2018 Review — North West England

[Khunanup]

So here's my scheme for Cheshire/Greater Manchester.

As you can see I've gone for the Birkenhead & Wallasey seat to sort out the Wirral conundrum. My reasoning is this. 1) A seat has to disappear but I don't want one splitting three ways 2) Splitting off part of the eastern Wirral conurbation and chucking it in with an outside seat is a no no 3) splitting Clatterbridge from Bromborough/Bebington/Eastham means that part of those settlements will be in different seats 4) in the eastern urban sprawl people say they're from the Wirral (unless they're talking to someone from the near vicinity), that is the primary identity 5) Birkenhead and Wallasey creates an 'urban seat' and then the other two are suburban seats in the MBW area.

As for Cheshire/GM I completely winged it. I don't know enough about a lot of the connections between settlements, especially in GM and I did a bit of whimsy to bring back Littleborough and Saddleworth etc so don't take it entirely seriously (though obviously it's all in quota and there's no split wards). By doing some cross boundaries where there hasn't been proposed at the moment I thought it might give some people more knowledgeable of the area scope to see if other combinations work. I'm sure there's plenty of pitchfork...

Enjoy!

[Deleted]

Apr 27, 2016 8:38:07 GMT swix said:

Question, how/where are you getting the ward maps to build these maps?

Search for Plan Builder. The 2018 version terms you how close you are away from going over quota.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

I was thinking "What's Congleton ever done to you?".

Congleton and Macclesfield in one seat can work but not with Alsager - which looks more to the west (Sandbach, Crewe etc). And Dane Valley ward (including Holmes Chapel) is a very odd fit in a Knutsford and Wilmslow based seat.

[lennon]

Genuine question for those that know the North-West better than I do - Do Widnes and Runcorn really see themselves as having more in common with each other than anywhere else? From the outside Halton looks like a pretty artificial Authority, and I would have naturally treated the Mersey as a much stronger boundary - but it appears that everybody treats the Halton / Halewood-St Helens-Warrington boundary as a solid and sacrosanct boundary instead of giving the Mersey / Ship Canal that function.

Given the opprobrium given to crossing the Mersey / Ship Canal either downstream (Mersey Banks / Mersey Tunnels) or upstream (Stretford and Irlam) it seems an oddity for somewhere where there is only a single bridge / point of connection (unlike eg Warrington)

[Khunanup]

Apr 27, 2016 8:41:47 GMT swix said:

And you really can't complain about the splitting of Eastham and Bromborough given some of the seats you've drawn there. You've split up Northwich, taking away Greenbank (which is absolutely part of Northwich) and stuck it into Eddisbury. So many of those seats are awful, the Chester and Congelton seats are crazy! Seems like a very high price to pay for just keeping the community you live in united in one seat.

Did you read the rest of my post? I said it's a plan which shouldn't be taken too seriously outside Wirral.

As has already been mentioned on this thread, what you do with Wirral wards has very little effect on the pattern across the rest of Cheshire and GM (it comes down to which bit of existing Ellesmere Port and Neston goes into another seat(s)).

[Khunanup]

Apr 27, 2016 9:10:40 GMT lennon said:

Genuine question for those that know the North-West better than I do - Do Widnes and Runcorn really see themselves as having more in common with each other than anywhere else? From the outside Halton looks like a pretty artificial Authority, and I would have naturally treated the Mersey as a much stronger boundary - but it appears that everybody treats the Halton / Halewood-St Helens-Warrington boundary as a solid and sacrosanct boundary instead of giving the Mersey / Ship Canal that function.

Given the opprobrium given to crossing the Mersey / Ship Canal either downstream (Mersey Banks / Mersey Tunnels) or upstream (Stretford and Irlam) it seems an oddity for somewhere where there is only a single bridge / point of connection (unlike eg Warrington)

@trident is the man with the answers there! Very superficially though, the fact that Widnes and Runcorn are part of one unitary authority and are therefore governed together does make the case for splitting them up completely that much harder (even if it might make sense).

[East Anglian Lefty]

Putting Widnes into Merseyside doesn't seem to make things any easier and causes a lot of unnecessary change. If you give Great Sankey to the Widnes seat, you can have a Warrington North that's more or less entirely north of the Mersey, whilst Weaver Vale loses Northwich and gains the rest of Runcorn. The problem is that there aren't any particular great pairings for the seat with the rest of Warrington in it. Probably your least worst option is to take the west of Tatton and southern parts of Trafford, but it's not particularly lovely. It does allow you to recreate Altrincham & Sale, but I haven't considered its further knock-on consequences.

