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Post by greenhert on Mar 25, 2016 19:51:20 GMT
Shropshire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire:   Wrekin South (77621) Wrekin North (72785) North Shropshire (77768) - unchanged Shrewsbury (75528) - unchanged Ludlow & Leominster (76083) Hereford (74764) Malvern (75809) - alternative suggestions for the name welcome Wyre Forest (75226) - unchanged Bromsgrove (78121) - working out where Droitwich goes looks to be the key decision when drawing Worcestershire Redditch and Wythall (77756) Worcestershire South (75535) Worcester (72912) This is not the least change option for the Telford area - you can get Telford up to quota by adding either Donington and Muxton or Apley Castle and Hadley & Leegomery, then put Bridgnorth (but not Broseley) in the Wrekin seat, but I felt that made the Wrekin seat a bit too sprawling. YMMV. Malvern should be 'Malvern & Ledbury'; when creating cross-county constituencies always address one town or part of each county the constituency covers. Evesham would be a better name for Worcestershire South, since a former constituency with that title also covered Malvern Hills (before 1950, Malvern was covered by Bewdley, not Evesham). Your version of Bromsgrove should really be Bromsgrove & Droitwich.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Apr 1, 2016 23:34:52 GMT
And here's a take on Birmingham, completely ignoring wards, but using polling districts as useful building blocks:  Scaling the 2014 electorates uniformly across wards to the 2015 figures suggests these are approximately: Birmingham Central 77594 Birmingham West 75967 Birmingham South West 76754 Birmingham South 74936 Birmingham South East 76713 Birmingham East 77555 Birmingham North East 77211 Birmingham North 76898 Sutton Coldfield 73173 A better starting point is the M6/Tame Valley barrier south of Erdington, and going anti-clockwise you get an Erdington seat, a Perry Barr/Handsworth seat, and then Ladywood with Heartlands. |
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on Apr 2, 2016 15:00:37 GMT
Oh I agree that the Soho Road should never really be used as a constituency boundary, but sometimes large communities, e.g. Handsworth and Brixton, can be split, in the same way that towns can be split between seats if it makes the overall pattern better. For example, I don't see why hiving off a bit of Erdington into Hodge Hill is a better solution than dividing Handsworth.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 2, 2016 15:15:02 GMT
Think wrt Shropshire you'd be better off with an expanded Telford seat (which might well include the summit of the Wrekin and so might well revert to its old name) and a sprawly East Shropshire seat which would be way more coherent than it might look.
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Post by greenhert on Apr 4, 2016 14:34:22 GMT
My proposals for Staffordshire:
1. Cannock Chase. Unchanged from current boundaries. ELectorate: 73,470.
2. Burton. Unchanged from current boundaries. Electorate: 72,542.
3. Staffordshire South West. Same boundaries as Staffordshire South; name changed to reflect geographic reality within Staffordshire and due to not being entirely coterminous with the Staffordshire South district. Electorate: 72,132.
4. Staffordshire Moorlands. The entire district of Staffordshire Moorlands. Electorate: 78,211.
5. Tamworth. As the current Tamworth constituency (adjusted for new ward boundaries), plus the Lichfield ward of Whittington and Streethay. Electorate: 73,305.
6. Lichfield. As the current Lichfield constituency minus the Whittington & Streethay ward but plus the Stafford ward of Haywood and Hixon. Electorate: 74,778.
7. Stafford. As the current Stafford constituency (adjusted for new ward boundaries) plus the ward of Goxnall & Woodsaves. Electorate: 72,896.
8. Newcastle-under-Lyme. As the current Newcastle-under-Lyme constituency plus the wards of Maddeley, Talke, and Luggerhead & Whitemore. Electorate: 74,596.
9. Stoke-on-Trent Burslem. The Stoke-on-Trent wards of Goldenhill & Sandyford, Great Chell & Packmoor, Tunstall, Little Chell & Stansfield, Bradeley & Chell Heath, Baddeley, Milton & Norton, Burslem Park, Burslem Central, Sneyd Green, Ford Green & Smalthorne and Moorcroft, plus the Newcastle-under-Lyme wards of Ravenscliffe, Butt Lane, Kidgrove and Newchapel. Electorate: 72,751.
