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Post by islington on Aug 2, 2020 17:59:29 GMT
Sussex map -
 Chichester - 75824 Bognor Regis - 75831 (and this version does allow you to drive from Bognor to Selsey without leaving the seat - although I agree with Adrian this shouldn't be a dealbreaker) Arundel - 75460 (very happy with this one) Horsham - 74220 (yes I know it looks like a clumsily-fried egg but it's all connected) Worthing - 74570 Shoreham - 75762
Brighton West and Hove - 73799 Brighton North - 74641 Brighton East - 75982
Everything else I think is as Adrian had it.
(Edited to add: Except Hailsham would be a better name than Wealden)
Also, I'd better keep away from Brighton for a while or they'll keelhaul me beneath the pier or whatever it is they do to heretics down there.
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on Aug 2, 2020 20:39:42 GMT
islington When we were "doing" 600 seats I included a single Worthing seat in my plan. IIRC the Commission did not. Now it's no longer possible to have a single seat without chipping a bit off, I think it's even less likely that the current arrangement will be significantly changed. Although I wouldn't put it past them to be perverse.
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on Aug 2, 2020 21:15:41 GMT
The Joy Of Wessex
Main points:
A new Exeter West & Okehampton - hardly minimum change, but now that it's necessary to take 3 wards from Exeter it makes sense (?!) to have the seat boundary along the river. Okehampton is just about close enough to do this, and it allows the seat boundaries to much more closely align with district boundaries.
Lyme Regis or Wessex Coast - it'd be good to transfer Chickerell to Weymouth, but it requires a more radical shake-up of the other seats.
Shaftesbury or Cranborne Chase - similar story, it'd be better with Downton in Salisbury.
I've tinkered quite a bit with the Wiltshire seats because I thought that "minimum change" made them a bit ugly, but I dare say the Commission won't be so radical.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2020 21:46:17 GMT
The Joy Of Wessex Main points: A new Exeter West & Okehampton - hardly minimum change, but now that it's necessary to take 3 wards from Exeter it makes sense (?!) to have the seat boundary along the river. Okehampton is just about close enough to do this, and it allows the seat boundaries to much more closely align with district boundaries. Lyme Regis or Wessex Coast - it'd be good to transfer Chickerell to Weymouth, but it requires a more radical shake-up of the other seats. Shaftesbury or Cranborne Chase - similar story, it'd be better with Downton in Salisbury. I've tinkered quite a bit with the Wiltshire seats because I thought that "minimum change" made them a bit ugly, but I dare say the Commission won't be so radical. Are those changes enough to make Exeter a marginal seat? |
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andrewp
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Post by andrewp on Aug 2, 2020 21:52:20 GMT
The Joy Of Wessex Main points: A new Exeter West & Okehampton - hardly minimum change, but now that it's necessary to take 3 wards from Exeter it makes sense (?!) to have the seat boundary along the river. Okehampton is just about close enough to do this, and it allows the seat boundaries to much more closely align with district boundaries. Lyme Regis or Wessex Coast - it'd be good to transfer Chickerell to Weymouth, but it requires a more radical shake-up of the other seats. Shaftesbury or Cranborne Chase - similar story, it'd be better with Downton in Salisbury. I've tinkered quite a bit with the Wiltshire seats because I thought that "minimum change" made them a bit ugly, but I dare say the Commission won't be so radical. Are those changes enough to make Exeter a marginal seat? They are essentially the changes initially proposed in the last review. And would very likely Have resulted in a Conservative gain in 2010. I would estimate a Labour majority of 5000 in 2019. |
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on Aug 2, 2020 22:34:57 GMT
Are those changes enough to make Exeter a marginal seat? They are essentially the changes initially proposed in the last review. And would very likely Have resulted in a Conservative gain in 2010. I would estimate a Labour majority of 5000 in 2019. I assume that the local Labour party has been working Topsham in case the boundaries move. |
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Khunanup
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Post by Khunanup on Aug 2, 2020 23:27:07 GMT
Sussex map -
Chichester - 75824 Bognor Regis - 75831 (and this version does allow you to drive from Bognor to Selsey without leaving the seat - although I agree with Adrian this shouldn't be a dealbreaker) Arundel - 75460 (very happy with this one) Horsham - 74220 (yes I know it looks like a clumsily-fried egg but it's all connected) Worthing - 74570 Shoreham - 75762
Brighton West and Hove - 73799 Brighton North - 74641 Brighton East - 75982 Everything else I think is as Adrian had it. (Edited to add: Except Hailsham would be a better name than Wealden)
Also, I'd better keep away from Brighton for a while or they'll keelhaul me beneath the pier or whatever it is they do to heretics down there.