[minionofmidas]

Do they work that way? I dunno, on the plan I drew, mostly before reading this thread (and certainly writing up a putative general outline before Al reminded me of the existence of this forum and I registered here), the numbers ended up giving me a clean split of Runcorn and Widnes that I hadn't even expected.

Presenting it now in order to be shouted down.

I'll start with the write-up from back then:

Northwest
Some of this works like a dream, and then the rest needs to be gerrymandered to make the dream come true.

Wirral 3.14. Remove one ward (any of the three) along the southern border, and it's rightsized for three seats (currently 4)

E Cheshire 3.62, W Cheshire & Chester 3.43. Would then have to take that ward... and an open border on the other end too. Congleton and Crewe & Nantwich currently right sized, snug up next to each other at the southern end of the territory and on either side of the UA line*, so will remain unchanged.

Warrington 2.05. Currently one seat too large and one too small, but this should be fixed within Warrington. New ward map too

St Helens 1.75, Knowsley 1.47. The three seats wholly within this area are rightsized... actually so is Garston & Halewood but that one won't live.

Halton 1.24. Needs to partner up with Cheshire, and through Halewood with Liverpool.

Liverpool. 4.07, but needed as a connector (the seats beside Garston are too small anyways, and as you'll see it's basically the only place. Of course, theoretically we don't have to involve Cheshire but I don't think they'll include one Birkenhead ward in a Liverpool constituency which is the only alternative) so 3 2/2 seats**

Here's the dreamy bit. Starry eyed.
Wigan 3.05, which would make three seats except it's 22 wards, one of these is currently in a Bolton constituency, and the other three constituencies (2.91) are all rightsized already and should remain unchanged

Manchester 4.62, Salford 2.18, Trafford 2.13. Salford & Eccles, Worsley & Eccles S, Blackley & Broughton, Gorton, Withington, Wythenshawe & Sale E all of legal population and should all remain unchanged. Altrincham & Sale E only needs to add the Bucklow Saint whatever ward which is the only ward in Stretford & Urmston south of the Mersey. Manchester Central is massively oversized and needs to shed its southwestern end into Stretford & Urmston, but that's a bullet I'll very very very happily bite.

Stockport 2.83, Tameside 2.19, Oldham 2.06. Area loses 1 seat but Oldham gets to be coextensive with its constituencies.***

Rochdale 1.98 and both seats are legal already

Bolton 2.53, Bury 1.80, that one Wigan ward 0.14, and the five undersized seats in Southeastern (modern, incl Blackburn) Lancashire 4.48 fits well for 9 seats. Yeah, that probably means Andrew Teale's pet project of Bolton North & Darren. Actually, probably cross the county line twice - makes more sense than throwing bits of Bolton in with Bury.

Sefton 2.66 and West Lancashire .94. Combines with Liverpool and points south... but that's not the only place it combines with.

In the middle of Lancashire there are three seats of legal population - Chorley, Ribble Valley, South Ribble. Chorley is a good reasonable shape and Ribble Valley is as good as can be hoped for given the geography of the area. South Ribble though is in the way and will have to be demolished.

In Northern Lancashire (incl Blackpool), seven current undersized seats are worth just 5.70 new seats. So I'm suggesting throwing this area in with South Ribble and points south as well.

Cumbria, 6 seats at current, exactly 5.00. The locals drew a good map last time (and YL a marginally better version of it) that they successfully bullied the commission into accepting - the commission's first try was dreadful and even worse than my own which was also dreadful. Have not yet checked whether it's still legal.

*evidently I was mistakenly assuming a more rational border between East and West Cheshire than actually exists.

**I didn't actually draw it like that, I linked north through Knowsley instead.

***Yeah yeah, this blatantly doesn't work because not just would it be an orphan ward but a split town as well. I obviously hadn't looked at a Tameside map lately. No matter that it would require a split ward instead. This was the point in drawing when I actually read this thread, and the map coming up has double crosses of the Cheshire-Stockport line. It has the fringe benefit of keeping Macclesfield's western border sane, which made it much easier to swallow.