10.Stoke-on-Trent Hanley. The Stoke-on-Trent wards of Birches Head & Central Forest Park, Etruria & Hanley, Abbey Holton & Townsend, Springfield & Trent Vale, Eaton Park, Joiner's Square, Hanley Park & Shelton, Hartshill & Basford, Boothen & Oak Hill, Fenton West & Mount Pleasant, Fenton East, Penkhull & Stoke, Sandford Hill, Meir Hay, Bentilee & Ubberley, and Weston Colney. Electorate: 75,654.
11. Stone and Stoke-on-Trent South. The Stoke-on-Trent wards of Longton East, Hollybush & Longton West, Meir North, Meir South, Blurton West & Newstead, Blurton East, Haniford & Trentham, Dresden & Florence, Meir Park, Eccleshall, and Lightwood & Normacot, plus the Stafford wards of Walton, Swymmerton & Olton, Barlaston, Fulford, and St Michael's and Stonefield. Electorate: 74,992.
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Post by islington on Apr 11, 2016 8:12:57 GMT
Back on 13 March I posted a way in which it is possible (surprisingly) to assign 25 whole seats to the old W Mids met county, with no monstrosities and no ward splits. I still feel this is the right approach so I'm sticking to this plan subject to a slight rejigging in the Coventry area so that it is the western (rather than the southern) parts of the city that are linked with two Solihull wards:
COVENTRY EAST - The present Coventry NE unchanged (but renamed for balance with the other seat names in Coventry). 72135
COVENTRY SOUTH - The current seat plus Whoberley. 78059
COVENTRY WEST AND MERIDEN - The rest of Coventry plus Meriden and Knowle. 77441
This means that Kenilworth escapes inclusion in a Coventry seat, but it also means that Warwickshire has to be paired with Staffs: 1216643 = 16.27 = 16 seats. In practice, this large grouping is readily broken down into two areas: Warwickshire plus Tamworth borough = 458005 = 6.13 = 6 seats; Staffs less Tamworth = 758,638 = 10.15 = 10 seats.
On this basis, Staffs is pretty straightforward. Two seats can stay as they are:
CANNOCK CHASE: 73470
SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE: 72132
Two seats can be aligned with their respective districts:
LEEK: 78211 (I'm sure the BCE would name it Staffs Moorlands after the district but I dislike names of this kind. 'NE Staffs' would be OK at a push. Anyway, it's the boundaries that matter, not the names.)
LICHFIELD: 77591
Elsewhere:
BURTON: The current seat plus Needwood. 76983
STAFFORD: The current seat plus Gnosall and Eccleshall and less Haywood. 73685
NEWCASTLE UNDER LYME: The current seat less Keele and Halmerend but plus the bits of the district currently in Staffs Moorland or Stoke N. 76394
STOKE ON TRENT NORTH: Wholly within Stoke and going as far south as the Etruria, Birches Head and Abbey Hulton wards - basically, Tunstall, Burslem and (the bulk of) Hanley. 77445
STOKE ON TRENT SOUTH: The rest of Stoke except the four wards in Mid Staffs. 76296
MID STAFFORDSHIRE: A classic 'everything else' seat, unfortunately covering parts of four LAs: Hanford, Hollybush, Bluton E, Blurton W from Stoke and the remaining wards of Newcastle, Stafford and E Staffs. You could call it 'Stone' if you don't like 'Mid' names. 76431.
Turning to Warwickshire & Tamworth, it works reasonably well apart from some unfortunate but unavoidable nibbling around Rugby.
TAMWORTH: The whole district plus the wards of N Warwks not in either of the following two seats. This seat is so well centred on Tamworth that, exceptionally, I don't think we need anything in the name to reflect the Warwks element. 75393
NUNEATON: The current seat plus Baddesley and the three Atherstone wards. 76975
BEDWORTH: The successor of the current N Warwks seat. From N Warwks district, Water Orton, Coleshill N, Coleshill S, Fillongley; the rest of Nuneaton & Bedworth district; and the northern part of Rugby district, which unfortunately means drawing the boundaries very tight around Rugby itself to take not only all the wards around the town such as Wolston, Newbold, Coton, Cligton, Hillmorton but also the ward of Admirals & Cawston. I accept the last of these is definitely part of the town itself but I can't make the numbers work otherwise. And the body of the town is left in the following seat. 75722
RUGBY AND KENILWORTH: The rest of Rugby district and the parts of Warwick and Stratford districts not in the following two seats. I'm sure Kenilworth will be much happier here than in a Coventry seat. (Note the electorate is an exact number, not an estimate.) 78000
WARWICK AND LEAMINGTON: The current seat, realigned for ward changes, plus Arden. 73545
STRATFORD-ON-AVON: The current seat plus Wellesbourne E, Wellesbourne W, Kineton, Red Horse. 78370
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Apr 11, 2016 20:03:05 GMT
Look what greeted me when I went into Brierley Hill library today. I wonder how many more are still gracing library walls around the country? I would've asked for this one but I've already got one.
