2023 Review - North East

[East Anglian Lefty]

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.

[bjornhattan]

Feb 9, 2022 10:41:47 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

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.

[islington]

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.)

[East Anglian Lefty]

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.

[ClevelandYorks]

From a quick scan the North East proposals are excellent (apart from a few irritating name changes). We've finally got Weardale and Crook in a West Durham-based seat rather than lumped in with Consett. Teesside is the best that could be done within the constraints. Newcastle/Northumberland proposals are far more sensible with a few split wards in the outermost suburbs. Some much more sensible pairings like Cramlington and Killingworth, and Blaydon and Consett.

[bjornhattan]

Nov 7, 2022 23:39:47 GMT ClevelandYorks said:

From a quick scan the North East proposals are excellent (apart from a few irritating name changes). We've finally got Weardale and Crook in a West Durham-based seat rather than lumped in with Consett. Teesside is the best that could be done within the constraints. Newcastle/Northumberland proposals are far more sensible with a few split wards in the outermost suburbs. Some much more sensible pairings like Cramlington and Killingworth, and Blaydon and Consett.

Near me they've come up with a really good map - I particularly like the Washington seat which looks slightly strange on paper but works very well on the ground (nearly all of Lamesley ward's electors either live near its southern boundary with Birtley or in Wrekenton which has good links with Springwell Village). They have fixed the awful mess they made of Sunderland with Houghton and Sunderland South almost unchanged from its current boundaries rather than getting put into Durham.

The only slight issue is that Jarrow now extends well into Gateshead but its name doesn't reference the Gateshead part at all. The area included looks almost identical to the old Felling Urban District; if Jarrow wasn't such a longstanding constituency name I'd urge them to consider renaming the seat to "Jarrow and Felling".

[East Anglian Lefty]

I thought my suggestions had been rejected everywhere, but it turns out the counter-proposal I threw together here with a ward split in County Durham was the one the Commission plumped for. I think it took me about 30 minutes, which indicates to me that in future I should spend less time on putting submissions together.

Teesside is still a bit ugly. They note lots of objections to the split of Thornaby but that they couldn't find a less disruptive arrangement. Suggests to me that there might be some value in proposing a double-crossing of the Middlesbrough/Stockton boundary as it doesn't sound like they considered that.

[iain]

These are actually pretty good. The split of Thornaby is the major downside, and Park End & Beckfield seems like a weird choice of ward to add to Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland.

[bjornhattan]

Nov 8, 2022 10:36:34 GMT iain said:

These are actually pretty good. The split of Thornaby is the major downside, and Park End & Beckfield seems like a weird choice of ward to add to Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland.

The choice of Park End and Beckfield is arguably minimal change - about 40% of the ward is already in MS & EC. It does look horrible on the map though!

[wysall]

Cramlington and Killingworth looks like the perfect opportunity to bring back the name Seaton Valley as something more than a parish council.

[Robert Waller]

boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/2023-review/north-east/

[Sibboleth]

The map in Co Durham changing from one of the very worst set of proposals in the country to about as good as you're likely to get under the present (bad, deficient, awful, etc) rules is welcome. It's good that they've listened to reason here, at least.

[wysall]

The Boundary Commission has made plenty of questionable choices with names but in the North East at least the worst has to be "Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West". Aside from the constituencies not needing anything more than the cardinal directions, the only part of it that is more central than west is Monument ward.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Has anybody been able to find a polling district map of Middlesbrough? The council's Electoral Services page isn't much help and I can't find details of their most recent polling district review online. I have been able to find a map of polling districts for Ladgate ward (https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Ladgate_1.pdf), but unfortunately changing the web address doesn't seem to bring up any other wards.

I'm looking into whether it's possible to re-unify Thornaby by putting Stainton & Thornton and Hemlington into Stockton South and then splitting a ward between the two Middlesbrough seats, but the numbers are really tight.

[bjornhattan]

Dec 1, 2022 12:21:53 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Has anybody been able to find a polling district map of Middlesbrough? The council's Electoral Services page isn't much help and I can't find details of their most recent polling district review online. I have been able to find a map of polling districts for Ladgate ward (https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Ladgate_1.pdf), but unfortunately changing the web address doesn't seem to bring up any other wards.

I'm looking into whether it's possible to re-unify Thornaby by putting Stainton & Thornton and Hemlington into Stockton South and then splitting a ward between the two Middlesbrough seats, but the numbers are really tight.

The good news is I've been able to find a map - the Ordnance Survey produce digital boundaries for polling districts that can be loaded into GIS software. The bad news is that not all of the polling districts on said map have electorate figures in the commission's spreadsheet. I would be reasonably willing to trust the data in most areas but Kader, Park End & Beckfield, and Brambles & Thorntree all have polling districts with missing figures (KE, OD, and IE respectively). Hopefully it's better than nothing!

[East Anglian Lefty]

Dec 1, 2022 14:35:17 GMT bjornhattan said:

Dec 1, 2022 12:21:53 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Has anybody been able to find a polling district map of Middlesbrough? The council's Electoral Services page isn't much help and I can't find details of their most recent polling district review online. I have been able to find a map of polling districts for Ladgate ward (https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Ladgate_1.pdf), but unfortunately changing the web address doesn't seem to bring up any other wards.

I'm looking into whether it's possible to re-unify Thornaby by putting Stainton & Thornton and Hemlington into Stockton South and then splitting a ward between the two Middlesbrough seats, but the numbers are really tight.

