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Post by An Sionnach Flannbhuí on Feb 27, 2016 23:04:35 GMT
Yes, it can just about work although I am not sure it is any better overall Bedford (72777) North West Bedfordshire (71205) North East Bedfordshire (71126) Luton Without  (74027) Luton North and Dunstable (77324) Luton South (73115)  The unfortunate shape of Bedford. Why can't it take Bromham? |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Feb 27, 2016 23:08:16 GMT
I would have it take Elstow
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Post by greatkingrat on Feb 27, 2016 23:24:03 GMT
I had to pick Eastcotts as it is the ward with the lowest electorate in Bedford. Any other ward and either NW or NE Beds drops below quota. Most of the electorate of Eastcotts does seem to be at the North end of the ward, so it probably isn't too bad.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Feb 27, 2016 23:28:33 GMT
Here are two schemes for Herts that produce 11 constituencies within quota with no ward-splitting. There are compromises with both options that can only be avoided by crossing the county boundary or splitting wards. In both schemes: NE Herts, Stevenage, Wel-Hat, Hert/Stort, Broxbourne, Hertsmere all as proposed by Pete W earlier (or could swap Hertford Rural South & Stanstead Abbots wards between constituencies). Option 1 Hemel - lose Ashridge; gain Redbourn SW Herts - lose remainder of Watford Rural parish; gain Ashridge Watford - lose remainder of Abbots Langley parish; gain rest of Oxhey Hall/Hayling and South Oxhey ward St Albans - lose Marshalswick N and Colney Heath; gain remainder of Abbots Langley parish Hitch & Harp - lose Redbourn, Cadwell & Chesfield; gain Marshalswick N and Colney Heath (?re-name Central Herts?) Option 2 Hemel - lose Kings Langley, Nash Mills; gain Tring wards and Aldbury/Wig - re-name as West Herts SW Herts - lose Tring wards and Aldbury/Wig and rest of Ox Hall/H and CP wards; gain Kings Langley, Nash Mills Watford - lose rest of Gade Val and Abbots Langley/Bed wards; gain rest of Oxhey Hall/Hayling St Albans - lose Marshalswick N; gain rest of Gade Val and Abbots Langley/Bed wards Hitch & Harp - lose Cadwell & Chesfield; gain Marshalswick N Definitely Option 1 is the better option there. There's quite a logic to Redbourn going with Hemel especially with the developments which are proposed there. I wish we could hive off St Michaels parish into St Albans though (there's only about 12 electors there anyway~) |
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Post by greatkingrat on Feb 28, 2016 0:16:33 GMT
Welwyn Hatfield is a little undersized so picks up Northaw & Cuffley to become coterminous with the LA - electorate 73,296 Broxbourne gains Hertford Heath, Stanstead Abbots and Great Amwell - electorate 72,664 Hertford & Stortford is pushed below quota by losing the above wards so gains Hertford Rural South - electorate 72,620 NE Hertfordshire likewise pushed below by loss of that ward so has to gain Cadwell (Datchworth would be better but this creates insurmountable problems for Stevenage) electorate 72,533 Stevenage gains Chesfield - electorate 72,564 Hitchin & Harpenden is undersized from loss of Cadwell and Chesfield so gains Ashridge & Watling from Dacorum - electorate 72,932 St Albans loses Bedmond (which has been split) and instead takes the Three Rivers ward of Leavesden - electorate 72,210 Hemel Hempstead takes GAde Valley and Abbots Langley & Bedmond while losing Ashridge and Watling - electorate 74,363 SW Herts loses South Oxhey (inclusing those parts now in other wards) electorate 70,309 * Watford loses the Three Rivers wards North of the town and gains South Oxhey - electorate 72,878 Hertsmere gains Carpenders PArk - electorate 74,831 * SW Herts here is just below quota so we would have to split a ward to resolve that. The best bet would be to take the DAF pollng district from Gade Valley (Hunton Bridge & Langleybury) which from memory contains about 1000 voters Not an ideal solution at all but its difficult with the average being somewhat close to the lower limit. Ward boundary changes in Three Rivers have caused particular problems. I might attempt a complete redrawing If you move Chesfield to NE Herts and Walkern and Watton-at-Stone to Stevenage, then Cadwell can stay in Hitchin & Harpenden, which in turn frees up Ashridge to bring SW Herts up to quota. Hitchin & Harpenden 72609 North East Hertfordshire 71800 South West Hertfordshire 72404 Stevenage 71525 |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 28, 2016 0:33:25 GMT
Last time round you only needed to move four wards to get all the Suffolk seats within quota. This time round you can do it with three (two from Bury St Edmunds into CSNI, one from CSNI into Ipswich).
