2018 review - Yorkshire and the Humber

[islington]

YH-F (S Yorks): 952530 = 12.74 = 13

I'm indebted to YL for the bulk of this plan (although I know it isn't his preferred option). It's perfectly fair to say that it is far from representing 'minimum change' but the seats mostly work well enough in themselves. And crucially, it gets 13 seats into S Yorks without have to spill over into any of the various other parts of the region, in all of which we have satisfactory plans as already posted.

BARNSLEY NORTH - 71128. Barnsley switches to a north-south split.
BARNSLEY SOUTH AND WENTWORTH - 73430
DONCASTER - 76115
MALTBY - 72464. Admittedly an odd-looking seat on the map, although its internal comms are much better than might be expected from its shape.
MEXBOROUGH AND BENTLEY - 72233. This isn't a bad seat in itself but I'm certainly open to better suggestions for the name.
PENISTONE AND ECCLESFIELD - 71524
ROTHERHAM - 71516
SHEFFIELD BRIGHTSIDE - 75849 (est). This involves my one and only split ward in England, Sheffield Central (which I've shown on the map as belonging to the Ecclesall seat). More on this below.
SHEFFIELD ECCLESALL - 75145 (est). Includes the other part of Central ward.
SHEFFIELD HEELEY - 78366
SHEFFIELD HILLSBOROUGH - 71618
SHEFFIELD WOODHOUSE - 71484
THORNE - 71928

Regarding the ward split, I mentioned in my previous post about how I feel that such a split needs a substantial leeway to ensure that it can be carried out in a sensible way along PD boundaries. This split illustrates the point. My estimates above are based on dividing the ward's electorate equally, but there's a lot of flexibility either side of this. I've assumed the division would be drawn along a line running west to east along Ecclesall Road, St Mary's Gate and St Mary's Road (this appears to be a PD boundary the whole way) so that the northern part of the ward (the city centre proper) would go to Brightside and the southern part (Highfield, Sharrow, &c) to Ecclesall. My estimate of a 50-50 split is a crude one, but the point is that it would need to be in error by a huge amount for this not to work. Brightside can afford to pick up 2654 electors in excess of my estimate, or Ecclesall 3358, before either of them hits the upper limit. 

And thus endeth the Grand Tour of England.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Greenhert - I am classifying the rest of North Lincs as South Yorks as the River Trent is a nice western border for lincs

[YL]

Jun 22, 2016 22:07:44 GMT islington said:

YH-F (S Yorks): 952530 = 12.74 = 13

I'm indebted to YL for the bulk of this plan (although I know it isn't his preferred option). It's perfectly fair to say that it is far from representing 'minimum change' but the seats mostly work well enough in themselves. And crucially, it gets 13 seats into S Yorks without have to spill over into any of the various other parts of the region, in all of which we have satisfactory plans as already posted.

I don't think it's that bad (otherwise I wouldn't have posted the plan it's based on); I just think you can do a bit better if you split another Sheffield ward to allow you to avoid crossing the boundary into Rotherham, which is the part of that plan which might be controversial. The problem in my view is Thurcroft; the Aston/Orgreave area is fine in a Sheffield seat but Thurcroft feels a bit out of place.

If the Commission are taking your approach to ward splitting, I'd recommend that plan but I'd suggest somehow acknowledging the Rotherham component in the name (when I came up with the seat I suggested "Sheffield Rother Vale" which incorporates the name of the ward Thurcroft is in, and most of the seat is either close to the Rother or already in a seat named after it); if they're prepared to be a bit more flexible about wards then I'd recommend another Sheffield split, but I'm more concerned about what you're proposing in Bradford than South Yorkshire.

[YL]

Jun 22, 2016 8:13:47 GMT islington said:

HALIFAX - 78151. Some plans upthread have suggested two whole seats for Calderdale, with a ward split to achieve it. But even if you don't mind ward splits, I don't this will work because the numbers are so tight (entitlement 1.91, average 71432) that it's almost certain that whichever ward you choose will fail to divide nicely in the very precise way that it needs to in order to keep both seats above the minimum. If you're going to split wards, I suggest that you need a reasonable amount of leeway (say about 1500-2000 voters either way) to allow you to effect a sensible split along PD boundaries. Since that leeway isn't available here, I think it's inevitable that Calderdale is going to have to 'borrow' some numbers from Bradford.

I think there's a decent chance that it will work, actually, unlike the even tighter Kirklees one.

However, at the moment my feeling is that it's better to cross the border with Bradford, though I'm leaning towards doing so with Worth Valley rather than Wyke. The plans I ended up with when I treated Calderdale on its own ran into problems in Bradford, whereas I think that once you take out Worth Valley, Ilkley and Wharfedale the rest of Bradford works pretty well, with one seat for Keighley and Bingley and three for the urban core. And while moving Worth Valley isn't ideal, there is a decent road and there's a common Yorkshire Pennine feeling.

