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Post by islington on Mar 12, 2022 17:13:25 GMT
And here's yet another 7-seat Leics. I acknowledge that it owes a huge debt to the version posted by East Anglian Lefty somewhere a long way upthread - without doing a ward-by-ward check I think four of the seats are identical.  I quite like this one so here are names, numbers and a few comments.
Blaby - 76056. Coterminous with the district, one of the best features of EAL's scheme. The BCE had a coterminous Harborough seat, which obviously can't survive in a 7-seat Leics map, but this means we can point to another district as being respected in the same way. The seat actually draws a majority of its voters from the current S Leics. Hinckley - 76281. I think as EAL had it - a perfectly logical seat and wholly contained within Bosworth district. It no longer includes Market Bosworth itself so a name change is necessary.
West Leicestershire - 76876. Again, I think as per EAL. Essentially the NW Leics seat shifted southward to lose Castle Donington and include the western wards of Bosworth. Loughborough - 76400. Gains Castle Donington; loses Mountsorrel, Sileby, &c. Mid Leicestershire - 76812. Sort-of the successor to Charnwood but loses its Blaby and Bosworth elements and picks up wards shed by Loughborough as well as an orphan ward (Thurnby) from Harborough. Essentially the seat comprises the northern environs of Leicester. East Leicestershire - 75494. Or 'Melton and Harborough' if you prefer. This arrangement avoids the orphan ward bitten out of Melton in EAL's scheme.
South Leicestershire - 76310. As per EAL. Yes, it's narrow in the middle but there's a direct road link and it's certainly no worse, arguably better than, the two wasp-waisted seats in the BCE scheme. Despite the name, it actually takes most of its electors from the Harborough seat.
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YL
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Post by YL on Mar 12, 2022 23:14:05 GMT
And here's yet another 7-seat Leices. I acknowledge that it owes a huge debt to the version posted by East Anglian Lefty somewhere a long way upthread - without doing a ward-by-ward check I think four of the seats are identical. I quite like this one so here are names, numbers and a few comments. Blaby - 75056. Coterminous with the district, one of the best features of EAL's scheme. The BCE had a coterminous Harborough seat, which obviously can't survive in a 7-seat Leics map, but this means we can point to another district as being respected in the same way. The seat actually draws a majority of its voters from the current S Leics. Hinckley - 76281. I think as EAL had it - a perfectly logical seat and wholly contained within Bosworth district. It no longer includes Market Bosworth itself so a name change is necessary.
West Leicestershire - 76876. Again, I think as per EAL. Essentially the NW Leics seat shifted southward to lose Castle Donington and include the western wards of Bosworth. Loughborough - 76400. Gains Castle Donington; loses Mountsorrel, Sileby, &c. Mid Leicestershire - 76812. Sort-of the successor to Charnwood but loses its Blaby and Bosworth elements and picks up wards shed by Loughborough as well as an orphan ward (Thurnby) from Harborough. Essentially the seat comprises the northern environs of Leicester. East Leicestershire - 75494. Or 'Melton and Harborough' if you prefer. This arrangement avoids the orphan ward bitten out of Melton in EAL's scheme.
South Leicestershire - 76310. As per EAL. Yes, it's narrow in the middle but there's a direct road link and it's certainly no worse, arguably better than, the two wasp-waisted seats in the BCE scheme. Despite the name, it actually takes most of its electors from the Harborough seat. At one point my submission was actually going to contain three options, and this was going to be one of them. |
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Post by islington on Mar 13, 2022 11:14:05 GMT
And here's yet another 7-seat Leics. I acknowledge that it owes a huge debt to the version posted by East Anglian Lefty somewhere a long way upthread - without doing a ward-by-ward check I think four of the seats are identical. I quite like this one so here are names, numbers and a few comments. Blaby - 76056. Coterminous with the district, one of the best features of EAL's scheme. The BCE had a coterminous Harborough seat, which obviously can't survive in a 7-seat Leics map, but this means we can point to another district as being respected in the same way. The seat actually draws a majority of its voters from the current S Leics. Hinckley - 76281. I think as EAL had it - a perfectly logical seat and wholly contained within Bosworth district. It no longer includes Market Bosworth itself so a name change is necessary.
