2023 Review - West Midlands

[islington]

Mar 7, 2022 8:12:14 GMT YL said:

If I imagine myself as an Assistant Commissioner looking at that map, the thing I'd be most worried about would be that seat stretching from the Great Wyrley area to the Cheshire border. Also I'd be a bit sceptical of the two separate nibbles at Dudley by South Staffs.

I'd definitely emphasise the avoidance of splitting Chelmsley Wood among the benefits of the Brum/Solihull/Warks approach.

Thanks for comments.

Regarding Chelmsley Wood: I agree completely, and I'd also point out the further benefit of being able to include Silhill ward in the Solihull seat. It's true that Lyndon and Elmdon wards, both really part of Solihull, can't be included in the seat, but at least these two wards are separated from the rest of the town by a clear physical boundary in the form of the Grand Union Canal.

Regarding the two separate Dudley wards: I'm not really sure why taking two mutually-adjacent wards is better than taking two non-adjacent ones, but I agree that the most obvious (and mutually-adjacent) wards are the Kingswinsfords. But this leaves Sedgley and Wordsley both to go into a Dudley seat with which Wordsley in particular is a very poor fit. In fact, once you've decided to reinforce Staffs with only two Dudley wards, rather than three, Wordsley becomes a real problem child: it can't be linked with the Kingswinsfords if they are going in with Staffs, and as I'm sure you've also discovered, the obvious and very attractive alternative of putting it in Stourbridge, instead of Netherton as in the BCE scheme, comes in at 69722, an infuriating 2 voters short of the minimum. The Kingswinfords, on the other hand, fit nicely with a Dudley seat; and once you do this, it is the impossibility of finding a Wordsley a decent home in Dudley that decided me that it might as well go into S Staffs. The choice of Sedgley as the other ward was based more on its history as a distinct parish and UD, and I think borough for a time, although it's fair to add that it's not a great fit in a Dudley seat either. So I'd defend my suggested arrangement, although I accept that the Kingswinsfords work equally well on the numbers so that option is still there if you don't mind the really messy (but legal) Dudley seat that results.

Regarding Gt Wyrley: I agree W Staffs isn't the most beautiful seat ever proposed but what are the alternatives? I've proposed the removal of a single ward from Cannock, and assuming you don't want to disrupt that seat any further, your choices are to link Gt Wyrley either: (a) with Stafford, which is just about workable but you have to cut really tightly to Stafford and you end up with a very awkward shape, plus you are then left with a huge sprawling seat based on Stone that looks worse than my W Staffs; or (b) with Stone, as the BCE suggests, but then you've lost Brewood and Wheaton Aston (compared with the BCE scheme) so you have to make up those numbers from somewhere and it's going to be messy however you do it. Or you can put Gt Wyrley in with Cannock town , but then Rugeley is displaced so that's another seat badly disrupted.

If you really think W Staffs won't fly, one might adopt the BCE versions of Stafford and NuL. This means that SoT N can be reinforced with the Biddulph wards only (70483); SoT C as I had it before; SoT S takes Forsbrook and Caverswell from Moorlands instead of the Stafford wards of Barlaston and Fulford (69833). Leek then comes in at 73798. It's all contiguous and legal, but Gt Wyrley is still at the southern end of a straggling seat (74413) - just that it's now called 'Stone' (unless you prefer 'Mid Staffs') and it extends to the southern boundary of Stoke on Trent. If nothing else this arrangement has the merit of being somewhat closer to the BCE scheme so maybe that's a point in its favour.

Incidentally, did you have any thoughts about the 10-seat Brum I posted yesterday?

[islington]

It looks like this.

I still think the Stone seat is messy but if anything it's a slight improvement on the BCE version in that Stone is better nested within it and it no longer extends to the border with Salop. So I think I'll adopt this as probably an easier sell, and my thanks to YL for helpful criticism.

[John Chanin]

To my mind there is no question that linking Cannock with Great Wyrley, and Rugeley with Stone works far better on every criterion except not disrupting the existing Cannock seat.

[YL]

islington: I think part of my problem is that while I understand your motivation in Brum/Solihull/Warks, I don't really understand what you're trying to achieve in the Black Country and Staffs. Is it to get rid of the split ward? (In that case, it won't surprise you to learn that I don't think getting rid of a split ward in Sandwell is a good justification for knock-on effects all the way through Staffordshire.) Is it to adopt some aspects of the Lib Dem proposal without their version of Wolverhampton? (If so, again, I'm worried that the knock on effects from the Dudley/Staffs border area all the way up towards North Staffs are too much to justify the benefits, at least in this form.)