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Post by minionofmidas on Apr 12, 2016 19:48:38 GMT
 Interesting little case study on the effects of one ward here. Haywood & Hixon (1) is currently in Stafford district and Stafford constituency. It isn't necessary to move it to Lichfield, but if it's kept in Stafford that needs to lose (or not gain) population elsewhere. The most obvious contender is moving Eccleshall (2) to Stoke South & Stone, more than doubling (I've summed it. Barely over) its surface area and also pushing it slightly above tolerance, requiring the further shift of a ward, most likely Weston Coyney (3) to Stoke C, which is currently near the lower bound and can absorb it. Meanwhile the current Lichfield and Tamworth seats are only barely large enough for two seats, and getting them both within tolerance would require the shifting of Hammerwich & Wall (4), the greater part of whose is basically in Burntwood, to Tamworth and Mease Valley (5) and Whittington & Streethay (6) to Lichfield (though the latter would also fit better there). |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 2, 2016 21:00:51 GMT
I figure dividing Solihull proper should be avoided if at all feasible, so I've worked out a scheme putting both Solihull and Coventry in with Warwickshire. However, I'm having problems getting 20 seats out of the West Midlands. I'm sure there is a workable combination, so I'll keep prodding at that, but if anybody else has found one, do they fancy saving me some work?
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Post by islington on May 3, 2016 7:28:07 GMT
I figure dividing Solihull proper should be avoided if at all feasible, so I've worked out a scheme putting both Solihull and Coventry in with Warwickshire. However, I'm having problems getting 20 seats out of the West Midlands. I'm sure there is a workable combination, so I'll keep prodding at that, but if anybody else has found one, do they fancy saving me some work? I'm always glad to be proved wrong, but I also looked for a solution along these lines and I couldn't find a way of doing it without ward splits. I tried putting Solihull in the mix as well, for 22 seats, but it still didn't work out; I always had a Solihull ward left over. It was only when I came up with a pattern that on the face of it was worse, because it had two Solihull wards left over, that I realized I could solve my problem by mixing in Coventry as well for 25 seats, with no splits, for the whole W Mids met county, and that's what I've gone for. I agree it would be good to keep Solihull proper in a single seat but it's a big place, it's well capable of forming the basis of two seats if it helps create a better map overall. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 3, 2016 7:37:14 GMT
I've been able to get within a ward of doing it on a couple of occasions, so I'm sure there is a workable combination. It's possible it'll need to add Rubery or Hagley into the mix, but I'm fairly sanguine about that, since they're part of the contiguous urban area and the Shropshire-Herefordshire-Worcestershire combo is on the large side anyway.
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rocky
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Post by rocky on May 7, 2016 8:40:01 GMT
Adding Hagley to Stourbridge and Rubery to Northfield makes map a lot easier
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on May 10, 2016 23:49:47 GMT
I've been having a go at Birmingham using the future ward boundaries. Unfortunately it's still not possible to create a minimum-change Erdington seat without splitting a ward. So instead I've created an Erdington-and-Aston seat. The electorates are the ones used by the LGBCE which include all EU citizens; asterisks indicate the seats with high concentrations of continental EU citizens.
Sutton Coldfield 76.0k
*Erdington 82.7k
*Perry Barr 84.3k
*Edgbaston 86.1k
*Small Heath 80.0k
Yardley 81.0k
Hall Green 81.4k
Northfield 76.7k
Kings Norton 80.3k
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rocky
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Post by rocky on May 11, 2016 7:38:42 GMT
I've been having a go at Birmingham using the future ward boundaries. Unfortunately it's still not possible to create a minimum-change Erdington seat without splitting a ward. So instead I've created an Erdington-and-Aston seat. The electorates are the ones used by the LGBCE which include all EU citizens; asterisks indicate the seats with high concentrations of continental EU citizens. Sutton Coldfield 76.0k *Erdington 82.7k *Perry Barr 84.3k *Edgbaston 86.1k *Small Heath 80.0k Yardley 81.0k Hall Green 81.4k Northfield 76.7k Kings Norton 80.3k Don't most these seats exceed the upper limit for the review?  if they don't then surely both Erdington and Perry Barr would be hugely improved in terms of logic by having the kingstanding, Oscott wards and Aston, Newtown and nechells wards swapped? This would protect the M6 boundary and keep communities together? |
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on May 11, 2016 11:42:20 GMT
Dear Rocky, you're not reading.
