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Post by tiberius on Apr 29, 2018 19:04:46 GMT
It's ok in parts - the Ealing/HIllingdon/Houinslow arrangement works well for example and most of South London holds together pretty well. I'd definitly go for an East/West split in Barnet (ie more or less keep the old Hendon MB together) as the lines of communication tend to be North to South. For the same reason the Brent/Harrow cross borough seat would be better including Stanmore than Central and South Harrow. I think your decision to keep boroughs together, while born of good intention, has some unhappy consequences. Hainault and (especially) Aldborough don't fit well with Romford and it would make more sense to either add Chadwell Heath or to add Harold Wood and cross the boundary between Hornchurch and Dagenham. Kepping B&D together prevents this. And keeping Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham whole means you;re forced to add some Southern wards from Brent to Kensington & Chelsea which is a really awkward looking seat. Since Ealing is fine as is I'd probably keep H&F together and then augment K&C with some Westminster wards which would be compenasated for by adding the city and the Holborn area  Does this look better? Wait a sec, that long, narrow yellow-colored constituency just south of Chigwell probably needs to be reworked... |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 29, 2018 19:53:16 GMT
 Is this sensible? Most of this is quite well done, although I suspect many would take issue with the the fact the two Barnard Castle wards are with areas in the North West of Durham and the South of Northumberland. I would have the Barnard Castle wards removed and the Darlington/Sedgefield ones reconfigured because I wouldn't want to expand the Northumberland ones further. I do however like the seats in the Cleveland area which makes this all the more complicated. |
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Post by tiberius on Apr 29, 2018 20:03:41 GMT
Is this sensible? Most of this is quite well done, although I suspect many would take issue with the the fact the two Barnard Castle wards are with areas in the North West of Durham and the South of Northumberland. I would have the Barnard Castle wards removed and the Darlington/Sedgefield ones reconfigured because I wouldn't want to expand the Northumberland ones further. I do however like the seats in the Cleveland area which makes this all the more complicated. My reasoning for that was that I was trying to keep the North Pennines AONB as whole within one seat as was possible. I also wanted to have all of A68's stretch within the Durham council area be within one seat, though that wasn't as important. |
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Post by tiberius on Apr 29, 2018 20:07:43 GMT
@beesley what are your thoughts on my prior version (with 19 seats). I assumed it was pretty bad, on its own merits. Was I right in that regard?
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Post by andrewteale on Apr 29, 2018 20:32:12 GMT
I must admit, I wasn't being entirely serious when I put that together. There's even a homage to the zombie review in there - a Mersey Banks seat with unbelievable boundaries. What are the wards in this Mersey Banks? All of Halton, plus Rainhill and Eccleston. I was trying to get two seats wholly within Halton and St Helens, and this was the only way of getting both of them within tolerance. |
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Post by andrewteale on Apr 29, 2018 20:52:30 GMT
 Any commentary/criticism/praise? Here's a view of Cumbria.  The Cumbria arrangement is pretty good, although the splitting of Windermere is a minus. Is there any way of avoiding that? If you're going to take three wards out of Bury and send them east, the three Prestwich wards (south of the M60) are the best choice. |
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Post by tiberius on Apr 29, 2018 21:30:49 GMT
 While we lack a ton of wiggle room (both of the seats with some of Windermere are less than 800 above quota), it appears possible we could unite Windermere by grabbing one of the one of the wards elsewhere, all without sacrificing too much. The ward though that would balance out the removal of that one ward and thus unify Windermere likely might have to come from Kendal, one of its smaller wards.
After a bit of toying around, I found you could remove the Windermere Bowness South ward (1,365) from the Barrow-on-Furness seat and replace it with Kendal Stonecross (1,586), which has the effect of making the Barrow-on-Furness seat have an electorate of 93,231 and the other seat (the one with all of Windermere) having 93,270. The minimum quota is 92,839; so they are both roughly 400 above that. Additionally, reworking the Bury seat along the lines you suggested gives the Bury seat an electorate of 110,817, and the other seat 107,102. It works. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 30, 2018 13:29:55 GMT
I've had another crack at this   |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2018 13:57:04 GMT
@beesley what are your thoughts on my prior version (with 19 seats). I assumed it was pretty bad, on its own merits. Was I right in that regard? I don't think it was all bad; here are my objections: - The Sunderland Region would be ideally divided between East and West so that Houghton and Washington would be in a different seat to Sunderland's Centre
- I don't know to what extent the Bede/Hebburn (think that's right?) ward area being situated with North Tyneside was avoidable. The best place to cross the river in my opinion would be in the area currently covered by Blaydon.