To answer some questions:

- In this context, I would put Great Wyrley with Cannock. Indeed, when I was trying plans for Staffs with two Black Country wards, that's what I did: see this post.

- Regarding the two Dudley wards, it's my view that in general (so not necessarily in all cases) if you are crossing a border, especially a major (county/Met borough/unitary) one, you should try to have reasonably coherent components on both sides of the border; Kingswinford achieves this. As I said, local loyalties in this area are a bit of a mystery to me so I'm not going to comment further on the details; maybe your option does indeed work fine on the ground.

- Regarding the 10 seat Birmingham, I'd think someone who's lived there would give a better answer. To my eyes it has some flaws but I think you're aware of them already (e.g. Lozells) and it's hard to avoid some flaws when dividing up a big city.

[islington]

Mar 7, 2022 17:49:24 GMT YL said:

islington : I think part of my problem is that while I understand your motivation in Brum/Solihull/Warks, I don't really understand what you're trying to achieve in the Black Country and Staffs. Is it to get rid of the split ward? (In that case, it won't surprise you to learn that I don't think getting rid of a split ward in Sandwell is a good justification for knock-on effects all the way through Staffordshire.) Is it to adopt some aspects of the Lib Dem proposal without their version of Wolverhampton? (If so, again, I'm worried that the knock on effects from the Dudley/Staffs border area all the way up towards North Staffs are too much to justify the benefits, at least in this form.)

Very good questions. See my substantive answer below.

To answer some questions:

- In this context, I would put Great Wyrley with Cannock. Indeed, when I was trying plans for Staffs with two Black Country wards, that's what I did: see this post.

Thanks for drawing attention to your post from Jan 2021. If you don't mind I think I'll steal adopt your Stoke. But I'll leave my Stone and Cannock as posted earlier today because (i) this arrangement is much nearer to the BCE scheme and thus (I hope) an easier sell, and (ii) I'm trying to avoid unforced crossings of LA boundaries. However, if you want to put Gt Wyrley in with Cannock, it's easy to do based on my proposal: Stone keeps Penkridge x 3 plus Huntington, with the four northernmost wards of Cannock (70472); Cannock takes the rest (75816).

- Regarding the two Dudley wards, it's my view that in general (so not necessarily in all cases) if you are crossing a border, especially a major (county/Met borough/unitary) one, you should try to have reasonably coherent components on both sides of the border; Kingswinford achieves this. As I said, local loyalties in this area are a bit of a mystery to me so I'm not going to comment further on the details; maybe your option does indeed work fine on the ground.

I don't think it matters whether the two wards adjoin provided they fit with the seat they're being put into. The Kingswinford wards fit better into S Staffs, I agree; but they also fit well into a Dudley seat whereas Sedgley's and Wordsley's fits with Dudley are, respectively, indifferent and downright awful. But, as I say, the Kingswinfords work if you don't mind a messy Dudley.

- Regarding the 10 seat Birmingham, I'd think someone who's lived there would give a better answer. To my eyes it has some flaws but I think you're aware of them already (e.g. Lozells) and it's hard to avoid some flaws when dividing up a big city.

What am I trying to achieve in the Black Country and Staffs?

Well, there's no single thing. It's more of an accumulation of plus points, none decisive in itself, but making a strong case when they are all taken together.

• Avoid ward splits, especially now a plan has been officially submitted (by the LibDems) that achieves this (whatever its flaws in other respects).
  
• Treat Walsall and Wolverhampton together (entitlement 5.04) ...
  
• ... with only one seat crossing the boundary between them.
  
• Only one seat crossing the Dudley/Staffs boundary.

Of the plans submitted at the initial consultation, none (so far as I can see) ticks all of these boxes.

Taking Staffs / Stoke / Dudley / Sandwell together, the combined entitlement of 17.59 means that before we start we are on the low side for 18 seats. A feature of a lot of plans is that they take three wards of Dudley to treat with Staffs - usually, the Kingswinfords and Wordsley. But this generates a problem because it leaves the rest of Dudley, plus Sandwell, with 428051 = 5.83 = 6 seats with an average electorate of only 71341. Not surprisingly this has proved a problem, one solved by the BCE by a "pernicious little ward split" (as the Lib Dem representative called it) and by the Lib Dems by breaking into Walsall and Wolverhampton and making a real mess of the latter.

