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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 8, 2022 15:40:30 GMT
Looking through the party submissions here, the Tories are mostly happy with what the Commission came up with. The Greens make comments in a few areas, but no counter-proposals. The Lib Dems are happy with the Tees Valley, Gateshead, South Tyneside and North of the Tyne. However, they propose new arrangements for County Durham and the fringes of Sunderland. These include a Houghton & Seaham seat (which doesn't include all of Houghton), a Bishop Auckland seat which covers Newton Aycliffe, a NW (really West) Durham seat that gives the City of Durham a close haircut, a North Durham seat made up of Stanley & Consett and a City of Durham & Chester-le-Street seat. Labour have counter-proposals in two areas: North of the Tyne, they think Hexham should gain Bedlington rather than outlying bits of Newcastle. Blyth & Ashington should then regain the Seaton Valley area and Cramlington should go with Longbenton rather than Whitley Bay. You then get a return of Newcastle East & Wallsend. This makes Hexham decidedly unlovely but it's probably an improvement for the remaining seats. South of the Tyne, they choose not to treat Gateshead on its own, which allows a pattern a little closer to the present one. Jarrow extends further into Gateshead, which in turn gains Whickham. Blaydon goes with Consett and Washington grabs Birtley and Lamesley. Personally I'd have called it Washington & Birtley rather than Washington & Gateshead South if I wanted to sell this. This allows minimum change solutions to Houghton & Sunderland South and North Durham. However, fitting in the four remaining seats mean an awful carve-up of Spennymoor and a Sedgefield seat which extends right to the edges of Durham. I suspect if they'd been willing to propose a ward split they'd have been able to find a much better alternative. They aren't happy with the situation in Stockton but they don't make definite counter-proposals. Ten minutes experimentation gives me this much better solution for the four southern-most seats in County Durham, relative to the Labour counter-proposal: Seaham & Peterlee (70043) - does not gain Sherburn, instead gains Wheatley Hill and Thornley from Trimdon & Thornley ward Sedgefield (71299) - does not gain Durham South, instead gains Spennymoor and retains only the Trimdon bits of Trimdon & Thornley City of Durham (72878) - does not gain Spennymoor, instead retains Durham South and Sherburn Bishop Auckland - as in the Labour proposal. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 9, 2022 10:41:47 GMT
16 MPs in the region commented on the proposals. Most proposed something in line with their party's wider proposals, but there were four exceptions:
- Mary Glindon endorsed a counter-proposal from North Tyneside CLP, which adds part of Riverside ward to Tynemouth, moves Valley the other way and puts Weetslade in with Newcastle North and Cramlington. I'm not sure what purpose the ward split serves, as it's not necessary on the numbers
- Kevan Jones backs the initial proposals for North Durham, which just add Burnopfield and Dipton, whereas the Labour counter-proposal adds Lanchester instead
- Ian Levy wants Blyth Valley to be maintained and to get up to size by adding Sleekburn ward and St Mary's from Tynemouth
- Dehenna Davison doesn't want Willington & Hunwick added to her seat and counter-proposes that it should instead add eastern parts of Deerness ward. This would make her constituency discontinuous by road. I'm in awe of how bad this proposal is.
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Post by bjornhattan on Feb 9, 2022 11:30:53 GMT
16 MPs in the region commented on the proposals. Most proposed something in line with their party's wider proposals, but there were four exceptions:
- Mary Glindon endorsed a counter-proposal from North Tyneside CLP, which adds part of Riverside ward to Tynemouth, moves Valley the other way and puts Weetslade in with Newcastle North and Cramlington. I'm not sure what purpose the ward split serves, as it's not necessary on the numbers
- Kevan Jones backs the initial proposals for North Durham, which just add Burnopfield and Dipton, whereas the Labour counter-proposal adds Lanchester instead
- Ian Levy wants Blyth Valley to be maintained and to get up to size by adding Sleekburn ward and St Mary's from Tynemouth
- Dehenna Davison doesn't want Willington & Hunwick added to her seat and counter-proposes that it should instead add eastern parts of Deerness ward. This would make her constituency discontinuous by road. I'm in awe of how bad this proposal is.
Riverside ward is something of a Frankenstein ward - it includes North Shields town centre, various new-ish developments down by the river, outlying bits of Meadow Well, small working class terraced villages such as Percy Main and Willington Quay, and finally much of Howdon which is essentially part of Wallsend. At the moment it is all in the "North Tyneside" constituency, but this is unsatisfactory because it means North Shields town centre is in a different constituency from most of the town (which is in Preston, Chirton, and western Tynemouth wards). Ideally, the eastern part of Riverside would be in a Tynemouth based constituency to eliminate the split of North Shields, while the western part would be included with Wallsend. There are two ways to achieve this: do what the commission proposes and combine Tynemouth and Wallsend into one constituency, or split Riverside ward. The former guarantees Glindon's constituency will be broken up so I imagine that's why she opposes it. |
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Post by islington on Mar 8, 2022 13:51:55 GMT
I've been playing with the North East. This is only a bit of fun. I'm definitely not going to make a submission in this region because I don't know it at all well, so I'm unqualified to say whether the map below is an improvement on the BCE scheme. But I can state with certainty that it involves fewer crossings of LA boundaries. (Uncoloured areas are as per the BCE.)  |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Apr 4, 2022 8:48:51 GMT
I put in a response here - 94274 - which largely supports the Labour counterproposal for the South of Tyne subregion but proposes alterations to three seats as suggested upthread. Includes one ward split.
Whilst justifying it, I realised that the Trimdon & Thornley ward includes bit of two different pre-2008 districts and I believe has been in existence since the creation of the unitary. What was the process for creating the initial unitary divisions? I'd assumed they'd just used the old county divisions, but clearly if they cross old district boundaries that can't have been the case.
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