YL
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Post by YL on Feb 24, 2021 12:48:28 GMT
In the case of Lancaster, Castle ward is 37% too large (new developments in Lancaster city centre) and University and Scotforth Rural ward is 31% too small (issues caused by individual electoral registration in a ward that is 90%+ students). That ward seems to have recovered less from the IER dip than a lot of student areas; it also has a low electorate in the March 2020 data, in which wards like Headingley & Hyde Park in Leeds and Broomhill & Sharrow Vale in Sheffield are both threatening to trigger new reviews for those councils due to being oversized. But they are reviewing Lancaster (included in one of the Cumbria proposals)?
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 24, 2021 12:51:37 GMT
In the case of Lancaster, Castle ward is 37% too large (new developments in Lancaster city centre) and University and Scotforth Rural ward is 31% too small (issues caused by individual electoral registration in a ward that is 90%+ students). That ward seems to have recovered less from the IER dip than a lot of student areas; it also has a low electorate in the March 2020 data, in which wards like Headingley & Hyde Park in Leeds and Broomhill & Sharrow Vale in Sheffield are both threatening to trigger new reviews for those councils due to being oversized. Already??? We had new wards in 2016 due to Central rocketing since 2004, even though Central had been deliberately drawn under-number to cope with it getting bigger, and I''m sure Broomhill & Sharrow Vale was similar drawn undernumber this time around to cope for expansion. Edit: checks figures vs other figures - bloody 'ell!
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YL
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Post by YL on Feb 24, 2021 21:15:08 GMT
That ward seems to have recovered less from the IER dip than a lot of student areas; it also has a low electorate in the March 2020 data, in which wards like Headingley & Hyde Park in Leeds and Broomhill & Sharrow Vale in Sheffield are both threatening to trigger new reviews for those councils due to being oversized. Already??? We had new wards in 2016 due to Central rocketing since 2004, even though Central had been deliberately drawn under-number to cope with it getting bigger, and I''m sure Broomhill & Sharrow Vale was similar drawn undernumber this time around to cope for expansion. Edit: checks figures vs other figures - bloody 'ell! And that's comparing it with one of the largest of the other wards. Broomhill and Sharrow Vale 22,704 50.46% Nether Edge and Sharrow 17,051 13.00% Walkley 17,035 12.89% City 16,860 11.73%Ecclesall 16,281 7.89% Crookes and Crosspool 15,841 4.98% Fulwood 15,322 1.54%Manor Castle 15,176 0.57%Dore and Totley 15,174 0.56%Hillsborough 15,128 0.25% Burngreave 15,104 0.09%Stocksbridge and Upper Don 14,816 -1.82%Stannington 14,805 -1.89%Firth Park 14,740 -2.32%Beauchief and Greenhill 14,551 -3.57% Richmond 14,546 -3.60%Southey 14,466 -4.13% Shiregreen and Brightside 14,293 -5.28%East Ecclesfield 14,276 -5.39%Gleadless Valley 14,254 -5.54%Darnall 14,177 -6.05%West Ecclesfield 14,000 -7.22%Mosborough 13,971 -7.41% Beighton 13,792 -8.60%Park and Arbourthorne 13,728 -9.03% Graves Park 13,706 -9.17%Woodhouse 13,566 -10.10% Birley 13,154 -12.83%(March 2020 local government figures, including "attainers", from the ONS spreadsheet) Note the geographical concentration of the oversized wards. (Colour coding indicates the constituency each ward is mostly in.)
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Post by andrewteale on Feb 24, 2021 23:30:27 GMT
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 25, 2021 9:13:23 GMT
Already??? We had new wards in 2016 due to Central rocketing since 2004, even though Central had been deliberately drawn under-number to cope with it getting bigger, and I''m sure Broomhill & Sharrow Vale was similar drawn undernumber this time around to cope for expansion. Edit: checks figures vs other figures - bloody 'ell! And that's comparing it with one of the largest of the other wards. I'm so used to Walkley being slap bang average in the middle of everything.