Two golden rules for Sussex. Try and keep your coastal towns in tightly drawn coastal seats as much as possible in the west. No west of Eastbourne coast to Kent/Surrey border seat in the east. Oh, and no Brighton East & 'Seahaven', but that appears to be mercifully less likely to be suggested this time. That is all... |
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on Aug 2, 2020 23:34:50 GMT
Khunanup "No west of Eastbourne coast to Kent/Surrey border seat in the east." This seems like an odd rule, given that Wealden district goes from Kent to coast.
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Khunanup
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Post by Khunanup on Aug 2, 2020 23:48:15 GMT
Khunanup "No west of Eastbourne coast to Kent/Surrey border seat in the east." This seems like an odd rule, given that Wealden district goes from Kent to coast. Wealden is a ridiculous district. Quite why East Dean/Seven Sisters, Alfriston etc aren't in Lewes district I'll never know (it's transport links with the rest of the district are much poorer than their links with Seaford in Lewes district and it's the other side of the Downs) and it also has a bizarre bulge with Hooe & Ninfield in it which really should be part of Rother. A real bits and pieces left over council area. |
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Post by Adrian on Aug 3, 2020 1:05:42 GMT
Khunanup "No west of Eastbourne coast to Kent/Surrey border seat in the east." This seems like an odd rule, given that Wealden district goes from Kent to coast. Wealden is a ridiculous district. Quite why East Dean/Seven Sisters, Alfriston etc aren't in Lewes district I'll never know (it's transport links with the rest of the district are much poorer than their links with Seaford in Lewes district and it's the other side of the Downs) and it also has a bizarre bulge with Hooe & Ninfield in it which really should be part of Rother. A real bits and pieces left over council area. It's an amalgamation of Hailsham and Uckfield rural districts. When the new districts were made it made sense to keep to the original boundaries, but it is a shame that so few councils have taken the opportunity to edit their boundaries in the intervening 45 years. (I suppose no-one wants to lose any tax receipts.) And the govt is still using those weird boundaries to construct its supercouncils. |
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Khunanup
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Post by Khunanup on Aug 3, 2020 3:12:07 GMT
Wealden is a ridiculous district. Quite why East Dean/Seven Sisters, Alfriston etc aren't in Lewes district I'll never know (it's transport links with the rest of the district are much poorer than their links with Seaford in Lewes district and it's the other side of the Downs) and it also has a bizarre bulge with Hooe & Ninfield in it which really should be part of Rother. A real bits and pieces left over council area. It's an amalgamation of Hailsham and Uckfield rural districts. When the new districts were made it made sense to keep to the original boundaries, but it is a shame that so few councils have taken the opportunity to edit their boundaries in the intervening 45 years. (I suppose no-one wants to lose any tax receipts.) And the govt is still using those weird boundaries to construct its supercouncils. I thought it was something like this. Those boundaries are so ridiculously dated and existed for reasons lost in the midst of time. Building new councils should be an opportunity to reflect communities as they are today rather than how they were over a century ago... |