And as I still have my scrap paper from before I wrote this, I have proof that I was in fact aware that Lancashire county (with Blackpool and Blackburn) is worth 14 seats but I don't remember it.

---

Cumbria. Compared the the zombie, Carlisle takes that last remaining ward, Westmorland & Lonsdale takes the rural wards outside of Appleby rather than ending just beyond the town, Penrith & Solway then takes Maryport to make up the numbers again and the Barrow-West Cumbria border moves slightly south which is an improvement as well. And "West Cumbria" is given a sane name.



The Lancaster/Preston problem is of course independent of what you do down south. I didn't try what a Valleys of Ribble & Lune solution would look like and I didn't like splitting Lancaster either. In Fylde, Blackpool N/Fleetwood/Thornton-Cleveleys/Poulton is actually a legal seat (including one fewer Blackpool ward) but the Fylde seat then gets really odd. Ward boundaries west of Cabus don't help either. I think this is better all told. (At one point of madness, I tried what a cross Ribble Estuary seat might look like to enable an urban Preston seat, but thankfully it doesn't come out semi-nice-looking at all!)



(comment to be added later)



Nice as everything else is, the Winsford/Eddisbury seat and Wilmslow & Northwich seats could be a lot more palatable with the pre UA ward map. Not that having a constituency boundary immediately south of Northwich town in continous built up territory is good, but it's the status quo (as visible in the little green line on the map). While that thing shown here splits the town and looks hideous. Of course you should just split the two wards if you're going with that setup but, well, it'd be the only split wards so it's obviously a drawback of the plan.
As has been discussed in this thread, there are several valid arrangements on the Wirral (including ones that preserve Ellesmere Port & Neston). I'm quite agnostic on that, content to leave the discussion to the locals. This is the arrangement from the zombie revision, but of course it may have been inspired by population constraints that don't now exist.

[Deleted]

I seem to recall that Ribble Estuary was a NW LibDems proposal from the review before laat

[Foggy]

'Stalybridge and Saddleworth South' from the Khunanup plan has so much wrong with it that it doesn't belong anywhere but in the 'Pitchfork Bait' thread.

[islington]

I see that minion's plan has the merit of not crossing the boundary between Trafford and Cheshire E, but the consequence is the perpetuation of one of the worst features of the current map: namely, a boundary smack through the middle of the town of Sale. I feel this is too high a price to pay.

On the other hand, I'm looking very seriously at his proposal to put Bramhall South into Macclesfield. This means that, compared with my plan, Dane Valley can now go into Knutsford. This isn't so much of an advantage in itself, since Dane Valley is a really awkward attachment to either of these seats; but it means in turn that Heald Green ward can stay in Cheadle, so that (in my plan) the Knutsford seat now extends into only two boroughs (if UAs count as boroughs) rather than three as I had it.

The only reason I am hesitating about making this change is that it involves separating Bramhall South from Bramhall North; but, looking at the wards in more detail, it's clear that the town centre of Bramhall is firmly located in South ward, so it's not quite as bad (in my opinion) as putting a boundary right through the centre of a town as in the case of Sale.

The only logical place for Dane Valley, incidentally, is in a Congleton seat, which is exactly where minion has put it. But to achieve this, he has had to make multiple crossings of the boundary between Cheshire E and CW&C UAs and again, in my view, this is too high a price.

[Adrian]

Apr 27, 2016 3:29:05 GMT Khunanup said:

So here's my scheme for Cheshire/Greater Manchester.

...
As for Cheshire/GM I completely winged it. I don't know enough about a lot of the connections between settlements, especially in GM and I did a bit of whimsy to bring back Littleborough and Saddleworth etc so don't take it entirely seriously (though obviously it's all in quota and there's no split wards). By doing some cross boundaries where there hasn't been proposed at the moment I thought it might give some people more knowledgeable of the area scope to see if other combinations work. I'm sure there's plenty of pitchfork...

Knutsford & Wincle! Your East Cheshire seats are a bit daft, but despite what some people might say, you could get away with all of them.

[Adrian]

Apr 27, 2016 20:08:09 GMT minionofmidas said:

Northwest
Some of this works like a dream, and then the rest needs to be gerrymandered to make the dream come true.