- The Northumberland Rural seat is awkwardly shaped, however this could be only solved with big changes to the Newcastle area or the Durham area so that Morpeth and Berwick are together.
Otherwise it has many strengths, particularly in Middlesbrough but also in the fact you've managed to avoid some of the possible problems, such as putting Billingham in with Hartlepool. It would probably lead to some better constituency names as you could avoid the more cumbersome ones as we've seen in that area. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 30, 2018 14:04:10 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2018 14:09:06 GMT
Any commentary/criticism/praise? Here's a view of Cumbria. Sorry if I sound like I'm continually grilling you: - In Cumbria it's great you've managed to get all the county in four seats; if I were to make any suggestion its that I think the area south of Kendal should be in the same seat, with Barrow having the Millom area, and Workington and Whitehaven taking the Cockermouth area.
- The Wirral was well done and I have no major complaints about it or the rest of the 'current' Cheshire. Ideally the Handforth and Wilmslow area would be united but as those seats centre on similar areas and are under one council it's no major flaw.
- The constituency that takes up a lot of the current Warrington North is not ideal as it has parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cheshire but I appreciate that you wanted to place St Helens in one seat.
- The Liverpool/Sefton areas are well done. I'm also pretty satisfied with the whole of Manchester.
- I can't tell if Chorley is being split - but I presume it's just Euxton and Buckshaw affected. I understand that was necessary to reduce the number of local authorities per seat.
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Post by tiberius on Apr 30, 2018 15:11:03 GMT
Any commentary/criticism/praise? Here's a view of Cumbria. Sorry if I sound like I'm continually grilling you: - In Cumbria it's great you've managed to get all the county in four seats; if I were to make any suggestion its that I think the area south of Kendal should be in the same seat, with Barrow having the Millom area, and Workington and Whitehaven taking the Cockermouth area.
- The Wirral was well done and I have no major complaints about it or the rest of the 'current' Cheshire. Ideally the Handforth and Wilmslow area would be united but as those seats centre on similar areas and are under one council it's no major flaw.
- The constituency that takes up a lot of the current Warrington North is not ideal as it has parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cheshire but I appreciate that you wanted to place St Helens in one seat.
- The Liverpool/Sefton areas are well done. I'm also pretty satisfied with the whole of Manchester.
- I can't tell if Chorley is being split - but I presume it's just Euxton and Buckshaw affected. I understand that was necessary to reduce the number of local authorities per seat.
My general thought was that in Cumbria the population distribution and low wiggle room made it hard to have good-looking seats, consistent road contiguity throughout a seat, cities/towns/villages mostly/completely whole, and electorate numbers within quota, all at the same time. Barrow-in-Furness has something like 53-odd thousand locked in and unless you want to cut Barrow-in-Furness in half, a big chunk of the South Lakeland council area needs to be paired with it. This is because pairing it with Copeland does not work for at least a few reasons; 1) it means an automatic cut into the South Lakeland council since that council area completely surrounds Barrow-in-Furness; 2) if you want 4 seats wholely within Cumbria you NEED to keep all of them from getting far from quota (a Copeland council area+Barrow-in-Furness council area+Broughton ward is 107,305, so unworkably large); and finally, 3) the way I have it, most of the Lake District is wholely within one seat, and introducing a large amount of new urban territory into the Lake District seat is just going to undermine that, and/or result in yet another council area split. As for that seat with a lot of current Warrington North, you could call that seat a "bad seat" of sorts, that helps make the others better. Wigan/Warrington/St. Helens required 5 seats, and all of them were above quota (in Wigan's case, it was over 2 quotas), and the best way to get the amount of council area splits down and maximize the number of seats wholely within a given council area was to have a seat that took from all 3 of them. The only alternative to pairing these three council areas together was to stay within Merseyside and cut into Knowsley, but Knowsley was already at quota; and Knowsley+St. Helens was too big for 2, so this meant that Liverpool might have to be split as well. Thanks for your kinds words regarding Wirral/Liverpool/Sefton/Manchester. As for Chorley, I found that it was destined to be put on the chopping block. West Lancashire (82644), South Ribble (81624), and Chorley (81668), all had too many electors to make it impossible to pair two out of three to get one seat, but lacked enough to make three seats out of the group. It also had too much to form two. I wanted to avoid having to cut into Merseyside. So I had to cut into Greater Manchester. Chorley was the only council area with sufficient connections to each of the three other areas, so it had to be sliced in pieces as if it was a pizza. |
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Post by tiberius on Apr 30, 2018 15:36:15 GMT
Some East of England council areas that fit into one constituency:
Norfolk (93077)
Great Witchingham (94862)
King's Lynn and West Norfolk (110945)
South Norfolk (98595)
Breckland (97669)
Suffolk Coastal (93970)
it's likely one of these might have to be split since North Norfolk is 80,922, and Great Yarmouth is 69,691.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2018 15:55:35 GMT
Perhaps I ought to try doing this myself - and compare notes and maps with everyone else.