West Leicestershire - 76876. Again, I think as per EAL. Essentially the NW Leics seat shifted southward to lose Castle Donington and include the western wards of Bosworth. Loughborough - 76400. Gains Castle Donington; loses Mountsorrel, Sileby, &c. Mid Leicestershire - 76812. Sort-of the successor to Charnwood but loses its Blaby and Bosworth elements and picks up wards shed by Loughborough as well as an orphan ward (Thurnby) from Harborough. Essentially the seat comprises the northern environs of Leicester. East Leicestershire - 75494. Or 'Melton and Harborough' if you prefer. This arrangement avoids the orphan ward bitten out of Melton in EAL's scheme.
South Leicestershire - 76310. As per EAL. Yes, it's narrow in the middle but there's a direct road link and it's certainly no worse, arguably better than, the two wasp-waisted seats in the BCE scheme. Despite the name, it actually takes most of its electors from the Harborough seat. At one point my submission was actually going to contain three options, and this was going to be one of them. Your eventual submission for Leics was identical to your post of 18 Feb 2021 and it helpfully provides an example of expanding Melton into Charnwood and preserving a very good match for the current Harborough seat.
When I do a submission I'm normally loth to include a number of different options because it can give the impression of being unclear about what I am advocating. But in this case, I think it is helpful to use the second phase to expose the BCE to a number of 7-seat Leics options to hammer home the point that Labour is wrong to imply that it can't be done.
By way of organizing thoughts, my starting point is that we have six seats already in Leics, all of which are oversize, plus the Leics element of Rutland & Melton, which has only 50298 and needs substantial reinforcement. In these circumstances it is inevitable that the current seat pattern will be seriously disrupted.
We do, however, have a choice about how to do this. I can see three basic approaches (each of which doubtless has variants).
Option A, as in your submission, is to expand Melton into Leicester suburbs on the north side of the city. This allows you to minimize disruption in the south of the county, with seats of Harborough and S Leics that are fairly similar to the current versions. On the other hand more substantial surgery is needed in the north of the county.
Option B, for instance my scheme posted on 26 Jan 2021, is to expand Melton in the south to include Mkt Harborough. This allows reasonable fealty to current boundaries in the north of the county, with Loughborough, Mid Leics (aka Charnwood), and NW Leics all easily recognizable despite the addition or removal of a few marginal wards. On the other hand, the current map is pretty much torn up in the south of the county.
Or there's option C, as above, which also unites Melton and Mkt Harborough and keeps the seat out of the Leicester suburbs (unless E Goscote qualifies as such), but which also disrupts the current seat pattern throughout. It is, however, maybe more respectful of LA boundaries than the other two, and in particular it shares with the BCE scheme the virtue of having a seat that coincides exactly with a district (albeit not the same district).
In the unlikely event that someone put a gun to my head, I think I'd go for option C. But really, I'd be perfectly happy with any of these schemes so if I make a submission at the second stage (which I am minded to do) I'd probably put forward both B and C, coupled with a favourable reference to your submission as well.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Mar 14, 2022 10:53:19 GMT
Still in the E Mids, here's yet another non-split Nhants. (Apologies if anything along these lines has already been posted, I haven't checked the thread.) This is based fairly closely on the LibDems' plan and it even incorporates something akin to their much-derided Raunds-to-Towcester seat (although this version of it does not include Towcester). Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough are exactly as proposed by the LibDems, which means that as much as possible of the Corby seat is retained, Kettering is unaltered, and Wellingborough town is kept together, including its peripheral bits. Also like the LibDem scheme, it maintains recognizable No'ton N and S seats (the latter would be No'ton S & Towcester), and although in this scheme the No'ton seats omit two wards formerly in Northampton borough, I'd point out that those wards are currently not included in a No'ton seat so from their point of view it's no change - they remain in a seat that I'd be tempted to call S Nhants, although admittedly the rest of it is hugely changed from the current seat of that name. A significant drawback of this plan, which it shares with the LibDem version, is that there are two seats crossing the UA boundary whereas it is possible to have a non-split plan with only one.
 Edited to add: Or, maybe better, compared with the above: Corby (75232) loses Irthlingborough, gains Ise; S Nhants (76552) loses Raunds, gains Deanshanger; Daventry (75354) loses Deanshanger, gains Long Buckby; Kettering (74999) loses Ise and Burton, gains Brixworth and Moulton. This leaves Wellingborough (76174) to lose its W Nhants wards and gain Buton, Irthlingborough, Raunds. This is a much more compact Wellingborough seat than the LibDem version, and wholly within N Nhants UA. Kettering now takes over the role of the second seat (other than S Nhants) extending into both UAs but it takes only two wards from W Nhants and doesn't look quite such as sprawl as the LibDems' W'boro.