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rocky
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Post by rocky on May 11, 2016 13:22:26 GMT
Dear Rocky, you're not reading. Apologies misread that re the figures being lgbce ones. I take it swapping Oscott, Kingstanding does not add up using the bce figures? In which case I would thing the remove of the Tyburn draft ward to hodge hill area is more satisfactory thank adding a whole chunk of Aston? |
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Post by John Chanin on May 11, 2016 14:30:19 GMT
Unfortunately I don't think we will be able to persuade the Boundary Commission to use the new wards. So we will have to revert to splitting wards in order to make sense out of Birmingham.
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Post by islington on May 11, 2016 15:14:50 GMT
The BCE has been very clear that the old wards will be used, and I'm not sure that the legislation allows any discretion about this anyway.
If you don't mind tinkering with the city boundaries (putting two Brum wards in seats otherwise outside the city; and two non-Brum wards in seats otherwise within the city) then you can do it without any ward splits at all - which is certainly what I'd advocate.
If you want to treat the city boundary as sacrosanct, then you have to deal with the issue that the city's entitlement is 9.19, meaning that the seats have to be well above average size. And this is a problem because Birmingham wards tend to want to combine in groups of 4; and while some such groups are within the permitted range, they will fall at the lower end of it. So the more 4-ward seats you create, the more you need other seats at the top of the range to balance them out, and the ward sizes don't work for this. You can create one five-ward seat somewhere in the Ladywood/Edgbaston area; there's scope for variation about the exact composition of this seat (I went for simply adding the Selly Oak ward to the existing Edgbaston seat) but my point is that I don't think you can create more than one five-ward seat.
The upshot of this is that you're looking at a really messy map with multiple splits - I think at least four in Birmingham itself, plus a fifth somewhere in the Dudley/Sandwell area (probably in Dudley) as a knock-on consequence of not including a Sandwell ward in Brum. It's not Sandwell itself that's the problem because you can give it three (rather small) seats to itself, without ward splits; but then Dudley won't work without a split (and even with it, is really ugly). So then you're looking at rescuing Dudley by crossing over into Worcs or Staffs, and thus disrupting the current very sensible adjoining seats in these counties (Bromsgrove, Wyre Forest aka Kidderminster, S Staffs) - all of which are within range and could otherwise have been left unchanged.
It seems an awful lot of trouble to go to to avoid taking some relatively minor liberties with the Birmingham city boundary.
It's always possible, of course, that I've missed some relatively straightforward solution: but it's a couple of months now since the ward stats were published, and no one has yet posted one.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on May 11, 2016 15:22:07 GMT
Dear Rocky, you're not reading. Apologies misread that re the figures being lgbce ones. I take it swapping Oscott, Kingstanding does not add up using the bce figures? In which case I would thing the remove of the Tyburn draft ward to hodge hill area is more satisfactory thank adding a whole chunk of Aston? Actually I think it's all of Aston, making quite a good Aston & Erdington seat imo. Certainly better than putting a chunk of Erdington into Hodge Hill. And, speaking as someone who lives in Oscott ward, I think most people here prefer to be in Perry Barr. |
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Post by islington on May 11, 2016 15:24:57 GMT
Apologies misread that re the figures being lgbce ones. I take it swapping Oscott, Kingstanding does not add up using the bce figures? In which case I would thing the remove of the Tyburn draft ward to hodge hill area is more satisfactory thank adding a whole chunk of Aston? Actually I think it's all of Aston, making quite a good Aston & Erdington seat imo. Certainly better than putting a chunk of Erdington into Hodge Hill. And, speaking as someone who lives in Oscott ward, I think most people here prefer to be in Perry Barr. Adrian - I'm afraid Oscott is one of the two wards swapped out in my plan. You end up in Aldridge. Sorry. |
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