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Aug 3, 2020 7:47:26 GMT
And now for something completely different.  1 South West Hertfordshire 70755 Yes 2 Watford 70304 Yes 3 South Hertfordshire 71281 Yes 4 Hemel Hempstead 69766 Yes 5 North West Hertfordshire 70987 Yes 6 St Albans 70399 Yes 7 Welwyn Hatfield 70847 Yes 8 Hitchin 71708 Yes 9 Stevenage 73529 Yes 10 Cheshunt 74619 Yes 11 Hertford 74412 Yes 12 Stortford and Dunmow 74208 Yes 13 Saffron Walden 73635 Yes 14 Braintree 71813 Yes 15 Colchester 75584 Yes 16 Maldon 74326 Yes 17 Harwich and North Essex 75225 Yes 18 Clacton 70872 Yes 19 Chelmsford North 75326 Yes 20 Chelmsford South and Billericay 72818 Yes 21 Rayleigh 69890 Yes 22 Harlow 72617 Yes 23 Epping Forest 74752 Yes 24 Brentwood and Ongar 70049 Yes 25 Basildon and Wickford 74083 Yes 26 Rochford and Southend North 72081 Yes 27 Southend South 69251 Yes 28 Castle Point 69579 Yes 29 Basildon South and Thurrock East 74426 Yes 30 Thurrock 70874 Yes |
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YL
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Post by YL on Aug 3, 2020 7:57:06 GMT
If you don't put Brownhills into Lichfield, there's no need to change either Lichfield or Tamworth other than assigning the wards currently split between the constituencies to one of them. So those areas going into Stafford is ultimately a knock on effect of refusing to split a ward in distant Wolverhampton. I don't know what you've done in Shropshire, but I came to the conclusion that the numbers in Staffs+Stoke+Dudley fitted well with those in Shropshire (including Telford & Wrekin) and that that allowed no crossing of the Herefordshire/Shropshire border and hence essentially no change in Herefordshire. Hence Shifnal and Albrighton making the numbers up in a mostly Staffordshire seat. (Plan posted way back.) Shropshire can of course be treated on its own, but with some difficulty. YL, on your first point: not really. It's true that if you put Brownhills back into Walsall you could then keep the wards in question to Lichfield; but that's only half the story because you'd then have to make up the numbers in Stafford from somewhere, with substantial knock-on implications for the rest of the county. Whereas Lichfield and Tamworth LAs, taken together, can be assigned two whole seats. So it's not the need to accommodate Brownhills that has driven me to put these wards in the Stafford seat; it's the fact that it's the least bad way of finding the necessary numbers for Stafford. On your second point, I've treated Shropshire separately for five seats. I couldn't improve on the plan someone posted way upthread for this. It's not pretty, but it's not so bad as all that. And, with Cheswardine in the E Salop seat and Prees and Hodnet in Oswestry, it does highlight what I might describe as the Tern Hill polyp: namely a small westward extension of Cheswardine ward that is attached to the rest of it only by what appears to be a point boundary. I presume this does not breach the expectation that seats be contiguous.
