Orpington

[Pete Whitehead]

Orpington is just under quota on current boundaries. The proposals by the boundary commission to move Chislehurst and Mottingham from Bromley & Chislehurst to a cross borough seat with Eltham forces the removal of Cray Valley West from that seat and into this one, unitingthe Crays again as they were before 2010. However this would now put Orpington over quota and the initial proposals remedied this by removing the Petts Wood & Knoll ward. This ward goes right into the centre of Orpington and the proposal caused a flurry of objections. The more logical solution would have been to remove Biggin Hill but Darwwin ward is in the way and removing both would have again lead to Orpington being undersized. Essentially there was no satisfactory solution which did not involve splitting a ward. Fortunately the boundary commission have been prepared to do this where necessary and in the revised plans Darwin is split to create a corridor allowing Biggin Hill to be linked with Bromley while most of the area and electorate of that ward remain in Orpington. The upshot is effectively to swap Biggin Hill for St Paul's Cray - a working class area which voted Labour in May. This will obviously not trouble the Conservatives here and the removal of that area together with Mottingham from the Bromley based seat means that they can be happy with at least this element of the boundary changes affecting Bromley

Notional result 2019 on the proposed new boundaries

Con	30908	61.4%
Lab	9942	19.8%
LD	7660	15.2%
Grn	1817	3.6%
Majority	20966	41.7%

[spinach]

Biggin Hill East and Cudham - 88.6% White British
Upminster South and Corbets Tey - 88.6% White British (part of Hornchurch and Upminister)
Biggin Hill West - 88.4% White British

MSOAs with the highest White British % in London 2021.

Unsurprisingly the areas of London on the Kent/Essex border have the highest % White British in Greater London, with such areas more culturally/socially connected to Kent/Essex than London.