2018 Review - Greater London

[lennon]

Following what I had thought of as a bit of a throw-away comment about linking Tottenham and Walthamstow I actually started looking at this more closely and am coming around to it as an idea... (and not just in order to see a David Lammy/Stella Creasy showdown)

Part of the reason being that whilst the North Circular doesn't cross within the seat and the A503 is the only road crossing of the Lea the rail links between the 2 are excellent with both the Victoria line between Walthamstow Central/BLackhorse Road and Tottenham Hale/Seven Sisters and the Overground line from Walthamstow Queen's Road/Blackhorse Road and South Tottenham. The A503 also carries 3 bus routes (123, 230 and N73) so it is clear that whilst seperated there is actually pretty good public transport connectivity between Tottenham and Walthamstow. (In contrast, the A110 between Chingford and Edmonton has just a single bus running across it and there are no train/underground links at all, and whilst the North Circular crosses in the combined seat, it is right at the southern end and doesn't really link the centres of the 2 communities.)

Additionally, it seems to me that by doing this you can get away with a pretty good amount of minimum change in East London / match to the BCE. Equally, you obviously have the benefit of keeping all 4 of the Tower Hamlets / Hackney seats unchanged and wholly within the borough boundaries.


Working from East to West:

Hornchurch and Upminster: As BCE - Unchanged from current seat.
Romford: As BCE - Addition of 1 ward
Dagenham and Rainham: As BCE - Loses 1 ward to Romford, Gains 2 wards from Barking
Ilford South: Unlike the BCE, this seats remains unchanged.
Barking: Loses 2 wards to Dagenham & Rainham and gains 2 Newham wards (Beckton and Royal Docks)
Ilford North: Current Seat + Wanstead ward (a little ungainly, but trying to leave Chingford as the BCE did)
Chingford & Woodford: As BCE - gains Chapel End
Leyton: Gains Lea Bridge, Hoe Street and Wood Street, Loses Wanstead
East Ham: Loses Beckton and Royal Docks, Gains Green Street West
West Ham: Loses Green Street West
Poplar and Limehouse / Bethnal Green and Bow: Unchanged
Hackney South and Shoreditch / Hackney North and Stoke Newington: Unchanged
Tottenham and Walthamstow: Takes 4 remaining Walthamstow wards + 5 Tottenham wards (Northumberland Park, Tottenham Hale, Bruce Grove, Tottenham Green, St Ann's and Seven Sisters) Clearly Tottenham wards could be adjusted to taste.

[greenhert]

Thank you very much for this, lennon- this will definitely solve my frustrations with sensible plans for North London (creating sensible plans for South London is much easier). The 4 Waltham Forest wards in Tottenham (South) & Walthamstow (West) are Higham Hill, William Morris, High Street and Markhouse, just for the record.

Here is how the seats in the Barnet-Camden-Enfield-Haringey-Islington would fare out in my book:

Hendon (78,403) Gains Golders Green ward.
Edmonton & Tottenham North (77,892). As Edmonton plus the Tottenham wards of Northumberland Park and White Hart Lane.
Islington South & Finsbury (73,470). Gains Mildmay ward.
Islington North & Harringay (75,593). As Islington North minus Mildmay ward but plus the Haringey wards of Stroud Green and Harringay.
Holborn & St Pancras (73,268). Loses Highgate ward.
Hampstead (75,774). Same as BCE proposal for Hampstead & Golders Green with a name change (since Golders Green ward is not in this constituency).
Finchley & Hornsey (76,687). The Barnet wards of East Finchley, Finchley Church End, West Finchley, and Woodhouse, and the Haringey wards of Crouch End, Fortis Green, Highgate, Hornsey, and Muswell Hill.
Enfield (75,302). As per BCE proposal (i.e. Enfield North plus Grange ward).
Southgate & Wood Green (72,663+x). The Haringey wards of Alexandra, Bounds Green, Noel Park and Woodside, plus the Enfield wards of Southgate, Palmers Green, Winchmore Hill, Bowes, Southgate Green, and all voters in the Cockfosters ward south of the A110.
Chipping Barnet (82,012-x). Gains the portion of Enfield's Cockfosters ward that is north of the A110.

[Adrian]

Hm since there are 8 wards in Tottenham and 8 wards in Walthamstow this solution doesn't seem to have much respect for those two communities.

[Pete Whitehead]

Sept 27, 2016 17:05:37 GMT greenhert said:

Thank you very much for this, lennon- this will definitely solve my frustrations with sensible plans for North London (creating sensible plans for South London is much easier). The 4 Waltham Forest wards in Tottenham (South) & Walthamstow (West) are Higham Hill, William Morris, High Street and Markhouse, just for the record.

Here is how the seats in the Barnet-Camden-Enfield-Haringey-Islington would fare out in my book:

Hendon (78,403) Gains Golders Green ward.
Edmonton & Tottenham North (77,892). As Edmonton plus the Tottenham wards of Northumberland Park and White Hart Lane.
Islington South & Finsbury (73,470). Gains Mildmay ward.
Islington North & Harringay (75,593). As Islington North minus Mildmay ward but plus the Haringey wards of Stroud Green and Harringay.
Holborn & St Pancras (73,268). Loses Highgate ward.
Hampstead (75,774). Same as BCE proposal for Hampstead & Golders Green with a name change (since Golders Green ward is not in this constituency).
Finchley & Hornsey (76,687). The Barnet wards of East Finchley, Finchley Church End, West Finchley, and Woodhouse, and the Haringey wards of Crouch End, Fortis Green, Highgate, Hornsey, and Muswell Hill.
Enfield (75,302). As per BCE proposal (i.e. Enfield North plus Grange ward).
Southgate & Wood Green (72,663+x). The Haringey wards of Alexandra, Bounds Green, Noel Park and Woodside, plus the Enfield wards of Southgate, Palmers Green, Winchmore Hill, Bowes, Southgate Green, and all voters in the Cockfosters ward south of the A110.
Chipping Barnet (82,012-x). Gains the portion of Enfield's Cockfosters ward that is north of the A110.