Ah, it had not occurred to me that you might have adopted one of those Shropshire plans; I'd assumed you'd followed the earlier suggestion to tack a Shropshire ward onto Leominster. If you really zoom in on the right mapping I think you will see that Cheswardine ward is connected by a very thin strip. (E.g. OpenStreetMap, which doesn't show wards but does show the parish boundary it's based on.) I still think your re-map of Walsall made things worse, in ways that you basically acknowledged when you introduced it, and this sort of knock-on effect outside the authority with the awkward ward sizes (Wolverhampton here) is one of the main situations where you really ought to consider a split ward. But you're never actually going to accept that splitting a ward is the right solution, are you? |
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YL
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Post by YL on Aug 3, 2020 8:20:57 GMT
I think we all try to avoid three upper-tier or single-tier authorities in the same seat (unless it's Windsor), but there are plenty of seats that extend into three different second-tier authorities: so, although obviously undesirable, it isn't a fatal flaw. The current Arundel and C Devon seats extend into four, however, which is a bit much. The Arundel problem should be easily resolved in a 17-seat Sussex plan, but C Devon is a lost cause. I just found this old post when searching for something else, and it's confusing me. I don't think it's too difficult to avoid a four district seat in Devon; certainly my plan doesn't have one, and I don't think Adrian's just posted one does either. |
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YL
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Post by YL on Aug 3, 2020 9:29:02 GMT
Prompted by the above discussion, I thought I'd have another go at Sussex:  1. Hove 74767 - unchanged 2. Brighton North & Lewes 75681 - extending a Brighton seat to include Lewes town rather than Peacehaven allows Hove to remain unchanged without a ward split in Brighton; if a ward split is acceptable then it's possible to swap Peacehaven back in for Lewes and return to something close to the existing lines in Brighton. 3. Brighton Kemptown 73505 - or "Kemptown & Pavilion"? 4. Hastings & Rye 75852 5. Bexhill & Battle 75378 6. Eastbourne 73317 7. Crowborough & Hailsham 74350 - or "Wealden" 8. Polegate & Seaford 73858 - see above on Lewes vs. Peacehaven 9. Haywards Heath & Bluebell 75458 - OK, naming a seat after a steam railway might be a bit weird (would @pr1berske approve?), but it seemed like a way of acknowledging the extent of this across the internal Sussex boundary without making the name too much of a mouthful  10. Burgess Hill 75996 11. Worthing East & Shoreham 73971 - unchanged, but I've fixed the name. 12. Worthing West 74915 13. Bognor Regis 72022 14. Chichester 70566 15. Littlehampton & Arundel 70812 - this breaks Khunanup 's first rule, but it's hard to keep all the coastal towns in compact seats. 16. Horsham 71138 17. Crawley 74712 - unchanged |
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Post by islington on Aug 3, 2020 11:01:01 GMT
YL, on your first point: not really. It's true that if you put Brownhills back into Walsall you could then keep the wards in question to Lichfield; but that's only half the story because you'd then have to make up the numbers in Stafford from somewhere, with substantial knock-on implications for the rest of the county. Whereas Lichfield and Tamworth LAs, taken together, can be assigned two whole seats. So it's not the need to accommodate Brownhills that has driven me to put these wards in the Stafford seat; it's the fact that it's the least bad way of finding the necessary numbers for Stafford. On your second point, I've treated Shropshire separately for five seats. I couldn't improve on the plan someone posted way upthread for this. It's not pretty, but it's not so bad as all that. And, with Cheswardine in the E Salop seat and Prees and Hodnet in Oswestry, it does highlight what I might describe as the Tern Hill polyp: namely a small westward extension of Cheswardine ward that is attached to the rest of it only by what appears to be a point boundary. I presume this does not breach the expectation that seats be contiguous.
Ah, it had not occurred to me that you might have adopted one of those Shropshire plans; I'd assumed you'd followed the earlier suggestion to tack a Shropshire ward onto Leominster. If you really zoom in on the right mapping I think you will see that Cheswardine ward is connected by a very thin strip. (E.g. OpenStreetMap, which doesn't show wards but does show the parish boundary it's based on.) I still think your re-map of Walsall made things worse, in ways that you basically acknowledged when you introduced it, and this sort of knock-on effect outside the authority with the awkward ward sizes (Wolverhampton here) is one of the main situations where you really ought to consider a split ward. But you're never actually going to accept that splitting a ward is the right solution, are you? Just on the last point -
No, I can imagine that splitting a ward, although ipso facto an unsatisfactory solution, may sometimes be the least unsatisfactory solution available.
What I'm trying to do here is to come up with the best possible non-split plan for any given area. This then gives a baseline against which to judge the value added by any suggested ward split. This is as opposed to the alternative approach of assuming from the outset that ward splits will be necessary, which I think is misconceived because it means that the non-split possibilities don't get thoroughly explored before any splits are considered.