I do think the Kirklees split (allowing the only change there to be moving part of a ward from Colne Valley to Huddersfield) should be adopted in the unlikely event that it works. That then allows a Wakefield/Doncaster crossing and the five seat Sheffield.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

East Yorkshire

Kingston-upon-Hull East 76217
Kingston-upon-Hull Central 71404
Kingston-upon-Hull West 75103
Bridlington & Holderness 71117
Beverley 74232

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Doncaster

Doncaster North 77617
Doncaster Central 76987
Doncaster South 74097

[J.G.Harston]

Jun 23, 2016 10:53:14 GMT AustralianSwingVoter said:

Scarborough 71371
Ryedale 72033
Hambleton 72041
Richmondshire 72129
Craven 71892
Harrogate 71841
York Central 73287
York Outer 72349
Selby 74377

North Yorkshire

It's difficult to tell from the colours you've used, but if you want to split Whitby off from Scarborough the better boundary is the Whitby Rural District boundary between Flask Inn and Ravenscar, that is, Fylingdales Ward should be in the same entity as the rest of the Whitby and Esk Valley wards.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I don't want to split off whitby

[J.G.Harston]

Jun 22, 2016 7:41:15 GMT islington said:

And moving onto the last leg of our tour of England, we arrive in Y&H.

SCARBOROUGH - 72771. I've dropped 'Whitby' to deter Filey, now in the seat, from also demanding headline billing.

Grr. Happened again. Why do some posts disappear like this? Try again:

Pitchforsk at dawn! It's bad enough being subsumed into Scarbrough Council, not you want us to be subsumed into Scarbrough Constituency.

[J.G.Harston]

Jun 23, 2016 12:21:08 GMT AustralianSwingVoter said:

I don't want to split off whitby

I can't tell from the colours what arrangement you've done between Scarborough Council and Rydale Council next door. The underlying colouration from the North Yorks National Park makes it difficult to tell, but it looks like you've got a Scarbrough & East Whitby seat plus a Whitby West & Thirsk seat.

[iain]

Jun 23, 2016 12:24:42 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Jun 23, 2016 12:21:08 GMT AustralianSwingVoter said:

I don't want to split off whitby

I can't tell from the colours what arrangement you've done between Scarborough Council and Rydale Council next door. The underlying colouration from the North Yorks National Park makes it difficult to tell, but it looks like you've got a Scarbrough & East Whitby seat plus a Whitby West & Thirsk seat.

He's taken the two NW wards of Scarborough & Whitby out.

[islington]

Jun 23, 2016 7:31:41 GMT YL said:

Jun 22, 2016 8:13:47 GMT islington said:

HALIFAX - 78151. Some plans upthread have suggested two whole seats for Calderdale, with a ward split to achieve it. But even if you don't mind ward splits, I don't this will work because the numbers are so tight (entitlement 1.91, average 71432) that it's almost certain that whichever ward you choose will fail to divide nicely in the very precise way that it needs to in order to keep both seats above the minimum. If you're going to split wards, I suggest that you need a reasonable amount of leeway (say about 1500-2000 voters either way) to allow you to effect a sensible split along PD boundaries. Since that leeway isn't available here, I think it's inevitable that Calderdale is going to have to 'borrow' some numbers from Bradford.

I think there's a decent chance that it will work, actually, unlike the even tighter Kirklees one.

However, at the moment my feeling is that it's better to cross the border with Bradford, though I'm leaning towards doing so with Worth Valley rather than Wyke. The plans I ended up with when I treated Calderdale on its own ran into problems in Bradford, whereas I think that once you take out Worth Valley, Ilkley and Wharfedale the rest of Bradford works pretty well, with one seat for Keighley and Bingley and three for the urban core. And while moving Worth Valley isn't ideal, there is a decent road and there's a common Yorkshire Pennine feeling.

I do think the Kirklees split (allowing the only change there to be moving part of a ward from Colne Valley to Huddersfield) should be adopted in the unlikely event that it works. That then allows a Wakefield/Doncaster crossing and the five seat Sheffield.

YL, I've been doing some more thinking about the logistics of ward splitting. If you're going to split at all (and as you know, where reasonably possible I much prefer not to), I'd cite my proposed split of Sheffield Central ward as an approach that should give rise to little operational difficulty. The Brightside and Ecclesall seats, without any part of Central, have 68753 and 68048 electors respectively. Central ward, lying directly between them and with a long boundary with both, has 14193. The tout ensemble thus totals 150994, which is almost in the middle of the range for two whole seats (2.02). To estimate my electorates, I've simply divided Central's numbers in half (7096 to Brightside and 7097 to Ecclesall), but the obvious crudeness of this estimate doesn't trouble me because I could be out by over 2500 voters either way and the split would still work, so it should be easy to divide the ward in a sensible way along PD boundaries.

