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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jun 23, 2021 15:56:59 GMT
I hadn't noticed until now that the commission's proposals have the Wetherby seat extending in to 4 local authorities. I thought their policy was not to draw anything reaching into more than 3 LAs?
It is incidentally comparatively simple to avoid this and to only have one seat crossing from South Yorkshire into West Yorkshire, but I don't think Richard Burgon would particularly enjoy the consequences.
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Post by islington on Jun 23, 2021 16:09:45 GMT
I hadn't noticed until now that the commission's proposals have the Wetherby seat extending in to 4 local authorities. I thought their policy was not to draw anything reaching into more than 3 LAs? It is incidentally comparatively simple to avoid this and to only have one seat crossing from South Yorkshire into West Yorkshire, but I don't think Richard Burgon would particularly enjoy the consequences. Sounds like a plan with no drawbacks.
Please post.
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YL
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Post by YL on Jun 23, 2021 16:29:14 GMT
I hadn't noticed until now that the commission's proposals have the Wetherby seat extending in to 4 local authorities. I thought their policy was not to draw anything reaching into more than 3 LAs? It is incidentally comparatively simple to avoid this and to only have one seat crossing from South Yorkshire into West Yorkshire, but I don't think Richard Burgon would particularly enjoy the consequences. Do you mean North Yorkshire?
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jun 24, 2021 8:59:00 GMT
Wakefield 75451 Morley & Leeds South 70437 Leeds Central 73364 Rothwell & Eggborough 76780 Leeds West & Wetherby 74799 Selby & Easingwold 73242 Gipton & Harehills ward is split along the same lines as the initial proposals. The last seat is pretty terrible and several of the others are nothing to write home about, so I personally wouldn't think it was worth submitting, but it's definitely more respectful of local authority boundaries. In partisan terms Morley shifts towards Labour, but Leeds West favours the Tories and whilst Rothwell & Eggborough is a little better for us than Selby, it still looks like very heavy lifting right now.
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Post by islington on Jun 24, 2021 10:26:43 GMT
Wakefield 75451 Morley & Leeds South 70437 Leeds Central 73364 Rothwell & Eggborough 76780 Leeds West & Wetherby 74799 Selby & Easingwold 73242 Gipton & Harehills ward is split along the same lines as the initial proposals. The last seat is pretty terrible and several of the others are nothing to write home about, so I personally wouldn't think it was worth submitting, but it's definitely more respectful of local authority boundaries. In partisan terms Morley shifts towards Labour, but Leeds West favours the Tories and whilst Rothwell & Eggborough is a little better for us than Selby, it still looks like very heavy lifting right now. Would this be less terrible?
Admittedly this disrupts another seat (York Outer) but it gives better 'Vale of York' and 'Selby' seats. I've split West York Rural ward to take out the Askhams, which I've estimated at 1800 electors. On this basis: Selby 73909, VoY 74616, so there's plenty of room for error on the numbers.
Everything else as you had it except that I've put Thorpe Willoughby into the Selby seat, which leaves your Rothwell at 74217.
Edited to add: Or, if you want to avoid the ward split, put the whole of W York Rural in the VoY seat and swap Dringhouses into York and Hull Road into the Selby seat.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jun 24, 2021 11:10:07 GMT
A ward split or disrupting City of York are both unnecessary - you can just go for an east/west split of York Outer instead. Optionally, you could also swap the Eggborough area for Tadcaster.
That said, I don't see the BCE making changes to York, so I think you'd be pushing at a brick wall.
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Post by islington on Jun 24, 2021 11:29:16 GMT
A ward split or disrupting City of York are both unnecessary - you can just go for an east/west split of York Outer instead. Optionally, you could also swap the Eggborough area for Tadcaster. That said, I don't see the BCE making changes to York, so I think you'd be pushing at a brick wall. Eggborough definitely goes better with Selby than with Rothwell; and Rothwell & Tadcaster doesn't sound too bad as a name.
I don't mind disrupting York Outer, although the BCE might; but a straight east-west split means a Selby seat going all the way north to Strensall, hence my interest in looking to the south side of York to find the extra voters that Selby needs.