The first version is pretty bad, the proposed modification is much worse. At a push you could maybe pair the two southern wards of Northampton with Wellingborough as there are links along the A45, but they don't go with Raunds or Rushden at all. The only reason not to have two seats entirely within the old NBC area is if you want to ward-split and grab contiguous areas of housing just over the border. |
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Post by YL on Mar 14, 2022 17:14:39 GMT
If you want - only one split ward - only one constituency crossing the North Northants/West Northants border - only two constituencies containing parts of the former borough of Northampton then you can always try a doughnut: Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough, Daventry exactly as in the map posted by islington in the post at the top of this page (not the quoted map, the one below it, the one with Desborough and Rothwell with Corby and so on) Northampton South as per BCE Northampton North as per BCE plus part of Moulton ward, the parishes of Moulton (3671 electors) and Overstone (738 electors, if I've identified the polling districts correctly), giving an electorate of 75623 Mid Northamptonshire (yes, even I'd call it that) everything else, electorate 76943 Variations on the theme are possible, e.g. you could take Boughton instead of Overstone. |
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Post by islington on Mar 14, 2022 18:08:35 GMT
Actually I'm baffled by the very common determination to have two seats exactly coinciding with the former borough of Northampton.
Yes: the former borough. That's 'former' as in 'does not exist any more'.
When it did exist as a borough, its boundary didn't receive any particular respect and chunks round the edges were hived off into S Nhants. But now it's been abolished, its former boundary seems somehow to have acquired semi-sacred status.
Consider the boundary between, say, the wards of Nene Valley and Hackleton. Is it a local authority boundary? No, not any more. Is it an existing constituency boundary? No: both wards are wholly in the S Nhants seat. Is there then some great physical barrier such as a lofty mountain or mighty river separating the two wards? Well, if there is the Ordnance Survey seems to have overlooked it. Yet the BCE scheme respects the line and the majority of submissions seem to agree. It's very odd.
The reason I don't want to have two seats in the former borough is that they would average only 73612 and this just seems to create needless difficulties elsewhere when the average for seven seats across Nhants as a whole is as high as 75700 - or, if you treat former Northampton by itself, 76535 for the remaining five seats.
Besides, I'd like to minimize the number of ward splits, at zero if reasonably possible, and adherence to an abolished boundary certainly doesn't strike me as a legitimate ground for a split.
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Post by bjornhattan on Mar 14, 2022 22:25:06 GMT
Actually I'm baffled by the very common determination to have two seats exactly coinciding with the former borough of Northampton. Yes: the former borough. That's 'former' as in 'does not exist any more'. When it did exist as a borough, its boundary didn't receive any particular respect and chunks round the edges were hived off into S Nhants. But now it's been abolished, its former boundary seems somehow to have acquired semi-sacred status. Consider the boundary between, say, the wards of Nene Valley and Hackleton. Is it a local authority boundary? No, not any more. Is it an existing constituency boundary? No: both wards are wholly in the S Nhants seat. Is there then some great physical barrier such as a lofty mountain or mighty river separating the two wards? Well, if there is the Ordnance Survey seems to have overlooked it. Yet the BCE scheme respects the line and the majority of submissions seem to agree. It's very odd. The reason I don't want to have two seats in the former borough is that they would average only 73612 and this just seems to create needless difficulties elsewhere when the average for seven seats across Nhants as a whole is as high as 75700 - or, if you treat former Northampton by itself, 76535 for the remaining five seats. Besides, I'd like to minimize the number of ward splits, at zero if reasonably possible, and adherence to an abolished boundary certainly doesn't strike me as a legitimate ground for a split. The main reason for retaining the former borough boundary is that it generally forms the boundary between wholly urban or suburban wards in Northampton, and more rural wards outwith the town. There's clearly some development in Hackleton & Grange Park and Moulton which is urban overspill but each ward also takes in a significant number of rural villages which are clearly not Northampton. Obviously that doesn't mean you can't include these wards in Northampton seats - as was the case for Hackleton in the 2000s - but to suggest the old borough boundary is completely immaterial is a step too far. |
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Post by YL on Mar 15, 2022 8:05:40 GMT