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 25, 2021 9:35:01 GMT
Already??? We had new wards in 2016 due to Central rocketing since 2004, even though Central had been deliberately drawn under-number to cope with it getting bigger, and I''m sure Broomhill & Sharrow Vale was similar drawn undernumber this time around to cope for expansion. Edit: checks figures vs other figures - bloody 'ell! And that's comparing it with one of the largest of the other wards. Broomhill and Sharrow Vale 22,704 50.46% Nether Edge and Sharrow 17,051 13.00% Walkley 17,035 12.89% ...
(March 2020 local government figures, including "attainers", from the ONS spreadsheet) Note the geographical concentration of the oversized wards. (Colour coding indicates the constituency each ward is mostly in.) I was going to query those figures as not matching those I'd typed up by sitting in the library going through the registers - then realised I was looking at the "Parliament" column in my data! Doh! The library locked up before I could complete my data.
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ilerda
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Post by ilerda on Feb 25, 2021 9:54:00 GMT
The breakdown by constituency is fascinating. It's certainly looking like if a review is triggered anytime soon it'll have to break the fairly longstanding sub-regional boundary in the south east of the city. Expanding Birley and Woodhouse will likely come at the expense of Richmond, and that would mean a need to cross the outer ring road in a rather unappealing way to keep Richmond viable by taking either parts of the Manor or Gleadless.
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islington
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Post by islington on Feb 25, 2021 10:55:19 GMT
I'm not a Sheffield person so shoot me down, but it strikes me the issue is made more difficult by the insistence on elections by thirds and enormous three-member wards.
The Birmingham model of all-off elections and smaller wards, electing one or two councillors, would introduce some much-needed flexibility.
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 25, 2021 11:10:58 GMT
I'm not a Sheffield person so shoot me down, but it strikes me the issue is made more difficult by the insistence on elections by thirds and enormous three-member wards. The Birmingham model of all-off elections and smaller wards, electing one or two councillors, would introduce some much-needed flexibility. While all-up elections and three-member wards are different issues, in the 2004 review the point was made by several respondents that not being bound to three-member seats would make drawing the rural wards to the north a lot easier. Two decades later and it's the urban seats that are the problem. In addition a review has to review the entire city, you can't just eg redraw Broomhill+Sharrow+City or give Broomhill one extra councillor. In pre-1968 reviews that was done occasionally, a single or pair of wards would be reviewed in isolation and just sliced in two. (I never found my 13,500 electors "enormous"....)
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ilerda
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Post by ilerda on Feb 25, 2021 11:51:33 GMT
Yes I'm personally in favour of maintaining rolling elections every year, but of allowing some wards to have fewer than 3 councillors. Other districts manage this and the world doesn't seem to have fallen apart around them. It would be particularly useful in Sheffield given the significant rural areas and separately identifying towns. It would also allow some distinct neighbourhoods to have their own councillors where now they are subsumed into larger wards.
On the point about a review having to cover the whole city, whilst this is technically true it's worth remembering that at the 2016 Sheffield review lots of wards were essentially left entirely alone.
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Post by hullenedge on Feb 25, 2021 12:19:59 GMT
It was Labour policy in 1997 for annual local elections in England (and Wales?). Quietly dropped after a few years. Assume too difficult to implement.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Feb 25, 2021 12:40:57 GMT
It was Labour policy in 1997 for annual local elections in England (and Wales?). Quietly dropped after a few years. Assume too difficult to implement. That was the reason the LGBCE was ordered to prepare schemes for all London boroughs in which everywhere had three member wards. But the idea of annual elections went down like the proverbial cup of cold sick in the party in London, which may have been why it was dropped.
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Post by hullenedge on Feb 25, 2021 12:42:07 GMT
It was Labour policy in 1997 for annual local elections in England (and Wales?). Quietly dropped after a few years. Assume too difficult to implement. That was the reason the LGBCE was ordered to prepare schemes for all London boroughs in which everywhere had three member wards. But the idea of annual elections went down like the proverbial cup of cold sick in the party in London, which may have been why it was dropped. Thanks. Makes sense. Annual elections unlikely to be well received in the sticks.
