They're reviewing Colchester again, so naturally I've got the maps and spreadsheets out to have a look. The LGBCE page is here:
www.lgbce.org.uk/all-reviews/colchesterA long exploration of my initial thoughts follows. If you're not especially interested in the minutiae of north Essex local geography, you may want to skip this.
Council sizeCurrently Colchester City Council has 51 councillors. The LGBCE have decided it should remain at 51 councillors, meaning by 2030 there will be one councillor for every 3077 electors. As it is currently elected by thirds, the presumption will be that it has a pattern of uniform three-member wards unless there are strong reasons to do otherwise. You could perhaps make a case for Mersea Island to form a two-member ward, but as it’s currently part of a three-member ward and hasn’t encountered any obvious problems from this I think it’s unlikely.
51 councillors means 17 wards. Labour suggested a council size of 54, which would create an extra ward. The LGBCE are only going to consider this if it can be shown that it clearly produces a superior ward pattern. I will investigate this later, but for now let’s see what we can do with 17 wards.
GroupingsBroadly speaking, there are three parts to the district – there’s Colchester itself (the unparished area, plus the parishes of Myland and Braiswick); there are the surrounding settlements to the north, south and west; and then there’s Wivenhoe, which is separated from the second group by the river Colne.
The Wivenhoe civil parish only covers the town itself, but the present ward also includes the University campus. Given that the university campus has been in a ward with at least part of Wivenhoe since 2002, I don’t think you can make a case that continuing that is an unreasonable imposition. The present Wivenhoe ward is projected to have an electorate of 8273 by 2030. This means that it will have an electorate very marginally more than 10% below average, but it rounds to -10% so on previous precedent the LGBCE will have no problem with that. So we can call Wivenhoe a stand-alone group of one ward.
The other settlements outside Colchester large enough to form an entire ward are Stanway and Tiptree. Stanway adjoins Colchester and on a map looks like it’s just another part of the Colchester urban area, but it has always been separate from Colchester and the boundary between the two is so strong it’s actually a Scheduled Ancient Monument – Gryme’s Dyke, which was probably part of the boundary of the original Roman settlement of Camulodunum.
At present part of the parish forms the Stanway ward and another part (the GL polling district) is in the Marks Tey & Layer ward. By 2030 the Stanway ward is projected to have an electorate 15% below average, but the whole parish would have an electorate 18% above average, so clearly it can’t stand alone. I did look at considering it along with neighbouring bits of Colchester, but in practice that works poorly so it’s better to consider it with the rural areas.
Tiptree, on the other hand, currently forms a ward of its own. By 2030 it’s projected to be 8% below quota, which is fine, so I would suggested it can also form a stand-alone group.
If we total up all the rural areas besides Wivenhoe and Tiptree, we get an estimated electorate by 2030 of 42,800, which equates to an entitlement of 13.91 councillors. However, in practice we need to subtract the parish of East Donyland (covering the village of Rowhedge) from that, because if it’s not included in a ward with Colchester then it needs to go with Mersea Island at that would produce a ward with at least 15% too many electors.
That gets us down to 40844 electors and an entitlement to 13.27 councillors. Clearly that’s too many for four whole wards and too few for five, so we need to exclude at least one more parish.
At present the parishes of Aldham, Eight Ash Green and West Bergholt are combined with parts of Colchester in the frankly absurd Lexden & Braiswick ward. That ward is an abomination and deserves to be chopped up, but West Bergholt is a less bad fit with Colchester than the other two parishes, since it’s only just over the A12. So if we subtract that, that gets us down to 38,031, for an entitlement to 12.36 councillors. That seems perfectly workable, so let’s declare that a group of 4 wards, which I’m going to call the
Rural group.
That then leaves 11 Colchester wards. Within that, I think we can identify a few other subgroupings:
• The parishes of Myland, Braiswick and West Bergholt are projected to have a combined electorate of 18462, which produces an entitlement to exactly 6 councillors. So let’s call that a group of two wards. I’m going to call that the
North group.
• The remaining areas north of the River Colne (so the present wards of Greenstead and St Anne’s and St Johns, plus the bits of Highwoods proper in Highwoods ward and the Cowdray Avenue polling district of Castle ward)* have a combined electorate of 28,587, which entitles them to 9.29 councillors . That’s workable for 3 wards, which I’m going to call the
North East group.
• At present Berechurch ward is too small and the neighbouring ward of Old Heath & The Hythe is too large. Combine them and it’s an electorate of 18,121, which is an entitlement to 5.89 councillors and two wards. So I’m classing that as the
South East group.
• The Shrub End ward is in quota (projected to be 4% below quota by 2030) and has strong boundaries along main roads on all sides. So let’s keep things simple, leave it unchanged and call it another stand-alone group.
• That leaves 28,039 electors unaccounted for south of the river, which equates to 9.11 councillors and three wards. I’m calling this the
West Central group.
*A tiny number of electors in the Cowdray Avenue polling district are south of the Colne and a slightly larger number of electors in the Riverside polling district are north of the Colne. Realigning polling district boundaries to the river shouldn’t make a massive difference.
Rural groupThe Mersea & Pyefleet ward is presently comprised of the parishes of Abberton; East Mersea; Fingringhoe; Langenhoe; Peldon; and West Mersea and is projected to have 6% fewer electors than average by 2030. That’s within quota, but given this group is a little on the large side things would work better if it was a little closer to the average.
As it happens, Peldon is part of a grouped parish council (Winstred Hundred parish council) with Great & Little Wigborough; Salcott and Virley. These are all pretty tiny places, but adding them to the ward gets it to -2%. That gives you a pretty good northern boundary along Abberton Reservoir and the Roman River and justifies a name change to Mersea & Winstred.