So I'm looking at a different approach of taking only two Dudley wards. If you choose Wordsley and Sedgley you are left in the rest of Dudley plus Sandwell with 438560 = 5.98 = 6. As you might expect, this works a lot better and there is no need either to split a ward or to stray into Walsall / Wolverhampton.

But of course all this has implications for Staffs / Stoke. Taken with the K/K/W combination, this comes to 863102 = 11.76, already on the low side for 12 seats. But with only Sedgley and Wordsley, the total falls to 852593 = 11.62, which with 12 seats averages only 71049. So, assuming we want to avoid ward splits if we can (although I agree it's not the be-all and end-all), this means we face an unpalatable choice between small seats averaging only 71341 in Dudley and Sandwell, or even smaller seats averaging 71049 in Staffs and Stoke.

My argument is that the latter is actually the less difficult task, despite the smaller average. This is, first, because a larger area is involved with more seats, so more combinations are possible and there are more options to choose from; and secondly, because wards are generally smaller and also more variable in size compared with the bigger, more uniform wards in Dudley and Sandwell. It seems this is the only way of ticking all the boxes I identified above, and although I accept that none of them, taken alone, can be regarded as essential, I think taken together they are a prize worth having.

But if you tell me I've left the whole thing too late, you're probably right.

And just a final thought: if you're going to split a ward, doesn't it make more sense to do it not in Sandwell, as the BCE proposes, but in Dudley? With two Dudley wards going in with Staffs, a single split would allow three whole seats in the rest of Dudley with Sandwell treated alone for three more. So if you're going to split, I submit the BCE has done it in the wrong place.

 

 

[islington]

I said yesterday that I was stealing YL 's Stoke plan and I substantially am, but I've just noticed that his Stoke N includes Werrington but not Cellarhead. These wards are effectively the two halves of the town of Werrington. If you put both in Stoke N, then Leek is short of numbers, so I'm leaving them in Leek and putting Horton into Stoke N instead. Stoke on Trent North and Biddulph - 69858; Leek and Uttoxter - 72486.

[iainbhx]

I approve of 10-seat Birminghams, not only because the city deserves it, but because it produces better Solihull seats and has the potential knock on for a better Rugby seat as well. Islington's plan is fine in the South but falls apart somewhat in the centre, basically both "Ladywood" and "Erdington" are fairly horrible, but without ward splits, there aren't that many options and this may be the best of them, giving 7 satisfactory seats.

I still think that Redditch is an obscenity, but minimum change is minimum change.

I don't care that much about Staffordshire, but I do care about the Black Country boroughs and I suppose I care about the non-Dudley parts of Dudley the most. I was brought up in Wollescote and Norton, I have relatives in Wordsley and Wollaston, my maternal grandparents lived first in Quarry Bonk and then in Wall Heath for many years, they are buried in Gornal, my parents buried in Stourbridge. My first proper job was in The Owen - just opposite the Wagon and Horses, I worked in Kingswinford for nearly three years. Whilst it's been a long time since I lived there, I do visit reasonably frequently and consider myself connected.

Kingswinford is not that well linked to Dudley proper, it's always been separated by Pensnett which has a very distinct identity of its own, a lot of people work on locally on the large trading estates at Pensnett and Dawley Brook or in Wolves or Stourbridge, they shop locally or at Merry Hell, they only thing they really go east for is the Hospital and that's only because Wordsley Hospital has been gone since 2005. It does have some links with Staffordshire although mainly for leisure. It is not really as Black Country as either Sedgley or Old Wordsley.

Wordsley was also part of the fairly large Brierley Hill UDC, it looks that way or to Stourbridge or to Kingswinford for just about everything, in someways it's more distant from Dudley than Kingswinford, although its been in a Dudley seat since 1974. Its barely connected with Staffordshire, new developments around Lawnswood and at the old sanitorium nonwithstanding. Overall, it's probably more (lower) middle class, although Old Wordsley with its strong glass heritage was proper working class Black Country.

Putting all three wards into Staffs makes some sense, they are a cohesive unit and there are historical connections. Putting the two Kingswinford wards in also works. Some sort of weird split pair really doesn't. Wordsley without Kingswinford going into Staffordshire is awful.

Of course, you could question if the whole Staffordshire finger is worth it. Split it at the the Stour/Smestow Brook, West into Salop, East into either West Midlands or for some of the more southerly bits Worcestershire.