Wirral 3.14. Remove one ward (any of the three) along the southern border, and it's rightsized for three seats (currently 4)

E Cheshire 3.62, W Cheshire & Chester 3.43. Would then have to take that ward... and an open border on the other end too. Congleton and Crewe & Nantwich currently right sized, snug up next to each other at the southern end of the territory and on either side of the UA line*, so will remain unchanged.

Warrington 2.05. Currently one seat too large and one too small, but this should be fixed within Warrington. New ward map too

St Helens 1.75, Knowsley 1.47. The three seats wholly within this area are rightsized... actually so is Garston & Halewood but that one won't live.

Halton 1.24. Needs to partner up with Cheshire, and through Halewood with Liverpool.

Liverpool. 4.07, but needed as a connector (the seats beside Garston are too small anyways, and as you'll see it's basically the only place. Of course, theoretically we don't have to involve Cheshire but I don't think they'll include one Birkenhead ward in a Liverpool constituency which is the only alternative) so 3 2/2 seats**

Here's the dreamy bit. Starry eyed.
Wigan 3.05, which would make three seats except it's 22 wards, one of these is currently in a Bolton constituency, and the other three constituencies (2.91) are all rightsized already and should remain unchanged

Manchester 4.62, Salford 2.18, Trafford 2.13. Salford & Eccles, Worsley & Eccles S, Blackley & Broughton, Gorton, Withington, Wythenshawe & Sale E all of legal population and should all remain unchanged. Altrincham & Sale E only needs to add the Bucklow Saint whatever ward which is the only ward in Stretford & Urmston south of the Mersey. Manchester Central is massively oversized and needs to shed its southwestern end into Stretford & Urmston, but that's a bullet I'll very very very happily bite.

Stockport 2.83, Tameside 2.19, Oldham 2.06. Area loses 1 seat but Oldham gets to be coextensive with its constituencies.***

Rochdale 1.98 and both seats are legal already

Bolton 2.53, Bury 1.80, that one Wigan ward 0.14, and the five undersized seats in Southeastern (modern, incl Blackburn) Lancashire 4.48 fits well for 9 seats. Yeah, that probably means Andrew Teale's pet project of Bolton North & Darren. Actually, probably cross the county line twice - makes more sense than throwing bits of Bolton in with Bury.

Sefton 2.66 and West Lancashire .94. Combines with Liverpool and points south... but that's not the only place it combines with.

In the middle of Lancashire there are three seats of legal population - Chorley, Ribble Valley, South Ribble. Chorley is a good reasonable shape and Ribble Valley is as good as can be hoped for given the geography of the area. South Ribble though is in the way and will have to be demolished.

In Northern Lancashire (incl Blackpool), seven current undersized seats are worth just 5.70 new seats. So I'm suggesting throwing this area in with South Ribble and points south as well.

Cumbria, 6 seats at current, exactly 5.00. The locals drew a good map last time (and YL a marginally better version of it) that they successfully bullied the commission into accepting - the commission's first try was dreadful and even worse than my own which was also dreadful. Have not yet checked whether it's still legal.

Lots of interesting things here, not least the possible benefits of being open-minded (more open-minded than I am) about crossing county/MB/UA boundaries.

[East Anglian Lefty]

I've been thinking a bit further about lennon's suggestion of keeping Widnes and Runcorn separate and have come up with what I think is a plausible plan. Probably better in Cheshire than Greater Manchester, in no small part because I got a bit lazy towards the end, but I think it minimises the Cheshire pitchfork bait as much as is reasonably possible.





Wallasey (74240) - gains Hoylake & Meols
Birkenhead (72957) - gains Upton
Wirral South (77137) - rest of the Wirral bar Heswall, adjust the Wirral seats according to taste
Ellesmere Point & Heswall (76811) - gains Heswall
City of Chester (73723) - minimum change, more or less
Runcorn (74398) - the successor to Weaver Vale, loses Northwich and gains the rest of Runcorn
Widnes (76926) - successor to Halton, swapping its bits of Runcorn for four Warrington wards around Great Sankey
Warrington North (78159) - the rest of Warrington north of the Mersey