Similar, Rural North ward is projected to be 1% above quota, but we have room to play with. I’d be tempted to add in Aldham, which was in the same ward as the west of the current ward up until 2016. That gets you up to 6% above quota.
Stanway and the remaining rural parishes are projected to have a combined electorate of 19,190, which equates to two wards each about 4% above quota. One of those wards would be made up entirely of bits of Stanway, whilst the other would have the remainder of Stanway and all the rural bits.
It’s impossible to be sure without exact street-by-street figures, but I suspect the best approach is to take the existing Stanway ward and add in the bits of the GL polling district south of the Tollgate shopping centre. The existing ward boundary here cuts a new development (the Lakelands Estate) in half and reunifying it would create a strong boundary to the ward along the bypass. The other part of the GL polling district (the Oakwood Meadows estate) is separated from the rest of Stanway by Tollgate and so fits fine with the rural parishes instead.
North groupThe present Mile End ward is already well above quota and by 2030 it’ll be 34% above, so what we’re effectively doing with this group in turning one and a half wards into two. If we use polling districts as the basis, then the eastern ward could be based on the AP (Myland East) polling district from Highwoods ward and the AW (Turner Road) polling district from the present Mile End, whilst the western ward could be based on the AU (Bergholt Road) and AV (Mile End Road) polling districts from the present Mile End, plus the parishes of Braiswick and West Bergholt. You then need to shift about 2000 electors/putative electors from the western to the eastern ward.
Luckily, the existing polling district boundaries predate the construction of housing in the north of the ward and need updating anyway. I suspect moving the boundary so that it follows Nayland Road and the Northern Approach Road would be sufficient to restore electoral equality and if you need to shift a tiny bit more then the new Chesterwell estate should do the job.
North East groupStarting at the top, Highwoods was already too small and if you remove Myland East from it then you’ve only got about half a ward left. To get up to quota, you need to cross the Ipswich Road and start adding territory from the old St John’s ward. The old St John’s ward was made up of the BN and BO polling districts. Those plus AN and AO from Highwoods produces a viable ward 2% below quota, but the issue is that the BO polling district has an ugly dog leg south of the railway line that is out on a limb from the rest of the ward.
If you’re not happy with that, there are two basic solutions: the first is that you draw the boundary along the railway line, which is very clean but might make fitting two legal wards out of the area to the south a little tight. The second is to add the BL polling district, effectively moving the southern boundary to the Harwich Road. This produces a very large ward, but one which by a tiny margin rounds to +10%. Which one you choose essentially comes down to the choices you make with the other two wards in this group.
At the moment, Greenstead is heavily overpopulated and this is projected to intensify to 33% above the target by 2030. As far as I can tell, this mostly reflects the construction of new flats opposite the Hythe. The 2016 boundary changes added two areas to the ward in the east and west, both from the old St Anne’s ward – Longridge to the east of Greenstead and Greenstead Avenue to the west.
In theory you could reverse that, but in practice I don’t think that’s a good idea. The old St Anne’s ward had a ridiculous shape and was only barely contiguous. Longridge clearly functions as an extension of Greenstead and the only reason it was separate was because residents of that (privately built) estate didn’t want to be with the oiks on the council estate. They’ve been sharing a ward with them for nearly a decade now and they’ve survived, so there’s no reason to separate them again.
Instead I’d propose that Greenstead ward should consist of Longridge, the BH polling district (covering the east of the Greenstead estate) and that bit of the BI polling district which covers Greenstead proper – so with a boundary along St Andrew’s Avenue.
The St Anne’s ward would then definitely consist of the rest of BI, the St Anne’s (BK), Cowdray Avenue (AH) and Greenstead Road (BJ) polling districts, and depending on the numbers might also include the BH polling district and perhaps also the southern part of the BO polling district.
South East groupIn this group Old Heath & the Hythe needs to lose at least 750 electors and Berechurch can gain at most 2300. One way of doing this would be shifting Rowhedge into Berechurch, but in practice the links between the two aren’t very good so I would look to instead move the Barnhall (AL) polling district. The numbers for that work fine, but the polling district boundaries are a little ugly. If the numbers work, I might be tempted to also add the bits of the AM polling district west of Old Heath Road. If not (and honestly, even if they do) I might instead just keep Barn Hall Avenue itself in Old Heath whilst transferring the rest of the polling district.
West Central groupEssentially this group has to consist of one ward containing Prettygate and most of Lexden and two wards containing the city centre, the areas to the south of it and the rest of Lexden. Your basic choice is whether to maintain the current pattern, with those two wards split north-south, or to transition to an east-west split.
If you’re going for north-south, then it’s pretty simple: New Town & Christ Church is currently too large, so you detach the Christchurch (AI) polling district from it and create a new boundary along the Maldon Road. Prettygate takes the Trafalgar (AQ) polling district and as much of the East Lexden (AS) polling district as there’s room for (probably up about as far as Norman Way?) Both wards get renamed accordingly. The present Castle ward (minus the Cowdray Avenue polling district) then adds Christchurch and the rest of East Lexden.
The issue with that is that it makes Castle quite a long ward, extending well beyond what you could really call the centre.
If instead you’re going with an east-west arrangement, then you have to take an axe to the present polling districts, but your eastern ward is going to have a western boundary which approximately runs down Mersea Road and Queen Street. Prettygate stays as it is in the north-south plan, whilst the western halves of the current Castle and New Town & Christ Church wards get thrown together.
This looks neater on a map, but you would have to convince the LGBCE that this disruption is superior and that Southway isn’t an insuperable barrier (which I don’t think it is, given how many underpasses there are underneath it.)