The main reason for retaining the former borough boundary is that it generally forms the boundary between wholly urban or suburban wards in Northampton, and more rural wards outwith the town. There's clearly some development in Hackleton & Grange Park and Moulton which is urban overspill but each ward also takes in a significant number of rural villages which are clearly not Northampton. Obviously that doesn't mean you can't include these wards in Northampton seats - as was the case for Hackleton in the 2000s - but to suggest the old borough boundary is completely immaterial is a step too far. Quite. However islington's point that the numbers become very tight in the rest of the county if you have two seats wholly in that area is a reasonable one, and it's no doubt why the BCE split three wards while not doing the ward split there's perhaps the strongest case for (moving the outlying Wellingborough estate in Earls Barton ward into Wellingborough constituency). So on balance I would favour the approach, variations of which were submitted by the Lib Dems and by East Anglian Lefty, where a ward neighbouring the former borough is split in a way which brings urban overspill into one of the Northampton seats, giving more leeway in the rest of the county. The Lib Dems bring in Grange Park to the south; EAL brings in Moulton, Overstone and Boughton parishes to the north. If you want to bring the Earls Barton part of Wellingborough into Wellingborough constituency, then either you have to split Rushden and Wellingborough as the Lib Dems do or you have to split Earls Barton ward. The former option is pretty horrible so I would go for the latter. That's two ward splits: Earls Barton and either Moulton or Hackleton & Grange Park. The option I posted yesterday (with the doughnut) has room to split Earls Barton so can achieve that. I think the justification for any further splits beyond that comes from trying to keep roughly the current orientation of the Corby and Kettering seats, which personally I find a less convincing argument. (It's not as if the current Corby constituency is a particularly coherent entity.) But this is a county I mostly know from passing through it on the M1 and the Midland Main Line, so I'm not planning on making further submissions here. |
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Post by islington on Mar 15, 2022 11:59:24 GMT
The main reason for retaining the former borough boundary is that it generally forms the boundary between wholly urban or suburban wards in Northampton, and more rural wards outwith the town. There's clearly some development in Hackleton & Grange Park and Moulton which is urban overspill but each ward also takes in a significant number of rural villages which are clearly not Northampton. Obviously that doesn't mean you can't include these wards in Northampton seats - as was the case for Hackleton in the 2000s - but to suggest the old borough boundary is completely immaterial is a step too far. Quite. However islington 's point that the numbers become very tight in the rest of the county if you have two seats wholly in that area is a reasonable one, and it's no doubt why the BCE split three wards while not doing the ward split there's perhaps the strongest case for (moving the outlying Wellingborough estate in Earls Barton ward into Wellingborough constituency). So on balance I would favour the approach, variations of which were submitted by the Lib Dems and by East Anglian Lefty , where a ward neighbouring the former borough is split in a way which brings urban overspill into one of the Northampton seats, giving more leeway in the rest of the county. The Lib Dems bring in Grange Park to the south; EAL brings in Moulton, Overstone and Boughton parishes to the north. If you want to bring the Earls Barton part of Wellingborough into Wellingborough constituency, then either you have to split Rushden and Wellingborough as the Lib Dems do or you have to split Earls Barton ward. The former option is pretty horrible so I would go for the latter. That's two ward splits: Earls Barton and either Moulton or Hackleton & Grange Park. The option I posted yesterday (with the doughnut) has room to split Earls Barton so can achieve that. I think the justification for any further splits beyond that comes from trying to keep roughly the current orientation of the Corby and Kettering seats, which personally I find a less convincing argument. (It's not as if the current Corby constituency is a particularly coherent entity.) But this is a county I mostly know from passing through it on the M1 and the Midland Main Line, so I'm not planning on making further submissions here. Quite. If you want to keep two seats based on Northamption, it makes sense to increase the numbers by swapping out a couple of wards from the former borough in exchange for two bigger wards. For instance, if you leave out E Hunsbury and Nene Valley (neither of which is currently in a Northampton seat) and include Bugbrooke and Towcester instead, your two Northampton seats now average 75794, which fits very well with the average of 75700 for the county as a whole.