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Post by mattb on Feb 28, 2016 11:15:34 GMT
Welwyn Hatfield is a little undersized so picks up Northaw & Cuffley to become coterminous with the LA - electorate 73,296 Broxbourne gains Hertford Heath, Stanstead Abbots and Great Amwell - electorate 72,664 Hertford & Stortford is pushed below quota by losing the above wards so gains Hertford Rural South - electorate 72,620 NE Hertfordshire likewise pushed below by loss of that ward so has to gain Cadwell (Datchworth would be better but this creates insurmountable problems for Stevenage) electorate 72,533 Stevenage gains Chesfield - electorate 72,564 Hitchin & Harpenden is undersized from loss of Cadwell and Chesfield so gains Ashridge & Watling from Dacorum - electorate 72,932 St Albans loses Bedmond (which has been split) and instead takes the Three Rivers ward of Leavesden - electorate 72,210 Hemel Hempstead takes GAde Valley and Abbots Langley & Bedmond while losing Ashridge and Watling - electorate 74,363 SW Herts loses South Oxhey (inclusing those parts now in other wards) electorate 70,309 * Watford loses the Three Rivers wards North of the town and gains South Oxhey - electorate 72,878 Hertsmere gains Carpenders PArk - electorate 74,831 * SW Herts here is just below quota so we would have to split a ward to resolve that. The best bet would be to take the DAF pollng district from Gade Valley (Hunton Bridge & Langleybury) which from memory contains about 1000 voters Not an ideal solution at all but its difficult with the average being somewhat close to the lower limit. Ward boundary changes in Three Rivers have caused particular problems. I might attempt a complete redrawing If you move Chesfield to NE Herts and Walkern and Watton-at-Stone to Stevenage, then Cadwell can stay in Hitchin & Harpenden, which in turn frees up Ashridge to bring SW Herts up to quota. Hitchin & Harpenden 72609 North East Hertfordshire 71800 South West Hertfordshire 72404 Stevenage 71525 Now you have freed up Ashridge from Hitch & Harp, you can significantly reduce the amount of disruption by leaving Ashridge in Hemel; leaving South Oxhey in SW Herts; leaving Leavesden in Watford; and just moving the remainder of Abbots Langley/Bedmond into St Albans. Splitting Leavesden from Watford just makes no sense if you don't have to. Hemel Hempstead 71,486 St Albans 72,071 SW Herts 74,846 Watford 73,452 |
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Post by greatkingrat on Feb 28, 2016 12:00:34 GMT
Yes, that makes sense. So between the three of us, we now have this map  |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 28, 2016 12:10:02 GMT
That's a fairly hellish carve-up of South Oxhey.
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Post by mattb on Feb 28, 2016 12:45:57 GMT
That's a fairly hellish carve-up of South Oxhey. Doesn't do much for Abbots Langley either - or for Three Rivers as a whole for that matter - split between 5 constituencies! Alternative is to look at crossing the county boundary or splitting wards. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Feb 28, 2016 13:02:51 GMT
I don't like the look of Ashridge in Hemel and agree that the three way splits of both Abbots and South Oxhey is undesirable. If you stick with my plan with gkr's amendments , then Abbots Langley parish and Watford rurtal are only split two ways. You could split off the bit of South Oxhey which is in Carpenders park and put that in Watford too to untie the whole township though as it isn't mathematically necessary it may be difficult to make that case
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 28, 2016 13:10:41 GMT
Pete, I seem to remember you mentioning at the last review that there's no direct link between Carpender's Park and Bushey and you have to go via Watford. Is that still the case with the new wards? If so, I'd suggest you first need to fix Hertsmere and work from there.
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Post by greatkingrat on Feb 28, 2016 13:40:59 GMT
That is correct, however it was proposed last time and the Commission did not seem to think it was an issue.
AC204 The Commission also proposed moving Carpenders Park ward into Hertsmere, as the electorate in the existing Hertsmere constituency is too small. This then allowed it to minimise changes to St Albans and Welwyn Hatfield. With a few exceptions (e.g.IP/004172, IP/004190, and IP/007051) which set out no counter‑proposals, there was broad support for the proposed move from councils, individuals,
and from the Parliamentary political parties. We acknowledge that there is little connection between Carpenders Park and the rest of Hertsmere, but no other solution better meets the statutory factors, and this proposal has the advantage of minimising changes elsewhere.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 28, 2016 15:12:30 GMT
Sure, but their conclusions from last time aren't necessarily definitive, and Boundary Commissions are rarely consistent. And splitting South Oxhey 3 ways is hideous, and this is compounded if you link one part to somewhere it doesn't have a proper road link to. So I'd suggest the fact that they were dozy enough to agree to it last time isn't sufficient justification to try the same solution again.