Warrington South & Knutsford (74226) - successor to Warrington South, taking about 45000 electors from there and the remainder from Tatton. Contains parts of three authorities. Not lovely, but not entirely illogical.
Northwich & Winsford (75277) - a cohesive Mid-Cheshire constituency, with south-west Cheshire added because it doesn't fit anywhere else.
Crewe & Nantwich (72890) - loses two wards east of Crewe, gains three to the west as far as the unitary authority boundary.
Congleton (74186) - unfortunately, I couldn't manage to keep Holmes Chapel in the seat.
Macclesfield (73513) - swaps Disley for Holmes Chapel



Cheadle & Wilmslow (71447) - successor to Cheadle, loses Bramhall and Stepping Hill, gains the Wilmslow area and Mobberley
Hazel Grove (72723) - loses the Bredbury wards, gains Bramhall and Stepping Hill
Stockport & Denton (75922) - I did have a compact, coherent Stockport seat, but then I noticed it was too small by nine electors. So instead you've got this unlovely creation, combining central Stockport with Bredbury & Woodley and Denton
Stalybridge & Hyde (71307) - loses Mossley, gains Bredbury Green & Romiley from Hazel Grove. It's a shame to have a second seat crossing the Tameside-Stockport boundary, but it's the only way I've found to avoid splitting a town.
Ashton under Lyne (77564) - loses Failsworth, gains Audenshaw, Dukinfield and Mossley.
Manchester Gorton (74124) - loses Fallowfield and Whalley Range, gains Ardwick and Bradford.
Manchester Withington (76997) - loses Didsbury and Burnage, gains Fallowfield, Whalley Range and Moss Side.
Didsbury & Reddish (72241) - I started off thinking about trying to create something resembling older iterations of Manchester Gorton, but it would up being substantially easier to cross a few miles further south. The Didsbury wards, Burnage, the Heatons ward and Reddish. There is an alternative version that keeps Manchester Withington unchanged by going in to Gorton instead, but it's ugly and makes the seats round it uglier.
Wythenshawe & Sale East (75919) - unchanged.
Altrincham & Sale West (76239) - gains Bucklow-St. Martins
Stretford & Urmston (71053) - loses Bucklow-St. Martins, gains Hulme in Manchester.
Worsley & Eccles (72117) - loses Walkden and Little Hulton, gains Eccles and Swinton
Cities of Salford & Manchester (72088) - successor to Salford & Eccles. Loses Pendlebury, Swinton and Eccles, gains Broughton, Cheetham and City Centre. Earlier version swapped Pendlebury for Broughton, but this looks a little neater.
Manchester Blackley - (76054) four wards from Blackley & Broughton and three from Central.
Oldham West & Royton (76684) - same version as almost everybody goes for
Oldham East & Saddleworth (77067) - ditto
Rochdale (72530) - unchanged
Heywood & Middleton (75880) - unchanged
Bury South (78410) - loses Radcliffe East, gains Pendlebury and Kersal
Bury North (72781) - gains Radcliffe East
Bolton North East (73845) - loses Halliwell, gains Great Lever and Darcy Lever & Little Lever
Bolton West (77798) - gains Halliwell
Farnworth & Walkden (72675) - successor to Bolton SE, loses Great Lever and Darcy Lever & Little Lever, gains Little Hulton and the two Walkden wards
Leigh (73070) - unchanged
Makerfield (71857) - unchanged
Wigan (72733) - unchanged

[minionofmidas]

Apr 28, 2016 14:25:32 GMT islington said:

I see that minion's plan has the merit of not crossing the boundary between Trafford and Cheshire E, but the consequence is the perpetuation of one of the worst features of the current map: namely, a boundary smack through the middle of the town of Sale. I feel this is too high a price to pay.

Along an extremely recognizable line, while an ideally configured Altrincham & Sale seat is still too large and Wythenshawe has no readily fitting partner no matter where you look. This objection from someone who wants to randomly carve off bits of Bradford.
My impression was that the map doesn't actually improve overall by redrawing all Manchester, Trafford and Salford. Besides, minimum change rules. Though, you know, no actual personal knowledge of anywhere that far south of Manchester town centre whatsoever, so...

I did a bit more than minimum change in that part of the map in the end - the ward I used for Stretford & Urmston (and yes, that's crossing Manchester's western border three times now. Which isn't great no matter how odd a boundary it is) didn't come out of Central in the end, and as the odd split of Eccles can be fixed without knock-on effects I did that as well.