Looking at variations in ward size across the entire county, the two largest, Brackley and Towcester, come in at a whopping 11808 and 11460 respectively; whereas wards in some of the towns, especially in Northampton, Kettering and Daventry, tend to be small (I think St George, 7388, is the smallest). There are 57 wards in all and seven seats to be assigned, so if you're trying to avoid splits altogether you want nine wards in one seat, which clearly needs to be in Northampton because this is the biggest accumulation of small wards, with the other 48 wards bunched into six groups of eight. But you can't have any old group of eight because if you have too many wards on the large side you will come in above the maximum. In other words, seats that include very large wards need also to include some small wards to keep the overall size within range: for instance, Brackley can share a seat with the small Daventry wards, while Towcester goes in with parts of Northampton.
If you allow yourself one ward split it may give you a bit more wiggle room but probably not very much: in most of the county you will still face the issue of finding legal eight-ward combinations.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Mar 16, 2022 11:01:16 GMT
Actually I'm baffled by the very common determination to have two seats exactly coinciding with the former borough of Northampton. Yes: the former borough. That's 'former' as in 'does not exist any more'. When it did exist as a borough, its boundary didn't receive any particular respect and chunks round the edges were hived off into S Nhants. But now it's been abolished, its former boundary seems somehow to have acquired semi-sacred status. Consider the boundary between, say, the wards of Nene Valley and Hackleton. Is it a local authority boundary? No, not any more. Is it an existing constituency boundary? No: both wards are wholly in the S Nhants seat. Is there then some great physical barrier such as a lofty mountain or mighty river separating the two wards? Well, if there is the Ordnance Survey seems to have overlooked it. Yet the BCE scheme respects the line and the majority of submissions seem to agree. It's very odd. The reason I don't want to have two seats in the former borough is that they would average only 73612 and this just seems to create needless difficulties elsewhere when the average for seven seats across Nhants as a whole is as high as 75700 - or, if you treat former Northampton by itself, 76535 for the remaining five seats. Besides, I'd like to minimize the number of ward splits, at zero if reasonably possible, and adherence to an abolished boundary certainly doesn't strike me as a legitimate ground for a split. It's not that it's important to have two seats coterminous with the old NBC area, it's that Northampton is a single urban area with the right electorate for two seats and it doesn't make sense to divide it between three seats. People in Hunsbury or Wootton may live in the suburbs, but they still live in Northampton, which isn't true of people in Towcester. Is the old borough boundary a perfect representation of the extent of Northampton? Not entirely - it coincides with the urban limits on the eastern and most of the western boundaries, but in the south Grange Park is functionally Northampton and in the north settlement crosses into several of the parishes. But that's an argument for ward-splitting, which the BCE have accepted there's a strong case for in Northamptonshire because the current wards are placeholders. And that deals with your problem of having an average that's too low. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2022 19:12:48 GMT
Actually I'm baffled by the very common determination to have two seats exactly coinciding with the former borough of Northampton. Yes: the former borough. That's 'former' as in 'does not exist any more'. When it did exist as a borough, its boundary didn't receive any particular respect and chunks round the edges were hived off into S Nhants. But now it's been abolished, its former boundary seems somehow to have acquired semi-sacred status. Consider the boundary between, say, the wards of Nene Valley and Hackleton. Is it a local authority boundary? No, not any more. Is it an existing constituency boundary? No: both wards are wholly in the S Nhants seat. Is there then some great physical barrier such as a lofty mountain or mighty river separating the two wards? Well, if there is the Ordnance Survey seems to have overlooked it. Yet the BCE scheme respects the line and the majority of submissions seem to agree. It's very odd. The reason I don't want to have two seats in the former borough is that they would average only 73612 and this just seems to create needless difficulties elsewhere when the average for seven seats across Nhants as a whole is as high as 75700 - or, if you treat former Northampton by itself, 76535 for the remaining five seats. Besides, I'd like to minimize the number of ward splits, at zero if reasonably possible, and adherence to an abolished boundary certainly doesn't strike me as a legitimate ground for a split. Because it still forms the boundaries of a recognisable urban area and a socially/culturally identifiable one. and because it's insane to go tearing up strong local identities to satisfy your bizarre and ridiculous obsession with avoiding ward splits at all costs |
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Post by islington on Mar 16, 2022 21:36:21 GMT
Actually I'm baffled by the very common determination to have two seats exactly coinciding with the former borough of Northampton. Yes: the former borough. That's 'former' as in 'does not exist any more'. When it did exist as a borough, its boundary didn't receive any particular respect and chunks round the edges were hived off into S Nhants. But now it's been abolished, its former boundary seems somehow to have acquired semi-sacred status. Consider the boundary between, say, the wards of Nene Valley and Hackleton. Is it a local authority boundary? No, not any more. Is it an existing constituency boundary? No: both wards are wholly in the S Nhants seat. Is there then some great physical barrier such as a lofty mountain or mighty river separating the two wards? Well, if there is the Ordnance Survey seems to have overlooked it. Yet the BCE scheme respects the line and the majority of submissions seem to agree. It's very odd. The reason I don't want to have two seats in the former borough is that they would average only 73612 and this just seems to create needless difficulties elsewhere when the average for seven seats across Nhants as a whole is as high as 75700 - or, if you treat former Northampton by itself, 76535 for the remaining five seats. Besides, I'd like to minimize the number of ward splits, at zero if reasonably possible, and adherence to an abolished boundary certainly doesn't strike me as a legitimate ground for a split. Because it still forms the boundaries of a recognisable urban area and a socially/culturally identifiable one. and because it's insane to go tearing up strong local identities to satisfy your bizarre and ridiculous obsession with avoiding ward splits at all costs Pas du tout - I agree it's best to be sparing with ward splits but in the course of this exercise I've proposed some myself and supported a number of others suggested by the BCE.
