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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 16, 2024 21:34:47 GMT
I've taken a quick look at Milton Keynes and tried to work out some useful building blocks you could use when trying to draw up a plan. It's not a place I know much better than I need to to get to the IKEA, but I've used a mixture of existing wards, current civil parish boundaries and major roads to make some guesses at which areas go best together. - Bletchley is now the right size for three wards
- The Shenley Brook End civil parish is the right size for two (small) wards, though in practice you probably need to split a polling district to get good electoral equality
- The Shenley Church End civil parish is just large enough to stand alone as a ward
- You can then get two wards out of the other parishes west of Watling Street. There's a non-split option if you're prepared to pair Stony Stratford with Whitehouse, but a more sensible option is probably splitting the Abbey Hill civil parish
- Newton Pagnell is the right size for a ward on its own and I presume the locals would prefer that to the existing split
- Olney and the rural territory to the north of the city has enough electors for one and a half wards
- The parishes east of the River Ouzel have enough electors for three and a half wards. Walton is slightly too small to stand alone but can easily be got up to size with a small nearby parish. If you're going for minimising divisions of civil parishes (and I'm not sure how important those are as community identities there) then the easiest solution is to pair Walton with Old Woughton and/or Simpson and Ashland; the Brickhills with Woburn Sands and Wavendon; Kents Hill etc. with Milton Keynes and Broughton with the countryside to the north. That's not necessarily the best solution, mind.
- That leaves the other urban parishes, which have enough electors for six wards but with the average ward needing to be a little on the large size. There are a bunch of different solutions there and I don't have the knowledge to know which ones are better.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 20, 2024 13:13:24 GMT
I've taken a quick look at Milton Keynes and tried to work out some useful building blocks you could use when trying to draw up a plan. It's not a place I know much better than I need to to get to the IKEA, but I've used a mixture of existing wards, current civil parish boundaries and major roads to make some guesses at which areas go best together. - Bletchley is now the right size for three wards
- The Shenley Brook End civil parish is the right size for two (small) wards, though in practice you probably need to split a polling district to get good electoral equality
- The Shenley Church End civil parish is just large enough to stand alone as a ward
- You can then get two wards out of the other parishes west of Watling Street. There's a non-split option if you're prepared to pair Stony Stratford with Whitehouse, but a more sensible option is probably splitting the Abbey Hill civil parish
- Newton Pagnell is the right size for a ward on its own and I presume the locals would prefer that to the existing split
- Olney and the rural territory to the north of the city has enough electors for one and a half wards
- The parishes east of the River Ouzel have enough electors for three and a half wards. Walton is slightly too small to stand alone but can easily be got up to size with a small nearby parish. If you're going for minimising divisions of civil parishes (and I'm not sure how important those are as community identities there) then the easiest solution is to pair Walton with Old Woughton and/or Simpson and Ashland; the Brickhills with Woburn Sands and Wavendon; Kents Hill etc. with Milton Keynes and Broughton with the countryside to the north. That's not necessarily the best solution, mind.
- That leaves the other urban parishes, which have enough electors for six wards but with the average ward needing to be a little on the large size. There are a bunch of different solutions there and I don't have the knowledge to know which ones are better.
Have played around with this a bit more, and this is probably the best compromise between respecting parishes, existing ward boundaries and reasonable connectivity:  In the north, the boundary gets closer to Olney than I'd like, but you can at least follow the Great Ouse which is a decently clear boundary. I don't really like putting Old Woughton in with Walton (when it really looks like it should go with Woughton proper instead) but it'd undoubtedly be more popular with locals and it lets Woughton & Fishermead remain unchanged. In the north of the city, your arrangement is determined by how much you care about the boundaries of Bradwell civil parish and about trying to create a successor to Campbell Park & Old Woughton that looks more coherent, versus trying to minimise changes to the existing Stantonbury ward. Two split polling districts in the west - one in Two Mile Ash and one in Shenley Brook End. Non-split alternatives are available but I don't like them. In the latter case, the solution would be to run the border between the two SBE wards along H7, but to stick Tattenhoe Park in the northern one. ricmk Any thoughts? |
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ricmk
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Post by ricmk on May 21, 2024 12:27:59 GMT