[iainbhx]

Core Dudley: St Thomas's, St James's, Castle & Priory
Core Stourbridge: Wollaston & Stourbridge Town, Norton, Pedmore and Stourbridge E, Amblecote
Core Halesowen: Halesowen North, Halesowen South, Belle Vale
Own Identity: Kingswinford N & Wall Heath, Kingswinford S, Wordsley, Gornal, Sedgely, Coseley E, Brierley Hill


Hayley Green, deffo Halesowen, the Tanhouse bit that gives it Cradley South - not so much
Stourbridge E - Stourbridge, The Lye is The Lye
Cradley & Wollescote - Wollescote - more Lye than Stourbridge, Cradley is Cradley
Dudley Wood - Dudley, Quarry Bonk- Greater Lye
Brockmoor and Pensnett - Brockmoor - Brierley Hill, Pensnett - we don't talk about Pensnett
Upper Gornal and Woodsetton - Gornal is Gornal, Woodsetton - Dudley
Netherton, Woodside and St Andrew's - Oh God, Netherton is borderline Dudley, Cradley, Rowley and has its own identity, Woodside is Brierley Hill really, the remainder - Holly Hall is Dudley.

Honestly think the borough would be better with single member wards.

[greenhert]

Mar 8, 2022 19:19:53 GMT iainbhx said:

I approve of 10-seat Birminghams, not only because the city deserves it, but because it produces better Solihull seats and has the potential knock on for a better Rugby seat as well. Islington's plan is fine in the South but falls apart somewhat in the centre, basically both "Ladywood" and "Erdington" are fairly horrible, but without ward splits, there aren't that many options and this may be the best of them, giving 7 satisfactory seats.

I still think that Redditch is an obscenity, but minimum change is minimum change.

I don't care that much about Staffordshire, but I do care about the Black Country boroughs and I suppose I care about the non-Dudley parts of Dudley the most. I was brought up in Wollescote and Norton, I have relatives in Wordsley and Wollaston, my maternal grandparents lived first in Quarry Bonk and then in Wall Heath for many years, they are buried in Gornal, my parents buried in Stourbridge. My first proper job was in The Owen - just opposite the Wagon and Horses, I worked in Kingswinford for nearly three years. Whilst it's been a long time since I lived there, I do visit reasonably frequently and consider myself connected.

Kingswinford is not that well linked to Dudley proper, it's always been separated by Pensnett which has a very distinct identity of its own, a lot of people work on locally on the large trading estates at Pensnett and Dawley Brook or in Wolves or Stourbridge, they shop locally or at Merry Hell, they only thing they really go east for is the Hospital and that's only because Wordsley Hospital has been gone since 2005. It does have some links with Staffordshire although mainly for leisure. It is not really as Black Country as either Sedgley or Old Wordsley.

Wordsley was also part of the fairly large Brierley Hill UDC, it looks that way or to Stourbridge or to Kingswinford for just about everything, in someways it's more distant from Dudley than Kingswinford, although its been in a Dudley seat since 1974. Its barely connected with Staffordshire, new developments around Lawnswood and at the old sanitorium nonwithstanding. Overall, it's probably more (lower) middle class, although Old Wordsley with its strong glass heritage was proper working class Black Country.

Putting all three wards into Staffs makes some sense, they are a cohesive unit and there are historical connections. Putting the two Kingswinford wards in also works. Some sort of weird split pair really doesn't. Wordsley without Kingswinford going into Staffordshire is awful.

Of course, you could question if the whole Staffordshire finger is worth it. Split it at the the Stour/Smestow Brook, West into Salop, East into either West Midlands or for some of the more southerly bits Worcestershire.

Initially, the Local Government Act 1972 proposed almost exactly that, with the southern part of Seisdon Rural District (which mostly corresponds to the current South Staffordshire district) going into Shropshire and the northern part being absorbed into the borough of Dudley. However this was dropped before the Act became law.

[iainbhx]

Mar 8, 2022 22:13:09 GMT greenhert said:

Initially, the Local Government Act 1972 proposed almost exactly that, with the southern part of Seisdon Rural District (which mostly corresponds to the current South Staffordshire district) going into Shropshire and the northern part being absorbed into the borough of Dudley. However this was dropped before the Act became law.

Actually and unsurprisingly that's wrong.

The initial indicative map in the 1971 White Paper as can be found here, it split Seisdon RDC three ways the most southerly part - basically Kinver into Worcestershire, the west of the district into Salop and the North East of the District into Wolverhampton.