I'd always try to get rid of a ward split if I reasonably can but the emphasis is on the word 'reasonably' - i.e. not at the expense of a markedly inferior plan overall. For instance, I haven't challenged the BCE's ward split in Havering because although it's possible to get rid of it, the least bad way of doing it (that I can find) results in a terribly misshapen Dagenham seat.
I'm not against a ward split in Nhants, or even more than one, but the test is whether it improves the overall plan in terms of the statutory rules and BCE guidelines. The BCE's Nhants plan clearly fails this test - in particular by the inclusion of part of a ward in a seat otherwise drawn entirely from another authority, an out-and-out breach of the BCE's own published guidance (para 32, 3rd bullet). And respecting the boundary of a defunct local authority is not sufficient reason to split a ward. As for the 'strong local identities' that I'm tearing up - those identities didn't seem to be all that strong when the current boundaries were drawn because big chunks of Northampton borough were put in S Nhants, and that was when the boundary thereby crossed was a live one - so why pay it any greater respect now that it's dead?
Just for the record, I don't think the non-split plans for Nhants are terribly good and I'm receptive to the idea that a judicious ward split might improve them. But any splits need to comply with BCE guidance; and while one, or even two, might conceivably improve the map, three seems an awful lot for a relatively small county like Nhants.
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Post by YL on Mar 17, 2022 8:07:01 GMT
Here's a version with two splits:  Both splits are identical to ones in East Anglian Lefty 's submission: areas of Moulton ward with urban overspill (Moulton itself, Boughton and Overstone) are added to Northampton North to increase the total electorate of the two Northampton constituencies and so make numbers more manageable elsewhere in the county, and the Redhill Grange area of Earls Barton ward is included in Wellingborough. The plan is legal without the latter split, but it unites the Wellingborough town council area. The Daventry seat here is essentially a trimmed version of the one which existed from 1983 to 2010, and Northampton has been doughnutted before (Daventry from 1974 to 1983). If you prefer something like the current Daventry and South Northamptonshire orientation, then you could try moving the four northern wards of the yellow seat into the red one, and the three wards immediately south of Northampton the other way. That leaves the red seat slightly too big, which can be fixed by including Irchester rather than Burton & Broughton as one of the two North Northants wards. But that causes trouble: removing Irchester from Wellingborough means that without a further ward split any seat which contains all of both Rushden and Wellingborough is only going to be connected across that quadripoint from Finedon to Higham Ferrers. Then there's the question of how acceptable that realignment of the Corby and Kettering constituencies is. I don't really believe there's any very strong case for keeping Thrapston, Irthlingborough and Raunds with Corby, but there might be more of an argument against removing Rothwell and Desborough from Kettering and some might say that if you move Thrapston you should move Oundle too. I suspect EAL went through something like this map before submitting the one with two extra ward splits which allow something much closer to the current constituency pattern. Comments islington (and others)? |
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Post by islington on Mar 17, 2022 9:27:54 GMT
Here's a version with two splits: Both splits are identical to ones in East Anglian Lefty 's submission: areas of Moulton ward with urban overspill (Moulton itself, Boughton and Overstone) are added to Northampton North to increase the total electorate of the two Northampton constituencies and so make numbers more manageable elsewhere in the county, and the Redhill Grange area of Earls Barton ward is included in Wellingborough. The plan is legal without the latter split, but it unites the Wellingborough town council area. The Daventry seat here is essentially a trimmed version of the one which existed from 1983 to 2010, and Northampton has been doughnutted before (Daventry from 1974 to 1983). If you prefer something like the current Daventry and South Northamptonshire orientation, then you could try moving the four northern wards of the yellow seat into the red one, and the three wards immediately south of Northampton the other way. That leaves the red seat slightly too big, which can be fixed by including Irchester rather than Burton & Broughton as one of the two North Northants wards. But that causes trouble: removing Irchester from Wellingborough means that without a further ward split any seat which contains all of both Rushden and Wellingborough is only going to be connected across that quadripoint from Finedon to Higham Ferrers. Then there's the question of how acceptable that realignment of the Corby and Kettering constituencies is. I don't really believe there's any very strong case for keeping Thrapston, Irthlingborough and Raunds with Corby, but there might be more of an argument against removing Rothwell and Desborough from Kettering and some might say that if you move Thrapston you should move Oundle too. I suspect EAL went through something like this map before submitting the one with two extra ward splits which allow something much closer to the current constituency pattern. Comments islington (and others)? Well, since my opinion has been sought ...