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Post by newsouthender on Feb 28, 2016 18:19:51 GMT
Finally, this is the third option, which I came up with once it struck me that it probably wasn't strictly necessary to have two seats with long tails disconnected from their main urban centre. In this Rayleigh and Wickford remain together, Brentwood & East Thurrock is demonstrably rather than just plausibly less offensive than the current Basildon South & East Thurrock and it's Billericay which ends up being paired with wide swathes of Essex countryside (like a somewhat less silly version of the zombie review's Billericay & Great Dunmow.) The only downside is that I had to take Galleywood back out of Chelmsford to make the numbers work, but otherwise I'm really pleased with this. EAL, I think your plan three is really strong - particularly like how Rayleigh and Wickford includes the areas from the bottom end of Chelmsford borough like Runwell that look much more towards South Essex. Splitting Brentwood would have been very tough as Shenfield and Hutton are very closely associated and the areas run into each other. I appreciate that Basildon has been split for years but this feels more difficult to do in a smaller town like Brentwood, so keeping these together is a huge advantage over plan two. As you mention it also works nicely with the new ward boundaries that pull in the small villages round Canewdon into a Rochford town ward. Much of what is in Hawkwell South ward calls itself Rochford anyway so reuniting these areas is probably helpful for community identity. The trickiest area I can see in your plan for South Essex (sorry I don't know the rest of the county well!) is West Leigh being taken into Castle Point. David Amess and the Leigh Town Council ran a loud and ultimately successful campaign to get this reversed from the initial plans in the zombie review (although that may have transferred Leigh ward as well). While I can see the arguments for keeping Leigh together, and there is a clear divide in the southern part of the ward with the countryside running to Hadleigh castle, this is not the case with the area of West Leigh ward north of the London Road. Indeed there are several streets that are split between Southend and Castle Point in this area (even a 12 house cul-de-sac!) so it is difficult to argue that there is no link between the areas. Overall think this is a great plan but can't help feeling that the commission will mess about with Basildon rather than breaching the Southend boundary to the west, even though the same has been done to the Rochford boundary for many years. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Feb 28, 2016 18:56:52 GMT
Pete, I seem to remember you mentioning at the last review that there's no direct link between Carpender's Park and Bushey and you have to go via Watford. Is that still the case with the new wards? If so, I'd suggest you first need to fix Hertsmere and work from there. My Solution last time was to add Welham Green from Welwyn Hatfield, which is quite well linked with Potters Bar but that looks like a less plausible option this time for various reasons. There aren't many other neighbouring wards worth considering - London Colney is the obvious one but I suspect is too big. Really it needs to take a ward from the West of the county as that is where the oversized seats are so one possibility may be to add the Watford ward of Oxhey. I'd have to have a play to see how that would work - it would necessitate the whole of Watford Rural parish being in SW Herts which would then presumably need to lose Tring. Also not sure if Watford (-Oxhey) + Abbots Langley parish would be large enough so this would open several cans of worms |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Feb 28, 2016 18:58:46 GMT
Also not sure if Watford (-Oxhey) + Abbots Langley parish would be large enough Well I checked and it would be and the electorate would be about spot on for Herts so may look at that angle when I have more time later but suspect it's going to end up messy elsewhere |
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akmd
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Post by akmd on Feb 28, 2016 19:01:17 GMT
Anthony Wells at UKPR has suggested that Cambridge may have to take in a ward from outside the city in addition to Queen's Edith. Which ward is most likely to be added and what would the partisan impact be?
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Post by greatkingrat on Feb 28, 2016 19:47:20 GMT
Anthony Wells is talking rubbish. Cambridge (including Queen Edith's) comes to 72757 which is well within the quota.
If in some hypothetical future review another ward was needed, then I expect Milton ward would be the most likely.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 28, 2016 21:05:18 GMT
Milton is the most likely, because it avoids the detached part of the ward becoming problematic, but there would be plenty of other possible options if it was necessary (it isn't.)
Girton might actually be the strongest bet in terms of community identities, because a) there's a college, b) the parts of the village south of the A14 look a lot like Cambridge and c) the Darwin Green development crosses the city-Girton boundary.
If we're ward-splitting then Orchard Park and the Meadows from Histon & Impington would be natural editions, but if we aren't then Histon & Impington is too big.
You can make a similar case to Girton for Fen Ditton, though it's a little less strong as a) there's no college and b) the Wing development won't start being built for a few years yet.
The case for Fulbourn and Teversham is that both contain an area which is a seamless continuation of Cherry Hinton. The case against is that the eponymous villages themselves are separate.
Finally, The Shelfords and Stapleford runs into Trumpington more seamlessly with every year, but it's a bit on the large side.
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