By the time of the 1972 Act, Seisdon was once again as one, in the county of Staffordshire. A series of failed amendments (Amendments 293 to 296 tried to split it FOUR ways. With Himley going to Dudley, Kinver to Worcestershire, Codsall, Lower Penn, Wombourne and Wrottesley to Wolverhampton and the rest to Shropshire. This, obviously did not occur.

[greenhert]

Mar 8, 2022 22:54:28 GMT iainbhx said:

Mar 8, 2022 22:13:09 GMT greenhert said:

Initially, the Local Government Act 1972 proposed almost exactly that, with the southern part of Seisdon Rural District (which mostly corresponds to the current South Staffordshire district) going into Shropshire and the northern part being absorbed into the borough of Dudley. However this was dropped before the Act became law.

Actually and unsurprisingly that's wrong.

The initial indicative map in the 1971 White Paper as can be found here, it split Seisdon RDC three ways the most southerly part - basically Kinver into Worcestershire, the west of the district into Salop and the North East of the District into Wolverhampton.

By the time of the 1972 Act, Seisdon was once again as one, in the county of Staffordshire. A series of failed amendments (Amendments 293 to 296 tried to split it FOUR ways. With Himley going to Dudley, Kinver to Worcestershire, Codsall, Lower Penn, Wombourne and Wrottesley to Wolverhampton and the rest to Shropshire. This, obviously did not occur.

Due to resistance from the affluent villages that make up the South Staffordshire district, presumably-I strongly suspect it was primarily retained to prevent those villages from becoming Black Country suburbs. The same applies to the boroughs of Broxtowe and Gedling, which would have otherwise mostly been absorbed into the city of Nottingham.

[YL]

Mar 7, 2022 19:58:17 GMT islington said:

And just a final thought: if you're going to split a ward, doesn't it make more sense to do it not in Sandwell, as the BCE proposes, but in Dudley? With two Dudley wards going in with Staffs, a single split would allow three whole seats in the rest of Dudley with Sandwell treated alone for three more. So if you're going to split, I submit the BCE has done it in the wrong place.

The trouble with a three seat Dudley without Kingswinford is that Halesowen isn't big enough and Halesowen plus Stourbridge is too big. So you have to either split Stourbridge or have a rather odd looking Halesowen & Dudley Wood (other names are available) constituency curving round the south-west corner of Sandwell. (Something like Halesowen N, Halesowen S, Belle Vale, Hayley Green & Cradley S, Cradley & Wollescote, Quarry Bank & Dudley Wood, Netherton et al and the Lye part of Lye & Stourbridge N; based on iainbhx's helpful breakdown of the borough that would approximate to Halesowen, Cradley, The Lye and the southern fringes of Dudley proper.) There also seemed to be a view earlier in the thread that Sandwell didn't actually split that well into three in spite of the numbers meaning there are lots of ways to do it.

iainbhx: can you do Sandwell too? I'm aware of the council's division into six (West Bromwich, Wednesbury, Tipton, Smethwick, Oldbury, Rowley Regis) but I get the impression it's more complicated than that...

(This is why I don't make submissions for this region...)

[iainbhx]

I'll have a go this evening. I'm not so hot on the Sandwell side, but yes, it's quite complicated.

[islington]

I've been reflecting on recent exchanges and in particular on the really helpful post by iainbhx about the finer points of the geography of Dudley.

Obviously the prerequisite for making a submission is that its proposer should be confident that it represents a clear and significant improvement on the BCE scheme. Having had a couple of nights to sleep on it, I do not have that confidence in respect of Staffs and the Black Country so I won't be putting anything forward in this area.

Basically this is because I can't see a good way of taking only two Dudley wards to go with Staffs. You can take three (Kingswinfords and Wordsley), and the BCE has resolved the resultant shortage of voters in Dudley/Sandwell by a not-very-attractive ward split. But there's no more satisfactory solution that I can see; and in the end there are worse things in life than a ward split, and the LibDems' scheme for Wolverhampton is one of them.

I am still minded, however, to submit something on Brum / Solihull / Warwks.

[islington]

Turning back to Birmingham, and just to show that I'm prepared to consider a ward split when it achieves something useful, I'm contemplating the map below as an alternative arrangement in north and central Birmingham. The aim here is to avoid the much-changed Erdington seat in the plan I posted on 6 Mar, and also to maintain a viable Hodge Hill. This entails some consequential changes to Ladywood and Yardley. The rest of Brum would be as posted on 6 Mar.