That is a much better plan than the BCE version.
I don't think the split of Earls Barton is warranted because it's not necessary for the plan to work. Essentially the justification for the split is that the ward boundary between Earls Barton and Hatton Park is in the wrong place. Probably it is: but I don't think it's the function of the present exercise to 'correct' supposed or actual shortcomings in the way wards are drawn - that's the job of the LGBCE. For the purposes of the present exercise we should take wards as we find them, whether we like them or not, and ward splits (if any) have to be justified on the grounds that they are needed to draw legal and reasonable Parliamentary seats.
But if we judge the plan on the basis of a single ward split of Moulton, then it's fine. It keeps two solid Northampton seats; the two UAs are straddled by only one seat; the ward split makes practical sense and complies with BCE guidelines. Compared with the best possible non-split plans, I'd say that the improved treatment of Northampton is probably enough to justify the single split.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Mar 17, 2022 10:34:39 GMT
I don't recall my logic for my Northants proposal, but I think I did it in a hurry and just missed this configuration, which I think is very good. I don't think a doughnut is a particular problem - just about the entirety of the seat is made up of areas that look to Northampton as a major local service and employment centre.
Thrapston et al. have better links to Kettering than Corby (with the A14 being their major local artery.) I don't know Oundle at all well, but my impression is that it mostly looks to Peterborough and western bits of the ward have got links with Corby, which isn't true of the rest of the old East Northants district. Desborough and Rothwell do go better with Kettering than Corby, but I think it's an acceptable trade-off.
Including Finedon in Wellingborough is good as aside from the eponymous settlement looking towards Wellingborough, it also includes new housing developments on the eastern edge of Wellingborough. Similarly, it may be worth comparing polling district boundaries in Earls Barton ward with the plans for Wellingborough's northern extension - there's precedent from the 5th Review for keeping future settlements whole in regard to the boundary between South and SE Cambridgeshire.
If you're submitting that one, can you let me know and I'll put in a supportive comment for it?
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Mar 24, 2022 17:26:28 GMT
I submitted that Northants map. The reference is 90900.
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Post by islington on Apr 2, 2022 19:24:12 GMT
I submitted that Northants map. The reference is 90900. YL, what were your numbers for the split wards?
I've got the list of PD numbers for Moulton ward, for instance. There are 13 PDs but I don't know which PD relates to which parish.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Apr 2, 2022 19:44:23 GMT
I submitted that Northants map. The reference is 90900. YL, what were your numbers for the split wards? I've got the list of PD numbers for Moulton ward, for instance. There are 13 PDs but I don't know which PD relates to which parish. Both are as in East Anglian Lefty's original submission, reference 84681. Moulton: the part in Northampton North is AR (Boughton), EG (Moulton) and EO (Overstone), electorate 5799. Earls Barton: the part in Wellingborough is WMA, electorate 792. |
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Post by islington on Apr 3, 2022 16:43:43 GMT
Submission now made with a 7-seat Leics and backing YL almost all the way in Nhants. BCE-94367. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Apr 4, 2022 8:49:28 GMT
I also put in a response supporting YL's plan for Northants. 94281.
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