:

I think we should go back to using civil parishes and Community Council areas as the building blocks in rural areas (which I suppose would be 'County Constituencies' rather than 'Borough Constituencies' if that distinction is to have any meaning). My Parish consists of two distinct towns, so even in that case, there could be circumstances in which a split could be justified.

Go back to? That already happens. Parishes only tend to get split when it's difficult to make the numbers work otherwise.