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Post by YL on Jun 26, 2021 8:18:47 GMT
There was some discussion in the thread on the toxic by-election (involving andrew111 and hullenedge at least) about the future of Batley & Spen, and in particular the unpopular Batley & Hipperholme proposal, which was heading towards "what's the alternative?". Calderdale can be treated on its own by splitting a ward; there are various ways to do this. So then the question becomes how to handle Kirklees without that ward... I think it's reasonable to maintain the BCE's de facto subregions covering Bradford, York, the East Riding, Sheffield/Barnsley and Rotherham/Donny/N/NE Lincs. With Calderdale removed as well that leaves Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield and North Yorkshire (excluding York) with an allocation of 22 seats. What I (and others) had looked at previously was treating Kirklees and Leeds together on the one hand and Wakefield and North Yorkshire on the other. The latter works out reasonably well IMO, with a Selby & Pontefract cross-county seat, although it involves a sprawling "Tadcaster & Thirsk" (other names are available) curving around the west side of York. Leeds without Morley isn't too hard to come up with a viable solution for. Three of the existing seats are within quota (after ward re-alignment) and the other four come in two pairs of adjoining seats where one is too small and the other too big, so a ward split in each pair can get all within quota. That does involve adding a rural area to Leeds East, so it's worth looking at alternatives, but at least it's a starting point. So that leaves five seats for Kirklees plus the Morley area of Leeds, and the border crossing is then obviously going to be in the area of the current Batley & Spen. Unfortunately taking the whole of both Batley wards leaves the cross-border seat too big, and I'm not sure whether there's a sensible way of trimming one of them by enough; if there is, then the rest of the current seat could be added to Mirfield to form a Spen Valley constituency. Alternatively, the idea (which I think was originally suggested by East Anglian Lefty ) could be to split Birstall & Birkenshaw into its two components; then you can put the Birkenshaw part together with Cleckheaton in the cross-border seat. That's a bit ugly in that it's some way from Morley to Cleckheaton, but the numbers definitely work. If the Morley to Kirklees crossing isn't on, then I guess you have to cross the Kirklees/Wakefield border much as the BCE do and manage the knock-on effects of not having the Hipperholme & Lightcliffe electorate. I haven't tried this approach yet.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jun 26, 2021 8:26:27 GMT
There was some discussion in the thread on the toxic by-election (involving andrew111 and hullenedge at least) about the future of Batley & Spen, and in particular the unpopular Batley & Hipperholme proposal, which was heading towards "what's the alternative?". Calderdale can be treated on its own by splitting a ward; there are various ways to do this. So then the question becomes how to handle Kirklees without that ward... I think it's reasonable to maintain the BCE's de facto subregions covering Bradford, York, the East Riding, Sheffield/Barnsley and Rotherham/Donny/N/NE Lincs. With Calderdale removed as well that leaves Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield and North Yorkshire (excluding York) with an allocation of 22 seats. What I (and others) had looked at previously was treating Kirklees and Leeds together on the one hand and Wakefield and North Yorkshire on the other. The latter works out reasonably well IMO, with a Selby & Pontefract cross-county seat, although it involves a sprawling "Tadcaster & Thirsk" (other names are available) curving around the west side of York. Leeds without Morley isn't too hard to come up with a viable solution for. Three of the existing seats are within quota (after ward re-alignment) and the other four come in two pairs of adjoining seats where one is too small and the other too big, so a ward split in each pair can get all within quota. That does involve adding a rural area to Leeds East, so it's worth looking at alternatives, but at least it's a starting point. So that leaves five seats for Kirklees plus the Morley area of Leeds, and the border crossing is then obviously going to be in the area of the current Batley & Spen. Unfortunately taking the whole of both Batley wards leaves the cross-border seat too big, and I'm not sure whether there's a sensible way of trimming one of them by enough; if there is, then the rest of the current seat could be added to Mirfield to form a Spen Valley constituency. Alternatively, the idea (which I think was originally suggested by East Anglian Lefty ) could be to split Birstall & Birkenshaw into its two components; then you can put the Birkenshaw part together with Cleckheaton in the cross-border seat. That's a bit ugly in that it's some way from Morley to Cleckheaton, but the numbers definitely work. If the Morley to Kirklees crossing isn't on, then I guess you have to cross the Kirklees/Wakefield border much as the BCE do and manage the knock-on effects of not having the Hipperholme & Lightcliffe electorate. I haven't tried this approach yet. I've been thinking about this too following that discussion and I was (am) a fan of the East Anglian Lefty plan. The problem here is that the BCE have stated that in their policy on split wards they would only do this if a constituency was wholly within one borough (so fine for Calderdale but not for a Kirklees-Leeds cross borough seat) or at least within a borough which formed the greater part of a seat (which Batley does not in this case). I may have misunderstood or misremembered and I'm trying to think of all the split ward solutions used elsewhere to see if they conform to this 'rule'. I don't happen to agree with that constraint (although I can understand the reasoning for it) but if that is what is going to guide them then I suppose it has to be accommodated
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Post by YL on Jun 26, 2021 8:32:15 GMT
Regarding Batley West, I think you'd have to take polling districts BW01 and BW02, the north of the ward adjoining Birstall, into Spen Valley, but that comes into the town as far as Ings Road near Batley Grammar School. BW02 on its own is nowhere near enough.
