2023 Review - South West

[East Anglian Lefty]

One thing that does strike me is that if you exclude the three wards entirely west of the Exe from Exeter, you're at the right size for a seat - and it probably even works if you also cut out the portion of St David's ward west of the river too.

I'm not sure that helps with a 13 seat Devon, but it would let you replace Central Devon with something slightly more coherent combining parts of Exeter with commuter settlements in Teignbridge district.

[Pete Whitehead]

Sept 10, 2024 10:34:41 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

One thing that does strike me is that if you exclude the three wards entirely west of the Exe from Exeter, you're at the right size for a seat - and it probably even works if you also cut out the portion of St David's ward west of the river too.

I'm not sure that helps with a 13 seat Devon, but it would let you replace Central Devon with something slightly more coherent combining parts of Exeter with commuter settlements in Teignbridge district.

I seem to recall something along these lines was originally proposed ahead of either the boundary changes that came in in 1997 or those in 2010. I think it may have been before 1997 and it would have been reckoned to be helpful to the Tories in Exeter as those wards West of the Exe are very Labour. Of course now it would mean whatever seat included them would be Labour.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Here's what I came up with, keeping the existing grouping but trying to reduce local authority crossings and produce more natural seats:



Kingswood (71994)
Thornbury & Yate (69787)
Filton & Bradley Stoke (71252)

Three seats entirely in South Gloucestershire. I'm not wild about how narrow Filton & Bradley Stoke is, but the numbers are very tight so my room for manouevre was limited.

Bristol North East (76452)
Bristol North West (77028)
Bristol Central (70908)

Three seats north of the Avon. Again, Clifton in NW is rather awkward. If you're prepared to countenance a ward split, then you could replace those two wards with Redland and the Bishopston parts of Bishopston & Ashley Down.

Bristol South East (69911)
Bristol South West & Portishead (74959)
North Somerset (71718)
Weston super Mare (70722)
North East Somerset (69895)
Bath (73241)

I couldn't make the numbers work for putting Keynsham in a Bristol seat, but I don't think Portishead is that much worse. Bristol Green Party would disagree, needless to say. In an ideal world N Somerset wouldn't push as far into BANES, but I still think this is an improvement over having two seats crossing into the Somerset UA from the north.



Wells & Frome (75559)
Yeovil (70201)
Glastonbury & Burnham (71902)
Bridgwater & West Somerset (76432)
Taunton (73909)
Honiton & Chard (77041)
Exmouth & Sidmouth (74413)
Mid Devon (75425)

Not what I would have drawn if numbers were no object, but I think each of these is broadly justifiable on its own terms. My major issue is that Bridgwater gets quite a tight haircut. Links along the A303 are much stronger than over Exmoor and this allows a very sensible Mid Devon seat that lines up pretty closely to the district. A lot of these names could be shortened.



Exeter (71522)
Exeter West & Teignmouth (71632)
Newton Abbot & Totnes (72781)
Torbay (75742)
South Devon (approx 72510)
Tavistock & Plympton (approx 74201)
Plymouth Sutton & Devonport (73495)
Plymouth Moor View (73378)

Central Devon is replaced with a fairly neat seat that extends into only two districts. Not amazing but a definite improvement.

On the downside, Paignton ends up split three ways. There is a fix to this, but it involves pairing Torquary with Newton Abbot, putting Totnes in with Dartmouth and the rest of Torbay and stretching South Devon from Bovey Tracey to the outskirts of Plymouth, so the cure is worse than the disease.

Plymouth maintains the existing ward split and there's an extra one in South Hams to ensure contiguity.



Torridge & Okehampton (74890)
North Devon (76455)

The main road from Bideford to Tavistock goes via Okehampton, so this is clearly an improvement on what we actually got.

I don't think the BCE would have gone for this at all, but overall it feels like a pretty definite improvement to me. Local authority boundaries are crossed fifteen times, matching the fifteen in the actual map, and there are only three seats which cross top-level administrative boundaries, as compared to five in the actual map. Only three seats contain parts of more than two local authorities (two if you ignore the now-vanished Somerset districts.)