Erdington - 71242. Contains PDs NEC1 and NEC2 of Nechells, with a combined electorate of 2485. This is much more recognizably based on the current seat, although it still extends south of the M6.

Hodge Hill - 72036. Includes the rest of Nechells, which takes it further west than is ideal but it's still the clear successor of the current seat. If preferred it could take Garretts Gn instead of Heartlands but that would mean moving more electors than the arrangement shown above.

Ladywood - 70016.

Yardley - 70137. Not quite so neat and tidy as in my non-split plan.

Compared with the non-split plan, this is certainly an improvement in terms of minimum change. The question is whether the improvement is sufficient to justify a ward split when there are many alternative 10-seat Birmingham plans that involve no splits at all. 

[sirbenjamin]

Are there any 10-seat Brums that don't have horrible knock-on effects immediately outside?

I'm more inclined towards a cross-border Birmingham-Solihull seat *if* it means we can have a 6-seat Warks, a 3-seat Cov and a 1-seat Bromsgrove all neatly self-contained.

[greenchristian]

Mar 9, 2022 14:11:04 GMT sirbenjamin said:

Are there any 10-seat Brums that don't have horrible knock-on effects immediately outside?

Only if you consider the concept of a Solihull-Warks cross-border seat to be inherently horrible (and more so than splitting up the Chelmsley Wood estate).

[sirbenjamin]

Mar 9, 2022 14:13:54 GMT greenchristian said:

Mar 9, 2022 14:11:04 GMT sirbenjamin said:

Are there any 10-seat Brums that don't have horrible knock-on effects immediately outside?

Only if you consider the concept of a Solihull-Warks cross-border seat to be inherently horrible (and more so than splitting up the Chelmsley Wood estate).

I like a Solihull-Warks crossing less than a Solihull-Brum crossing, because crossing a ceremonial county boundary feels worse to me than crossing between two LAs in the same county.

(I know this won't matter for people whose heads are stuck pre-1974.)

[iainbhx]

I think the best thing to say about Sandwell is that it is inchoate, it is made of several different communities - some of which have been historic rivals and some of which are split across boroughs - which isn't quite so true of Dudley.

The classic example is Great Barr which is split across Birmingham, Sandwell and to a lesser extent Walsall. Great Barr could be the core of a seat, but combining 3 Mets. Nah.

There's also the dimension of ethnicity - Dudley is pretty white - especially the two Kingswinfords, Wordsley, Norton and, of course, Gornal. Ok, there's bits of Dudley and a few other places, but overall Sandwell has a much larger BAME population, especially in West Brom and Smethwick which probably have several majority minority wards by now. This has changed the way Sandwell hangs together from how it used to hang together in the 80's, never mind the Muslin/Sikh relationship within some of those wards.

Smethwick; Smethwick, St Paul's, Soho & Victoria
Warley: Langley, Bristnall, Old Warley
Rowley: Rowley, Blackheath
Great Barr: Newton, Great Barr, Charlemont & Grove Vale
West Brom: West Brom Central, Greets Green and Lyng, Hateley Heath.
Wednesbury: Wednesbury N & S
Tipton : Tipton Green, Princes End, Great Bridge

The Wednesbury & Tipton clusters sort of hold together, Wednesbury would probably be more comfortable with Darlo or Bilston.

The Warley and Rowley clusters also hold together reasonably well.

Friar Park - historically part of West Brom, has been associated more with Wednesbury since Sandwell was formed, feels and looks a lot more like Wednesbury
Tividale - historically part of Tipton, but also has attachments to Oldbury, Oakham up on the ridge line feels much more like part of Dudley. Contains Tividale Quays - which was a very brave regeneration of Dudley Port.
Abbey - aka Bearwood is really part of Groß Birmingham and would fit in an Edgbaston seat easily, but for a Sandwell seat is more Warley than Smevvick.
Cradley Heath and Old Hill - best with the other part of Cradley, although they will fight to the death about the differences between them, Ode Hill looks towards Halesowen more than Oldbury
Oldbury - Chemical Town - therefore strange in the metal bashing Black Country, was once part of Halesowen and therefore of Shropshire. Used to fit well with the Warley group, not so much now apart from being more middle class. The far north of the ward belongs with Tipton, the central section is really part of Tivvy, it's an odd set of ward boundaries.

Tipton, Darlo and Wednesbury - now there's a seat Nick Griffin would have loved.

[iainbhx]

In both its old and new forms, Nechells has always been one of the more splittable wards in Brum.