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Post by YL on Jun 26, 2021 8:36:09 GMT
I've been thinking about this too following that discussion and I was (am) a fan of the East Anglian Lefty plan. The problem here is that the BCE have stated that in their policy on split wards they would only do this if a constituency was wholly within one borough (so fine for Calderdale but not for a Kirklees-Leeds cross borough seat) or at least within a borough which formed the greater part of a seat (which Batley does not in this case). I may have misunderstood or misremembered and I'm trying to think of all the split ward solutions used elsewhere to see if they conform to this 'rule'. I don't happen to agree with that constraint (although I can understand the reasoning for it) but if that is what is going to guide them then I suppose it has to be accommodated Irchester ward in North Northamptonshire: the part of that ward they've put in their South Northamptonshire seat is the only part of North Northants in that constituency.
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 26, 2021 11:42:07 GMT
There was some discussion in the thread on the toxic by-election (involving andrew111 and hullenedge at least) about the future of Batley & Spen, and in particular the unpopular Batley & Hipperholme proposal, which was heading towards "what's the alternative?". Calderdale can be treated on its own by splitting a ward; there are various ways to do this. So then the question becomes how to handle Kirklees without that ward... I think it's reasonable to maintain the BCE's de facto subregions covering Bradford, York, the East Riding, Sheffield/Barnsley and Rotherham/Donny/N/NE Lincs. With Calderdale removed as well that leaves Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield and North Yorkshire (excluding York) with an allocation of 22 seats. What I (and others) had looked at previously was treating Kirklees and Leeds together on the one hand and Wakefield and North Yorkshire on the other. The latter works out reasonably well IMO, with a Selby & Pontefract cross-county seat, although it involves a sprawling "Tadcaster & Thirsk" (other names are available) curving around the west side of York. Leeds without Morley isn't too hard to come up with a viable solution for. Three of the existing seats are within quota (after ward re-alignment) and the other four come in two pairs of adjoining seats where one is too small and the other too big, so a ward split in each pair can get all within quota. That does involve adding a rural area to Leeds East, so it's worth looking at alternatives, but at least it's a starting point. So that leaves five seats for Kirklees plus the Morley area of Leeds, and the border crossing is then obviously going to be in the area of the current Batley & Spen. Unfortunately taking the whole of both Batley wards leaves the cross-border seat too big, and I'm not sure whether there's a sensible way of trimming one of them by enough; if there is, then the rest of the current seat could be added to Mirfield to form a Spen Valley constituency. Alternatively, the idea (which I think was originally suggested by East Anglian Lefty ) could be to split Birstall & Birkenshaw into its two components; then you can put the Birkenshaw part together with Cleckheaton in the cross-border seat. That's a bit ugly in that it's some way from Morley to Cleckheaton, but the numbers definitely work. If the Morley to Kirklees crossing isn't on, then I guess you have to cross the Kirklees/Wakefield border much as the BCE do and manage the knock-on effects of not having the Hipperholme & Lightcliffe electorate. I haven't tried this approach yet. I've been thinking about this too following that discussion and I was (am) a fan of the East Anglian Lefty plan. The problem here is that the BCE have stated that in their policy on split wards they would only do this if a constituency was wholly within one borough (so fine for Calderdale but not for a Kirklees-Leeds cross borough seat) or at least within a borough which formed the greater part of a seat (which Batley does not in this case). I may have misunderstood or misremembered and I'm trying to think of all the split ward solutions used elsewhere to see if they conform to this 'rule'. I don't