Re Bramhall vs Heald Green - I am indebted to you for finding the legal not-utterly-horrid arrangement of Tameside and Stockport. I used Bramhall South because of a) my preexistant Macclesfield seat which could now lose the ugly western tentacle it had previously had with no further knock-on effects b) Heald Green does have a name that implies it's a recognizable area, but I had a look at its northern boundary. Weaves through minor residential roads in parts. Bramhall S is actually cleaner.

[Adrian]

Apr 3, 2016 11:29:20 GMT islington said:

... That leaves us with the rest of Gtr Manchester plus Cheshire E = 1865973 = 24.96 = 25 seats.

So the question is whether this can be done in a way that
- has all seats within quota
- avoids ward splits
- avoids any seats covering three Gtr Manchester boroughs
- has fewer than three seats crossing the boundary between Gtr Manchester and Cheshire E
- avoids monstrosities and absurdities.

I am pleased to report that the answer is yes.

So ... (drumroll please) here is the plan.

WIGAN - Unchanged. 72733
MAKERFIELD - Unchanged. 71857
LEIGH - Gains Atherton and loses Astley Mosley Common. 74381
BOLTON WEST - Loses Atherton (and is thus entirely within Bolton); gains Hulton and Rumworth. 77948
BOLTON EAST - Compared with Bolton NE, gains Gt Lever. 72603
BURY - Compared with Bury N, gains Radcliffe N. 72771
RADCLIFFE AND FARNWORTH - Compared with Bolton SE (to which it is best regarded as the successor seat, although much altered): loses Gt Lever, Hulton and Rumworth; gains Radcliffe E, Radcliffe W, Pilkington Park, Besses, Unsworth. My initial thought was to put Radcliffe N in this seat and Unsworth in Bury. The numbers work; but looking in more detail, Radcliffe N is well away from the central area of Radcliffe whereas Unsworth penetrates almost to the centre of the town of Whitefield, so I feel it is less disruptive to put Radcliffe N in Bury. This seat and the following one mean between them that Bury S effectively vanishes. 76369
MANCHESTER BLACKLEY AND PRESTWICH - Compared with Blackley and Broughton: within Manchester, it loses Cheetham and gains Moston; outside Manchester, it loses the two Salford wards and gains the three remaining wards of Bury (i.e. the town of Prestwich). I feel that a seat with such a strong Manchester component should reflect this in its name. 77107
MANCHESTER CENTRAL - Gains Cheetham, loses Moston and Moss Side. 77434
MANCHESTER GORTON - Loses Whalley Range and Fallowfield; gains Withington and Burnage. This gives it a strong presence on the east side of the city proper and is surely an improvement on the current 'layer cake' arrangement in this part of Manchester. 73688
MANCHESTER MOSS SIDE - This could conceivably be regarded as the successor to the Withington seat but it is so much altered that it is probably easier to list the wards: Chorlton, Chorlton Park, Fallowfield, Moss Side, Old Moat, Whalley Range and the Trafford ward of Clifford. I regret the inclusion of a Trafford ward but if it must be done, Clifford is definitely the one to take; it is at the extreme northeastern tip of the borough and this is definitely an improvement on reinforcing a Manchester seat with half of Sale as under the present arrangements. The loss of Withington ward requires a name change but 'Moss Side' has history as a constituency name. 73952
MANCHESTER WYTHENSHAWE - The remaining seven wards of Manchester: in other words, everything south of the Mersey plus the two Didsbury wards. 74315
SALFORD - Gains Broughton and Kersal; loses the two Swinton wards. 73935
SWINTON AND WORSLEY - Gains the two Swinton wards plus AMC from Wigan borough; loses Barton, Irlam and Cadishead. I feel Swinton is too large a component of this seat not to be reflected in the name. 74495
STRETFORD AND IRLAM - This is Stretford & Urmston less Clifford and Bucklow St Martins but plus the three Salford wards of Barton, Irlam and Cadishead. Basically, the price you pay for losing the three-borough seat is a seat that crosses the Ship Canal but (as David Cameron would say) it is not the Amazon, and I'd point out there are two road bridges and a rail crossing within the seat. 77141
ALTRINCHAM AND SALE - Compared with Altrincham & Sale W, gains the other two Sale wards and Bucklow St Martins; loses Bowdon and the two Hale wards. 77226
ASHTON UNDER LYNE - Loses the two Failsworth wards (and is thus now wholly in Tameside); gains Audenshaw, Dukinfield and Mossley. 77564
STALYBRIDGE AND HYDE - Loses Mossley and gains Bredbury to come in just above the minimum. It's necessary to take a Stockport ward to avoid dividing the town of Denton. 71050
STOCKPORT AND DENTON - In effect the successor to Denton & Reddish, compared with which it loses Audenshaw and Dukinfield and gains Heatons N, Heatons S and Brinnington & Central. This means it now contains Stockport town centre, hence the name change, but effectively Stockport is the seat to disappear. 76088
HAZEL GROVE - Loses Bredbury; gains Manor and the infamous (and unsplit) Stepping Hill, plus Disley from Cheshire E. 73465
CHEADLE - Loses Stepping Hill and Heald Green; gains Edgeley and Davenport. 71478
KNUTSFORD AND WILMSLOW - Compared with Tatton, it loses all the parts in CW&C and gains three wards of Trafford (Bowdon and the Hale Wards) and one in Stockport (Heald Green). I agree it's not pretty to take wards from two different Gtr Manchester boroughs, but I can't find a better arrangement and it means that this seat and Hazel Grove are the only two to cross the boundary between Cheshire E and Gtr Manchester. Since 'Tatton' is an obscure name and there is no longer an eponymous local authority underpinning it, I've gone for a name that helps tell people where it is. 77784.
MACCLESFIELD - Loses Disley, gains Dane Valley. The latter is basically the Holmes Chapel area and it is an awkward spur on the Macclesfield seat, but it's needed for the numbers. 73513
CONGLETON - Loses Dane Valley, gains Haslington and Wyburnbury. The latter seems to me a better fit than Bunbury, as some others have proposed (although we need a minor tweak to fit new ward boundaries north of Crewe). 74186
CREWE AND NANTWICH - The rest of Cheshire E. 72890