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 25, 2021 12:45:19 GMT
Already??? We had new wards in 2016 due to Central rocketing since 2004, even though Central had been deliberately drawn under-number to cope with it getting bigger, and I''m sure Broomhill & Sharrow Vale was similar drawn undernumber this time around to cope for expansion. Edit: checks figures vs other figures - bloody 'ell! And that's comparing it with one of the largest of the other wards. ... (March 2020 local government figures, including "attainers", from the ONS spreadsheet) Ah, is that why all my figures are about 0.5% too small? My table counts everybody eligible to vote on 01-Mar-2020. When discussing electorate figures for the purposes of redistricting, what should be the correct number? Those eligible to vote on the appointed day, or Sum(last_elector_number)(firstPD...lastPD) (assuming sequential numbering).
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on Feb 25, 2021 18:50:48 GMT
It was Labour policy in 1997 for annual local elections in England (and Wales?). Quietly dropped after a few years. Assume too difficult to implement. That was the reason the LGBCE was ordered to prepare schemes for all London boroughs in which everywhere had three member wards. But the idea of annual elections went down like the proverbial cup of cold sick in the party in London, which may have been why it was dropped. That might have had something to do with: 1997: General election 1998: Borough elections / GLA/mayoral referendum 1999: European Parliament election 2000: GLA/mayoral elections 2001: General election 2002: Borough elections And all in a situation where Labour Party membership figures were consistently dropping, a significant proportion of those left weren't prepared to come out and campaign for Labour - and the 1999, 2000 and 2002 results were all pretty disastrous. Before 1997, I personally was prepared at least to consider that there might be benefits to annual elections - gaps of three years or more between election campaigns can significantly impair election preparedness. But by 2002, the prospect of a never-ending annual treadmill of elections definitely seemed worse. (Is it a coincidence that I stepped back from Party committees and local campaign organisation after 2002, and decided to have a life instead? No, I'm afraid not.)
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 25, 2021 19:24:08 GMT
Yes I'm personally in favour of maintaining rolling elections every year, but of allowing some wards to have fewer than 3 councillors. Other districts manage this and the world doesn't seem to have fallen apart around them. It would be particularly useful in Sheffield given the significant rural areas and separately identifying towns. It would also allow some distinct neighbourhoods to have their own councillors where now they are subsumed into larger wards. On the point about a review having to cover the whole city, whilst this is technically true it's worth remembering that at the 2016 Sheffield review lots of wards were essentially left entirely alone. I've updated my electorate table and even bearing in mind about half the figures are off by half a percent or so... Wow! Sheffield South West has gained a whole extra ward! (bottom of page 6) There's no way that can be redrawn by tweeking bits here and there, everything's going to have to push out towards Derbyshire to replace eight wards with nine wards. And to make it worse, North and South have both dropped by a fraction of a ward, and not in a way that makes for easy drawing. Even swapping Darnall between sectors doesn't get whole numbers, if Sheffield remains at 28*3=84 it looks like the only way to do it is to slice Darnall into two and break both the Sheffield Parkway boundary and the River Don boundary. A case could be made to go back up to 29 wards, and simple add a ward to South-West..... but there would be huge pushback against "giving" the LibDems/Greens an additional ward. But that would happen anyway sticking at 28 wards, just that doing that would be "stealing" a whole ward from Labour. Calmer heads held sway in the 2004 review when Labour essentially lost three whole wards (though balanced by gaining one by splitting Mosborough in two).
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 25, 2021 19:48:53 GMT
That might have had something to do with: 1997: General election 1998: Borough elections / GLA/mayoral referendum 1999: European Parliament election 2000: GLA/mayoral elections 2001: General election 2002: Borough elections ... But by 2002, the prospect of a never-ending annual treadmill of elections definitely seemed worse. (Is it a coincidence that I stepped back from Party committees and local campaign organisation after 2002, and decided to have a life instead? No, I'm afraid not.) Moving from Sheffield to Whitby and going from non-stop annual elections to an election every two years definitely felt like a welcome drop in pressure. In Sheffield the only gap we had in my time there was 2009 was never! Crumbs, it was 2013 and it felt really weird with "nothing" going on. The previous fallow year was 1993, and I was in Hong Kong.