Very interesting - and pretty impressive intuition for someone who claims not to know their way around town  There are a couple of problem areas which you've identified: 1. "Olney and the rural territory to the north of the city has enough electors for one and a half wards" Yep - so something needs to be mashed up somewhere. 2. If you put Old Woughton with Woughton, 50% (that is not a typo) of the households will individually write to the LGBCE to complain about it. Your "Walton and Old Woughton" looks better on the map than in reality, as the connection is straight across the parkland of the Ouzel Valley which is more a divide than a uniter. So good options thin on the ground. I think 18/20 of your wards are pretty good. 2 and 3 are the problems, caused by uniting Newport (which they definitely want.) 3 combines countryside villages near Olney, with the major MK East development not yet started but 1000+ houses in the review period, with established city estates - can't see that flying. And the connectivity issues with 2 are obvious, much as the opposition would love to have all the strongest Tory areas in a single ward like that. If you wanted to submit based on the 18, I'd add a 3 member Olney ward, and try your luck persuading the LGBCE that the Hanslope Park area (west part of 2) needs to be a 1-member ward, and the M1 new builds a 2-member ward. Might fly, given that all the alternatives here will do something nasty somewhere. A couple of other thoughts: -Shenley Brook End parish is good for 2 wards, but the split might be so awkward that it's better to stay with similar arrangements (Oxley Park in Tattenhoe) -Splitting Whitehouse more likely than Two Mile Ash -your ward 7 is also tricky, even though all parts currently in the same ward. This combines very old and very new and takes out the middle buffer. - you have put a lot more thought into respecting parish boundaries than the LGBCE did last time - I wish they had been more like you. I may well have "thoughts" on this myself a little later. I'll let you know what I've come up with when I can. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 21, 2024 13:12:51 GMT
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Post by ricmk on May 21, 2024 16:28:16 GMT
I think that's a neat treatment of the north of the borough, and an improvement on what's there at the moment.
I see some issues with your west flank wards though - 13,14,16 will all encourage varied levels of pitchfork-wielding, and the estate (Leadenhall/Coffee Hall SG/SH) split between 16 and 20 wouldn't go down well, nor would taking Peartree Bridge (SB) out of 20 into 5.
5 looks very ugly on the map - but it does try to handle the Old Woughton problem. Same issue on 6 as with EAL but as you've both gone for it, maybe it could be passed? The bit sticking up north out of 7 is the Open University, I imagine it would be moved into 5 to make more natural boundaries if something like that goes ahead.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 21, 2024 18:47:08 GMT
An alternative arrangement taking into account some of ricmk's comments into account, trying to respect existing wards but stepping right into the pitchfork-wielding mobs at Old Woughton:  - One polling district split, IE, which follows the grid system by adding Oakhill to the Tattenhoe ward.
- I'm not keen on crossing Watling Street, but if it has to be done then round Loughton looks like the best option.
- I think this is the obvious way to draw Woughton and that snobbery isn't a valid reason to draw a silly ward, but sadly I don't expect the LGBCE to agree with that so if I was actually making a submission I'd probably wimp out of it.
- Again, I don't think the Ouzel crossing in this one is elegant, but it is at least where there's already a crossing. If I was writing an actual submission I'd probably write some bilge about Willen Lake being a unifying feature
- Olney unchanged except for the removal of the MK East development
- Wasn't really the intention, but I get the impression this might be a decent map if you were looking to maximise the number of Labour-winnable marginals?
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Post by ricmk on May 21, 2024 22:40:23 GMT
That is a cracking map if you are going to face Old Woughton down; it looks credible across the piece.
The split in IE looks fine to me, although Tattenhoe will complain about getting the prison but not the middle class estate that comes with it!
The Ouzel Valley is as elegant as it gets in my view. Willen Lake is unifying and all well connected there.
That would put various Lib Dem and Labour areas into play together - Bradwell aside the LDs and Labour have battled the Conservatives in separate wards, but I can see at least 3 Lab-LD (or 3-way) contests there. Would be quite aggressive (risky?) for Labour at first glance.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 22, 2024 7:17:56 GMT
Which 3 are you thinking of? Presumably the Campbell Park ward is one, but elsewhere the third party share is so squeezed at the moment that I'm not sure where would become competitive with new lines.
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Post by ricmk on May 22, 2024 11:36:50 GMT
I was thinking of:
Campbell Park (green)
Stantonbury (blue, just to the north) which combines Lab Stantonbury + strong LD areas from Campbell Park
Bradwell (grey, just to the west) which has the other half of Stantonbury + core Bradwell.
Looking at it further, the yellow SE ward could well be added, you've got 1/2 of Monkston + 1/2 of Danesborough and Walton, taking out Lab's worst and best areas. May well be a 3-way fight.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 22, 2024 12:22:26 GMT
I think with Bradwell it's fairly unavoidable, as it's likely to see significant changes and all the surrounding wards are currently strong for Labour. I suspect the aggressive move for Labour there would be to try to combine core Bradwell with parts of CMK.
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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Jun 3, 2024 3:58:05 GMT
Today was supposed to be the announcement of the Sefton review. Website now says "Publication of Final Recommendations has been delayed due to the General Election."