happen to agree with that constraint (although I can understand the reasoning for it) but if that is what is going to guide them then I suppose it has to be accommodated Well, I have not seen any statements about this either, but given the reluctance to split wards I felt that splitting wards across local authority boundaries might be a step too far. One reason would be an aim to reunite ward and constituency boundaries in a future local govt review. Lindley is the oversize ward in Huddersfield and it would be easy enough I think for Dalton to make up for losing Kirkheaton by taking over the town centre polling districts from Newsome and then shuffle around Newsome into Crosland Moor and Crosland Moor into Greenhead and Greenhead into Lindley. (without doing the maths on polling districts). Kirkheaton would have to go into Mirfield which would be massive and that would be more tricky but I guess Dewsbury west would have to take a couple of polling districts.
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 26, 2021 11:50:04 GMT
There was some discussion in the thread on the toxic by-election (involving andrew111 and hullenedge at least) about the future of Batley & Spen, and in particular the unpopular Batley & Hipperholme proposal, which was heading towards "what's the alternative?". Calderdale can be treated on its own by splitting a ward; there are various ways to do this. So then the question becomes how to handle Kirklees without that ward... I think it's reasonable to maintain the BCE's de facto subregions covering Bradford, York, the East Riding, Sheffield/Barnsley and Rotherham/Donny/N/NE Lincs. With Calderdale removed as well that leaves Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield and North Yorkshire (excluding York) with an allocation of 22 seats. What I (and others) had looked at previously was treating Kirklees and Leeds together on the one hand and Wakefield and North Yorkshire on the other. The latter works out reasonably well IMO, with a Selby & Pontefract cross-county seat, although it involves a sprawling "Tadcaster & Thirsk" (other names are available) curving around the west side of York. Leeds without Morley isn't too hard to come up with a viable solution for. Three of the existing seats are within quota (after ward re-alignment) and the other four come in two pairs of adjoining seats where one is too small and the other too big, so a ward split in each pair can get all within quota. That does involve adding a rural area to Leeds East, so it's worth looking at alternatives, but at least it's a starting point. So that leaves five seats for Kirklees plus the Morley area of Leeds, and the border crossing is then obviously going to be in the area of the current Batley & Spen. Unfortunately taking the whole of both Batley wards leaves the cross-border seat too big, and I'm not sure whether there's a sensible way of trimming one of them by enough; if there is, then the rest of the current seat could be added to Mirfield to form a Spen Valley constituency. Alternatively, the idea (which I think was originally suggested by East Anglian Lefty ) could be to split Birstall & Birkenshaw into its two components; then you can put the Birkenshaw part together with Cleckheaton in the cross-border seat. That's a bit ugly in that it's some way from Morley to Cleckheaton, but the numbers definitely work. If the Morley to Kirklees crossing isn't on, then I guess you have to cross the Kirklees/Wakefield border much as the BCE do and manage the knock-on effects of not having the Hipperholme & Lightcliffe electorate. I haven't tried this approach yet. I think the $64,000 question in any other proposal is how many potentially controversial changes you have to make to other seats, especially ones not much affected by the current proposals. Every change will surely add to resistance in the BC... If it can be kept within Leeds, Kirklees and Calderdale and people in all three authorities can unite behind a different plan, it may happen..
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jun 28, 2021 9:09:34 GMT
A Kirklees/Wakefield crossing without the extra electorate from Hipperholme & Lightcliffe looks very difficult to me. There may be a solution if you split enough wards, but it certainly wouldn't be pretty.