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ilerda
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Post by ilerda on Feb 25, 2021 22:23:24 GMT
Yes I'm personally in favour of maintaining rolling elections every year, but of allowing some wards to have fewer than 3 councillors. Other districts manage this and the world doesn't seem to have fallen apart around them. It would be particularly useful in Sheffield given the significant rural areas and separately identifying towns. It would also allow some distinct neighbourhoods to have their own councillors where now they are subsumed into larger wards. On the point about a review having to cover the whole city, whilst this is technically true it's worth remembering that at the 2016 Sheffield review lots of wards were essentially left entirely alone. I've updated my electorate table and even bearing in mind about half the figures are off by half a percent or so... Wow! Sheffield South West has gained a whole extra ward! (bottom of page 6) There's no way that can be redrawn by tweeking bits here and there, everything's going to have to push out towards Derbyshire to replace eight wards with nine wards. And to make it worse, North and South have both dropped by a fraction of a ward, and not in a way that makes for easy drawing. Even swapping Darnall between sectors doesn't get whole numbers, if Sheffield remains at 28*3=84 it looks like the only way to do it is to slice Darnall into two and break both the Sheffield Parkway boundary and the River Don boundary. A case could be made to go back up to 29 wards, and simple add a ward to South-West..... but there would be huge pushback against "giving" the LibDems/Greens an additional ward. But that would happen anyway sticking at 28 wards, just that doing that would be "stealing" a whole ward from Labour. Calmer heads held sway in the 2004 review when Labour essentially lost three whole wards (though balanced by gaining one by splitting Mosborough in two). Very interesting, thank you for sharing. I fear your sectors may end up being pushed to the limit, but overall I’d say adding an extra ward in the SW would actually be the best fir the city as a whole. It would certainly be less painful for the rest of the city. Could we perhaps return to the old way of having separate wards for Sharrow and Nether Edge? Perhaps a Porter Brook ward running along both sides of Ecclesall Road?
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YL
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Post by YL on Feb 26, 2021 8:16:35 GMT
I agree that if Sheffield were to have a review on numbers close to those it would make sense to go back to 29 wards, with a new ward in the Sharrow/Broomhall area. In the context of a council review I think it's better to have a rough idea of what the best council size is and choose a size close to that which gives a good map, rather than picking an exact number out of thin air and then straining to draw a map which fits it.
I know 28 was partly chosen because it fitted well with the parliamentary numbers, and indeed if the wards were evenly sized it would work very well, but who knows where we'll be with the numbers when it comes to the parliamentary review after the current one?
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 26, 2021 11:20:51 GMT
On the topics of both electoral equality and of new authorities, it's interesting to look at the figures for the new Northamptonshire authorities. We don't yet have figures for the divisions, but we've get parliamentary electorates for the districts and can hence work out the average electorate of each division in the disappearing districts:
West Northamptonshire - 31 districts
Northampton - 17 divisions, parliamentary electorate 147225, average division size 8660 electors Daventry - 7 divisions, parliamentary electorate 64024, average division size 9146 electors South Northants - 7 divisions, parliamentary electorate 73269, average division size 10467 electors
Average division size across the whole authority 9178 electors, meaning the average division in South Northants is about 15% above the average for the authority as a whole. It wouldn't be a shock if some of the divisions are above 30%. It would be a big surprise if this affected overall control of the authority, but it wouldn't be a shock if malapportionment effectively costs the Conservatives a division.
North Northamptonshire - 26 districts
Corby - 5 divisions, parliamentary electorate 45783, average division size 9157 electors East Northants - 7 divisions, parliamentary electorate 70331, average division size 10047 electors Wellingborough - 6 divisions, parliamentary electorate 56490, average division size 9415 electors Kettering - 8 divisions, parliamentary electorate 72777, average division size 9097 electors
Average division size across the authority 9437 electors. Electoral equality is significantly better than in West Northants, but when the boundaries are reviewed you'd still expect so see a division effectively transferred to East Northants.
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