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Post by gerrardwinstanley on Jul 9, 2024 18:20:06 GMT
All the boundary reviews delayed by the general election have now been released by the LGBCE.
So far, I am somewhat unimpressed by the recommendations for the Vale of White Horse; I also wonder how much the LGBCE considers parliamentary constituency boundaries, because these ward recommendations seem to tidy up some of the worse aspects of the post-23 constituencies for the Vale.
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Post by greenchristian on Jul 9, 2024 19:52:37 GMT
I also wonder how much the LGBCE considers parliamentary constituency boundaries. Officially speaking they don't consider them at all. Unofficially there might be the occasional attempt to match them up when it doesn't compromise any of the statutory criteria, but I've never seen any evidence of it happening. |
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Post by YL on Jul 9, 2024 20:00:10 GMT
Almost no changes to the boundaries in Sefton but except in Southport the names have been overhauled:
Harington > Formby West
Ravenmeols > Formby East
Manor > Thornton & Hightown
Victoria > Great Crosby
Church > Waterloo
Linacre > Bootle West
Derby > Bootle East
Netherton & Orrell > Netherton South & Orrell
St Oswald > Netherton North
Molyneux > Aintree & Maghull South
Sudell > Maghull East
Park > Lydiate & Maghull West
I suspect not everyone will agree with me here, but I think this is a considerable improvement; too many of the old names were essentially meaningless and a couple were just wrong.
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Post by carolus on Jul 9, 2024 20:45:05 GMT
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Post by jamie on Jul 9, 2024 22:50:41 GMT
Reading through the Gateshead final report, they essentially seem to have taken the view that whatever the council said initially should take precedence over any subsequent submissions. There’s one bit where they respond to my submission on the inclusion of ‘Riverside’ in an otherwise unchanged ward’s name without any substantive argument against what I said, which is interesting as the initial report didn’t even acknowledge they had changed the ward’s name in the 1st place!
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Post by jamie on Jul 9, 2024 22:57:37 GMT
On Newcastle, there’s a lot of inoffensive changes but the north west of the city is a bit… odd. Chiefly, Kingston Park is separated from Dinnington by, checks notes, Newcastle International Airport. Oh, and Castle ward is still not named after an actual settlement for reasons. Perhaps because Great Park is estimated to have minimal growth, which was a very accurate prediction last review…
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Post by YL on Jul 10, 2024 16:16:25 GMT
On Newcastle, there’s a lot of inoffensive changes but the north west of the city is a bit… odd. Chiefly, Kingston Park is separated from Dinnington by, checks notes, Newcastle International Airport. Oh, and Castle ward is still not named after an actual settlement for reasons. Perhaps because Great Park is estimated to have minimal growth, which was a very accurate prediction last review… There is no explanation given for the retention of the "Castle" name so I think it is just that they adopted the Lib Dem proposal and the Lib Dems used that name. Labour called their version, which would have included Dinnington, "Great Park & the Villages", but that proposal was rejected because it would have been too big. I think that to get all wards within 10% then realistically you have to either cross the Airport or split the Great Park, but I imagine they might consider "Great Park & Brunswick" or the like as an alternative name. Anyway, if we get automatic registration then maybe they will have to review Newcastle again. |
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Post by YL on Jul 10, 2024 16:30:45 GMT
Further draft recommendations in Bradford. The changes from the previous draft are in two areas. In the north, Baildon no longer gains part of Bingley and instead takes the part of Baildon parish in Shipley ward. Bingley's excess electorate is then solved instead by transferring the part of the town west of the railway to Bingley Rural, renamed Bingley West, renaming the rump Bingley as Bingley East, and adding part of Cottingley to Shipley. In the south, they've dropped that dreadful-looking Wyke & Bierley Woods which crossed the M606, extending Wyke northwards instead with a few knock-on effects to Royds and Wibsey & Odsal. Tong then looks much as it does now, but they're proposing renaming it as Tong Street. |
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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Jul 11, 2024 10:06:12 GMT
Almost no changes to the boundaries in Sefton but except in Southport the names have been overhauled: Harington > Formby West Ravenmeols > Formby East Manor > Thornton & Hightown Victoria > Great Crosby Church > Waterloo Linacre > Bootle West Derby > Bootle East Netherton & Orrell > Netherton South & Orrell St Oswald > Netherton North Molyneux > Aintree & Maghull South Sudell > Maghull East Park > Lydiate & Maghull West I suspect not everyone will agree with me here, but I think this is a considerable improvement; too many of the old names were essentially meaningless and a couple were just wrong. The opening paragraphs of their Final report seem rather withering towards the local Conservatives! |
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