In conclusion, I'd like to acknowledge my debt to Andrew Teale's plan.

/photo/1

Seeing you respecting the awful Cheshire UA boundary must give me some of the same feeling people had in the late 70s when coming to terms with the new boundaries in Avon, Cleveland, and in dozens of other places. Ugh. The boundary line itself has some logic to it (except at Middlewich) but the way the line lumps towns together and artificially divides us was and is anathema to a lot of us.

Some comments on the plan:
- I'd change a couple of names: South East Cheshire is better than Congleton if the seat stretches south of Crewe; Denton & Stockport North for a seat that barely crosses the Mersey; Tatton should be kept as a name, especially if it's a cross-border seat now, though Bucklow is another possibility.
- Orphan wards: Bredbury, Disley, Heald Green, Clifford, Astley.
- Good seats: Altrincham & Sale, although nipping off Bowdon and Hale isn't ideal; Prestwich & Blackley.
- Bad seats: Stretford & Irlam - there is precedent for this but the split of Eccles is really horrible.

Your Tameside isn't bad. It's a shame that the Denton MP is so adamant that the town isn't split. It'd be nice to get rid of the Bredbury, Heald Green and Disley orphan wards (although the latter isn't a big deal), but even if we do, we're left with the split ward problem.

[andrewteale]

I never thought I'd see a proposal that split Whitefield three ways. And those Bolton seats are absolutely horrible: Breightmet and Radcliffe have nothing in common with each other, let alone North Turton and Radcliffe; and you can't seriously put Hall i' th' Wood in a seat called Bolton South.

[andrewteale]

You seem to be assuming that because Little Lever and Radcliffe have strong links, the same must be true of Breightmet and Radcliffe.

[islington]

This is just a quick note to express my appreciation to Adrian for compensating for my technical incompetence by uploading maps of my proposal.

A fuller post follows.

[Khunanup]

Apr 29, 2016 8:58:29 GMT swix said:

My Cheshire & Wirral mapped out:

 

Your Wirral seats are just to wind me up aren't they!

The only plan for Wirral that makes any sense apart from mine is the one from East Anglian Lefty Nothing else works apart from as a numbers game (Bebington & West Kirby and South Wirral would be the names to use rather than Wirral South and Ellesmere Port and Heswall though). I expect the boundary commission will got for one of the abomination plans however because they have a history of that kind of thing...