The good news is I've been able to find a map - the Ordnance Survey produce digital boundaries for polling districts that can be loaded into GIS software. The bad news is that not all of the polling districts on said map have electorate figures in the commission's spreadsheet. I would be reasonably willing to trust the data in most areas but Kader, Park End & Beckfield, and Brambles & Thorntree all have polling districts with missing figures (KE, OD, and IE respectively). Hopefully it's better than nothing!

Thanks. That's not ideal, but it gets me a long way. Unfortunately, I've found half a dozen different ways to get within 150 electors of having both Middlesbrough seats in range (in one case within 10 electors), but actual legal solutions are much harder to come by. There are a couple of possibilities worth investigating, but nothing that's exactly clean.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Follow up question: does that OS dataset also have polling district boundaries for Redcar & Cleveland? It strikes me that there are bits of Ormesby ward that are in reality Nunthorpe (and indeed have Nunthorpe addresses) and that it ought to be possible to squeeze a few electors out of there without making Redcar too small, but I can only find the old polling districts via Google, which don't match up to the ones in the BCE's spreadsheet.

[bjornhattan]

Dec 1, 2022 15:18:55 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Follow up question: does that OS dataset also have polling district boundaries for Redcar & Cleveland? It strikes me that there are bits of Ormesby ward that are in reality Nunthorpe (and indeed have Nunthorpe addresses) and that it ought to be possible to squeeze a few electors out of there without making Redcar too small, but I can only find the old polling districts via Google, which don't match up to the ones in the BCE's spreadsheet.

You are correct about those parts of Ormesby ward being part of Nunthorpe - the railway line is the borough boundary but because of the two local railway it serves as more of a unifying focal point than a hard border.

The bad news is that the OS dataset still has the old polling district boundaries, but I have found a document which may be of some use - it lists the polling stations for the Tees Valley mayoral election including the polling districts to which they correspond. Based on this, it would appear that OBYC (1,993 electors) is the figure for the parts of Nunthorpe in Redcar and Cleveland and OBYA and OBYB (2,940 electors) is the figure for the rest of Ormesby.

[nyx]

Here’s an idea to reunify Thornaby. Ward changes compared to revised proposals. No map unfortunately as my laptop is broken.

Middlesbrough loses the wards of Mandale and Victoria, Stainsby Hill, Trimdon, Kader, Acklam, and Ayresome to Stockton South
Stockton South loses Grangefield, Bishopsgarth and Elm Tree, Fairfield, Hartburn, Western Parishes, Sadberge and Middleton St George, and Hurworth to Stockton North
Stockton North loses Northern Parishes, Billingham West, Billingham North, Billingham East, Billingham Central, Billingham South to Middlesbrough.

Middlesbrough constituency is renamed “Middlesbrough and Billingham”, Stockton North to “Stockton”, Stockton South to “Thornaby, Acklam and Yarm”. This final constituency would need to gain part of a split ward from Middlesbrough to get up to quota, but it’s easy to do that.

Almost certainly too radical for this stage of the review but it’s interesting that this would manage to reunite both Stockton and Thornaby into coherent constituencies.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Dec 1, 2022 15:43:01 GMT bjornhattan said:

Dec 1, 2022 15:18:55 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Follow up question: does that OS dataset also have polling district boundaries for Redcar & Cleveland? It strikes me that there are bits of Ormesby ward that are in reality Nunthorpe (and indeed have Nunthorpe addresses) and that it ought to be possible to squeeze a few electors out of there without making Redcar too small, but I can only find the old polling districts via Google, which don't match up to the ones in the BCE's spreadsheet.

You are correct about those parts of Ormesby ward being part of Nunthorpe - the railway line is the borough boundary but because of the two local railway it serves as more of a unifying focal point than a hard border.

The bad news is that the OS dataset still has the old polling district boundaries, but I have found a document which may be of some use - it lists the polling stations for the Tees Valley mayoral election including the polling districts to which they correspond. Based on this, it would appear that OBYC (1,993 electors) is the figure for the parts of Nunthorpe in Redcar and Cleveland and OBYA and OBYB (2,940 electors) is the figure for the rest of Ormesby.

Yes, I found that one. Cross-referencing that and and the polling district map, here are my best guesses for the polling districts in the latter but not the former:

Kader - KE only appears to have about 150 properties in it, pretty much all houses. I suspect it's a split of KD, but it's unlikely to be helpful for our purposes - and as it's not in the BCE's spreadsheet, I don't know if they'd accept it as a valid polling district.

Park End & Beckfield - OAM is the same in both - the M appears to designate areas currently in Middlesbrough S & E Cleveland. I think OD is OC in the Tees Valley PDF and presumably also the BCE spreadsheet. OB and OC on the map are presumably a split of the OB polling district in the PDF?

Brambles & Thorntree - a glance at Googlemaps suggests that IA only has one area that's residential rather than industrial, in its south-west corner. Presumably IB on the map is IA in the spreadsheet and the PDF and so on.

For the Ormesby one, I suspect the polling district boundaries are going to be unhelpful - looking at the old polling districts, if OBYC is the southern one then it probably conforms to the old HB and HC and hence stretches up to somewhere in the region of Spring Garden Lane, which really is getting into Ormesby proper. OBYB is then probably the replacement for HE (so the rest of Ormesby south of the A174) which would leave OBYA as the bits to the north.

I'm also wondering about a split of Normanby ward rather than Ormesby. Would it be fair to say that the real boundary between the two is the Spencer Beck and that the bits of Normanby ward to the west probably don't actually think of themselves as Normanby?