A further potential difference of approach is that I regard a ward split as quite a serious drawback in itself. So for me, to be justified a split would have have to effect a substantial (not merely marginal) overall improvement on the best non-split plan, which implies that the non-split plan has to be pretty bad. I can see the argument in one or two places: possibly the Wirral, if it allowed us to keep Birkenhead, Wallasey and Ellesmere Port all united; maybe in W Yorks met if it allowed Bradford to be treated separately and the current pattern in Leeds to be better respected; and perhaps Wolverhampton as you suggest. But even in these cases, I'm not sure the case is compelling: of course I agree that the best non-split plans contain some seats that are far from ideal, particularly because of excessive LA boundary-crossings andor departing widely from the current map; but is there anything that's outrageously Lancaster-and-Fleetwood bad?
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Post by islington on Aug 3, 2020 11:05:48 GMT
islington When we were "doing" 600 seats I included a single Worthing seat in my plan. IIRC the Commission did not. Now it's no longer possible to have a single seat without chipping a bit off, I think it's even less likely that the current arrangement will be significantly changed. Although I wouldn't put it past them to be perverse. Well, the difference is that in the 2018 zombie W Sussex was entitled to 8 seats, the same as its existing allocation, and this made it had to justify anything other than treating it separately and shifting a few marginal wards to get everything within range. But now, it is being treated with E Sussex and the area as a whole needs to accommodate an extra seat, so bigger changes are needed. |
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Post by islington on Aug 3, 2020 11:44:24 GMT
Since the subject has come up, here's my take on Devon.
 N Devon (unchanged) - 74112 W Devon - 69763
Plymouth Devonport - 71128 (reverting to the traditional split of Plymouth) Plymouth Sutton - 75748 SW Devon - 71906 (changed only to align with new wards) Totnes - 69567 (ditto) Newton Abbot - 70608 (ditto)
Torquay - 75910 (ditto, and name changed because Torbay is a body of water and doesn't need a seat in Parliament) C Devon - 69590 (still sprawled across four districts)
Exeter - 72019 (either you split it along the Exe or you continue to hive wards off the eastern and southern rim; I attach myself to the latter school of thought) Exmouth - 69645 (the successor to E Devon; including Ottery rather than Sidmouth helps with the following two seats) Tiverton - 70952 Honiton & Bridport - 69516 (the cross-border seat with Dorset)
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andrewp
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Post by andrewp on Aug 3, 2020 12:17:28 GMT
Since the subject has come up, here's my take on Devon.
N Devon (unchanged) - 74112 W Devon - 69763
Plymouth Devonport - 71128 (reverting to the traditional split of Plymouth) Plymouth Sutton - 75748 SW Devon - 71906 (changed only to align with new wards) Totnes - 69567 (ditto) Newton Abbot - 70608 (ditto)
Torquay - 75910 (ditto, and name changed because Torbay is a body of water and doesn't need a seat in Parliament) C Devon - 69590 (still sprawled across four districts)
Exeter - 72019 (either you split it along the Exe or you continue to hive wards off the eastern and southern rim; I attach myself to the latter school of thought) Exmouth - 69645 (the successor to E Devon; including Ottery rather than Sidmouth helps with the following two seats) Tiverton - 70952 Honiton & Bridport - 69516 (the cross-border seat with Dorset)
That’s not bad at all. The Central Devon seat is not nice at all, but might be tricky to avoid. Unless you can Have Bideford and Okehampton together, and Tavistock and Buckfastkeigh. With Exmouth, I don’t know if it’s possible to swap the Exe Valley area for Ottery. |
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YL
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Post by YL on Aug 3, 2020 12:40:52 GMT
I would try, compared with islington's plan Tiverton: as is less Taw Vale. 69566 NW Devon: all of Torridge district, plus the two Okehampton wards, South Tawton, Exbourne and Hatherleigh, Taw and Taw Vale from Mid Devon. 69548 Tavistock & Dartmoor (or whatever you want to call it, but it's not really "Central"): rest of Mid Devon and West Devon, plus the Teignbridge component of his C Devon. 71191 Or you could keep NW Devon out of Mid Devon district by adding Bridestow and putting Taw and Taw Vale in the other seat. Other permutations are available. |
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