I think if you want to sell a Leeds/Kirklees pairing, you need to be able to demonstrate how it's better than the initial proposals. Wakefield/N Yorks isn't too hard, as whilst Tadcaster & Thirsk isn't a very nice seat, nor is Wetherby & Easingwold and it crosses fewer LA boundaries. It might also be worth looking at electors moved to see if there's a notable improvement in electors moved that you could quote.
Leeds/Kirklees is the harder sell, for two reasons:
1. If you put Wetherby in with Leeds East, it'll get criticised by snobs in Wetherby and by Labour on partisan grounds, which will look like significant local opposition to the BCE. So you need to ensure that doesn't happen. Which is doable, but needs a ward split.
2. The BCE plan for West Yorkshire has three split wards. You can maybe justify four if there's a widespread consensus round a particular plan, but it'd be much easier if you can do it with 3 - so compared to my original plan, you probably need to eliminate a split somewhere.
I think it's doable, but I think such a proposal would have to think quite carefully about how to tie in to the BCE's guiding assumptions.
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Post by YL on Jul 2, 2021 12:26:29 GMT
Is splitting four Kirklees wards beyond the pale? Colne Valley as per BCE Huddersfield as per BCE less Fenay Bridge area of Almondbury (AL06, AL07, AL08); electorate 71558. Batley & Spen current seat less Norristhorpe area of Heckmondwike ward (HE05, HE06); electorate 76386. Dewsbury as per BCE, plus Fenay Bridge, less Heckmondwike "proper", plus north part of Kirkburton ward (Flockton etc., KB04, KB07, KB10). Electorate 70495. Ossett & Denby Dale as per BCE, less Flockton etc. Electorate 71595. Obviously you could just take more of one of Almondbury or Dalton into Dewsbury rather than splitting them both, so it could just be three, but that'd take the Dewsbury seat deeper into Huddersfield.
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Post by hullenedge on Jul 2, 2021 12:31:23 GMT
Is splitting four Kirklees wards beyond the pale? Colne Valley as per BCE Huddersfield as per BCE less Fenay Bridge area of Almondbury (AL06, AL07, AL08); electorate 71558. Batley & Spen current seat less Norristhorpe area of Heckmondwike ward (HE05, HE06); electorate 76386. Dewsbury as per BCE, plus Fenay Bridge, less Heckmondwike "proper", plus north part of Kirkburton ward (Flockton etc., KB04, KB07, KB10). Electorate 70495. Ossett & Denby Dale as per BCE, less Flockton etc. Electorate 71595. Obviously you could just take more of one of Almondbury or Dalton into Dewsbury rather than splitting them both, so it could just be three, but that'd take the Dewsbury seat deeper into Huddersfield. Shouldn't be beyond the pale. Your map is superior to the BCE proposals.
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Post by ilerda on Jul 2, 2021 13:06:31 GMT
I think it's beautiful
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Post by islington on Jul 2, 2021 13:46:56 GMT
Is splitting four Kirklees wards beyond the pale? Colne Valley as per BCE Huddersfield as per BCE less Fenay Bridge area of Almondbury (AL06, AL07, AL08); electorate 71558. Batley & Spen current seat less Norristhorpe area of Heckmondwike ward (HE05, HE06); electorate 76386. Dewsbury as per BCE, plus Fenay Bridge, less Heckmondwike "proper", plus north part of Kirkburton ward (Flockton etc., KB04, KB07, KB10). Electorate 70495. Ossett & Denby Dale as per BCE, less Flockton etc. Electorate 71595. Obviously you could just take more of one of Almondbury or Dalton into Dewsbury rather than splitting them both, so it could just be three, but that'd take the Dewsbury seat deeper into Huddersfield. You could get it down to two ward splits if that will make it more palatable to BCE.
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Post by islington on Jul 2, 2021 14:17:43 GMT
Say, like this ...?
Inelegant? Certainly. But it does the business with only two splits.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 2, 2021 15:33:04 GMT
Say, like this ...?
Inelegant? Certainly. But it does the business with only two splits.
I think that takes away a lot of appeal of YL's plan. But a slightly more radical rearrangement that would work with two ward splits is to put Batley in with Dewsbury and add Flockton, then put the Spen Valley with Mirfield and Kirkheaton. I don't love it from a partisan perspective, but it looks alright on a map.
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