Generalizing from this, I'd suggest that if the two constituencies involved in a ward split add up to somewhere between, say, 146000 and 153000 (in round numbers), then you'll have leeway of about 2000 each way and it ought to work. Even if you extend the range to 145000 - 154000, which equates to about 1500 leeway in either direction, it might restrict your options but would probably still work. But if the combined total is less than 145000 or more than 154000, it becomes quite likely that the split won't work (more and more so, of course, as you approach the theoretical extremes of 142062 and 157014).  

I mention this because I've seen quite a few ward-splitting schemes that rely on assumptions that a particular ward will lend itself to being divided in a way that will allow two seats both just above the minimum or both just below the maximum; to my mind, these assumptions are highly optimistic and probably wouldn't work out in practice. 

[Adrian]

Speaking for myself, I don't make split-ward proposals unless I've checked the polling district electorates. This isn't always easy, but it's always possible, even if the data online is a few years out of date. My split-ward plans for Kirklees and Calderdale have both been checked.

Unfortunately Sheffield is tricky because of the ward changes. There are nice maps of all the wards, but you have to be careful because they've changed the codes for a lot of the polling districts. Old Central ward: mdfs.net/maps/Sheffield/Wards/2004/Central.gif New Central ward: mdfs.net/maps/Sheffield/Wards/2016/Central.gif

Anyway, the PD data for today's referendum gives the electorate for the Central ward PDs north of the ringroad (new codes GA GC GE GF GG) as 6652, which suggests that splitting the ward along the ring road would work perfectly for you.

[Adrian]

Jun 23, 2016 10:53:14 GMT AustralianSwingVoter said:

East Yorkshire

Hull East 76217
Hull Central 71404
Hull West 75103
Bridlington & Holderness 71117
Beverley 74232

East Yorkshire

The BCE proposed Hedon in Hull East at the zombie review but then took Hedon out when people complained.

[J.G.Harston]

Jun 23, 2016 12:26:27 GMT iain said:

Jun 23, 2016 12:24:42 GMT J.G.Harston said:

I can't tell from the colours what arrangement you've done between Scarborough Council and Rydale Council next door. The underlying colouration from the North Yorks National Park makes it difficult to tell, but it looks like you've got a Scarbrough & East Whitby seat plus a Whitby West & Thirsk seat.

He's taken the two NW wards of Scarborough & Whitby out.

So has split off bits of Whitby district.

That means there's a tiny constriction (Whitby itself) joining Mulgrave ward to the rest of the constituency with the Whitby Esk Valley hinterland split off from Whitby and joined with areas seperated from it by 20 miles of moorland.

Aren't the numbers for North Yorkshire right to not need cross-county borders? I'm surprised so much of East Yorkshire as been put in Malton

[Adrian]

My Yorkshire plans ukelect.wordpress.com/tag/yorkshire-and-humber/

[Crimson King]

Jul 7, 2016 22:41:56 GMT Adrian said:

My Yorkshire plans ukelect.wordpress.com/tag/yorkshire-and-humber/

any chance you could amend your bradford maps to the same (understandable) style that everyone else gets ?

[YL]

Jul 7, 2016 22:41:56 GMT Adrian said:

My Yorkshire plans ukelect.wordpress.com/tag/yorkshire-and-humber/

Generally, I think you've done a good job.

How confident are you that that split of Kirkburton ward works? If it does, then it looks like a good solution for a four seat Kirklees.

In Barnsley, I would suggest that putting the two wards covering Hoyland (Rockingham and Hoyland Milton) into the cross-border seat with Wombwell makes more sense than the Dearne option, though admittedly the Dearne option has "minimum change" on its side. If you take the Hoyland option, it's possible to divide the rest of the borough into West & Penistone and East without splitting a ward.

I think your Bradford North West/Shipley seat (which I would call Bradford West & Shipley) is seriously pitchforky. I don't particularly want to encourage the racism and snobbery that I think would be motivating much of the pitchfork wielders, but Denholme and inner city Bradford do not seem like a good fit.

Names:
- Yeah, "Rother Valley" has most of the problems of names based on rivers, but it has a long history and the seat is unchanged, so I wouldn't bother. If you do bother, "Kiveton Park" and "Maltby" are better options than the seriously obscure "Morthen".
- In Sheffield, you absolutely can't call a seat "Sheffield Hallam" if it contains neither Fulwood nor Crookes; indeed when I first read your plan I assumed "Hallam" meant the north-western seat. The south-western seat should be "Sheffield Ecclesall".

[Crimson King]

Jul 7, 2016 22:57:00 GMT Crimson King said:

Jul 7, 2016 22:41:56 GMT Adrian said:

My Yorkshire plans ukelect.wordpress.com/tag/yorkshire-and-humber/

any chance you could amend your bradford maps to the same (understandable) style that everyone else gets ?

sorry (or thanks) I either missed it or you have

[Crimson King]

I have to say I agree with YL about the Denholme to Baildon seat. Apart from the likely racist pitchfork folk there is also the cultural problem that politics is done in a very different way in the Asian communities with alliances based on family rather than ideology. Not sure what the answer to that is though