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Post by tiberius on Apr 30, 2018 17:07:53 GMT
   No Devonwall! Cornwall has 4 seats, Devon has 8, Dorset+Wiltshire has 10, Somerset has 6, Bristol has 3, Gloucestershire has 7. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2018 17:23:22 GMT
No Devonwall! Cornwall has 4 seats, Devon has 9, Dorset+Wiltshire has 10, Somerset has 6, Bristol has 3, Gloucestershire has 7. This is one of your best - there's little at fault. But such is my interest that means I always find minor quibbles. - I wonder to what extent the East of Cornwall could be reconfigured so the two seats run East West rather than North South, although if that wasn't possible, I wouldn't split a town like Looe. If it prevents Devonwall though, then do whatever it takes!
- Another minor point, but Plympton and Plymstock would be better off in the same seat. I'm glad you chose to split the current Moor View rather than S&D. I'm not sure about whether the Tiverton/Dartmoor seat would work well.
- I like Dorset, Wiltshire and Bristol; despite Swindon being hard to configure I think you did that well. I also like Somerset, particularly the return of the old Taunton seat, except the configuration in the existing North Somerset seat. I don't think Nailsea needs to be in that seat if there's wiggle room there, and I understand you tried to keep Mendip in one seat which wasn't necessarily a bad idea, although it means the seat is oddly configured.
- Gloucestershire was also done well, and any ward changes would be aesthetic.
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Post by Foggy on Apr 30, 2018 17:30:03 GMT
Some East of England council areas that fit into one constituency: Norfolk (93077) Great Witchingham (94862) What kind of automatic correction system changes 'Yarmouth' to 'Witchingham'? You mean Norwich rather than Norfolk for the first authority too. I like the seats based around Bath, Yeovil and Taunton/Minehead, but I'm afraid you've had a bit of a 'mare with the other 3 Somerset constituencies. |
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Post by tiberius on Apr 30, 2018 18:02:08 GMT
Some East of England council areas that fit into one constituency: Norfolk (93077) Great Witchingham (94862) What kind of automatic correction system changes 'Yarmouth' to 'Witchingham'? You mean Norwich rather than Norfolk for the first authority too. I like the seats based around Bath, Yeovil and Taunton/Minehead, but I'm afraid you've had a bit of a 'mare with the other 3 Somerset constituencies. Since the seats holding Yeovil and Minehead hold 3 council areas that fit for 2 seats, the rest of Somerset had to be parcelled out into 4. This area was fairly close to the top of the upper band for 4 seats. The Sedgemoor and Mendip areas were kept whole, but this meant that the North Somerset unitary authority needed to get split twice. Weston-super-Mare was kept whole, but this meant extra nastyness in outlying areas (which were aggravated by the closeness to the upper band of quota that all of the seats had). |
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Post by Foggy on Apr 30, 2018 18:05:17 GMT
What kind of automatic correction system changes 'Yarmouth' to 'Witchingham'? You mean Norwich rather than Norfolk for the first authority too. I like the seats based around Bath, Yeovil and Taunton/Minehead, but I'm afraid you've had a bit of a 'mare with the other 3 Somerset constituencies. Since the seats holding Yeovil and Minehead hold 3 council areas that fit for 2 seats, the rest of Somerset had to be parcelled out into 4. This area was fairly close to the top of the upper band for 4 seats. The Sedgemoor and Mendip areas were kept whole, but this meant that the North Somerset unitary authority needed to get split twice. Weston-super-Mare was kept whole, but this meant extra nastyness in outlying areas (which were aggravated by the closeness to quota that all of the seats had). What is the obsession with keeping Mendip whole? I don't think it ever has been left intact for the purposes of parliamentary constituencies. Somerton & Frome was created for the 1983 election, which was based on the first (successfully adopted) review at which the 1970s districts had been taken into account. There are nicer seats to be made if you just tweak your priorities a little, I think. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 30, 2018 18:19:37 GMT
While I agree with you that it we should not give undue regard to the boundaries of local authorities of a quite recent and transient existance, I think it is the case that from 1950 to 1983 the Wells constituency did include the whole of what was to become the Mendip district (plus also the Wincanton RD which is in South Somerset). It is quite ironic that as you say the boundaries created for 1983 were the first based on the new districts and yet in this case they split a previously united area in two
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