I've already explained that most of the area known as Golders Green is in the proposed seat even if the ward of that name is not - if anything it is that ward that is mis-named

I really don't see the point in coming up with seats in this area which involve splitting wards, as you are advocating with Cockfosters since plenty of serviceable plans have been put forward which don't do that and therefore this is not going to be entertained

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Sept 27, 2016 18:06:59 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I've already explained that most of the area known as Golders Green is in the proposed seat even if the ward of that name is not - if anything it is that ward that is mis-named

My impression is the ward is mostly named after Golders Green Road.

Incidentally the original boundary review had an east/west split between Childs Hill and Golders Green, not north/south.

[Pete Whitehead]

That would have been a far more logical split. The Western ward in that scenario (Cricklewood or Brent Cross perhaps) would probably be a Labour ward and they would have control now (depending on whether it would have to extend to any significant extent to the East of the A41)

[lennon]

Sept 27, 2016 17:31:54 GMT Adrian said:

Hm since there are 8 wards in Tottenham and 8 wards in Walthamstow this solution doesn't seem to have much respect for those two communities.

Oh I don't disagree - Whilst Tottenham can reasonably be trimmed back to 6 wards, Walthamstow gets pretty hacked about stripping it back to 4. It was more a thought that actually there are some advantages to a Lea crossing there that I hadn't appreciated previously, and so it moved from the 'not credible' to 'possible if it has enough advantages elsewhere'. Personally I don't think greenhert 's version does, but I am still playing around with a couple of comparisons.

[islington]

Greenhert -

I don't agree with splitting a ward either (you won't be surprised to hear) but if you're going to propose it, there's no longer any need for this '+x' and '-x' business. It's a simple matter to get the numbers from the BCE site, which allows me to tell you that the area of Cockfosters ward south of the A110 has 5007 electors. So you could have given the exact numbers for your scheme, which are 77005 for the Barnet seat and 77670 for Southgate.

[greenhert]

I will make sure to do this for other proposals of mine which realistically require split wards (particularly Birmingham, Sheffield, and Leeds).

[East Anglian Lefty]

The tube links between Tottenham and Walthamstow don't strike me as particularly relevant, given that almost nobody boards in one of those places and alights in the other.

[islington]

Sept 18, 2016 9:39:13 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Certainly a big improvement in Ealing but unfortunately Brent and HArrow is now an even bigger mess. I like the East London plans - only change i'd suggest there is to swap Grive Green and Lea Bridge wards around if the numbers allow it. You've split Hampstead quite badly too.

I think so many problems in London are caused by insisting on treating Kensington & Chelsea as a single seat, just because it happens to be in quota. It would make a modicum of sense if they gave a flying one about LA boundaries in the rest of London, but they clearly don't

I'm generally happy with my proposals for east London but in the light of Pete's comments about my suggestion for the Leyton area, I've been tinkering further with the areas either side of the lower Lea and I've come up with the following, which I think I'm now going to go with. All changes are compared with the big map I posted on 18 Sep.

WALTHAMSTOW - Gains Lea Bridge; loses Grove Green, Leytonstone (and thus 'and Leytonstone' from its name). I'm happy with this, it's a much more solid-looking Walthamstow seat, albeit only just over the minimum. 71280
WEST HAM AND LEYTON - Gains Grove Green, Leytonstone; loses Lea Bridge, Plaistow North. Much better - it keeps Leyton and Leytonstone together and avoids the ugly division of Plaistow that was a feature of my earlier plan (and of the BCE scheme). 74379
POPLAR AND CANNING TOWN - Gains Plaistow North; loses Bromley South. Now contains the whole of Plaistow and none of Bromley-by-Bow. 78073
STEPNEY AND BOW - Gains Bromley South; loses Spitalfields. Contains the whole of Bromley-by-Bow and is generally a more compact shape. 77554
SHOREDITCH AND BETHNAL GREEN - Gains Spitalfields, Dalston; loses Victoria. The swap of Dalston and Victoria wards with the following seat is not strictly necessary but it gets the South Hackney area out of this seat, hence the change of name. 75449
HACKNEY - Gains Victoria, loses Dalston. Now includes South Hackney (the Well Street area), thus losing 'North' from its name. 75824

Moving west, I'm generally happy with the BCE proposals subject to the realignments suggested by Pete Whitehead affecting the Ealing/Southall seats and the Finchley/Barnet area; also, the changes Pete and I hammered out between us for the three seats in the Wembley/Harrow area. In Islington, I think I prefer the BCE proposal to Pete's alternative (sorry, Pete). 

All this is assuming that the BCE won't be shifted on crossing the Lea between TH and Newham. I think I'm resigned to this.

[Pete Whitehead]

I'm not too fussed about Islington etc. It wasn't one of the suggested changes I was planning to make a submission on.

[lennon]

Sept 28, 2016 8:07:09 GMT islington said:

Sept 18, 2016 9:39:13 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Certainly a big improvement in Ealing but unfortunately Brent and HArrow is now an even bigger mess. I like the East London plans - only change i'd suggest there is to swap Grive Green and Lea Bridge wards around if the numbers allow it. You've split Hampstead quite badly too.

I think so many problems in London are caused by insisting on treating Kensington & Chelsea as a single seat, just because it happens to be in quota. It would make a modicum of sense if they gave a flying one about LA boundaries in the rest of London, but they clearly don't

I'm generally happy with my proposals for east London but in the light of Pete's comments about my suggestion for the Leyton area, I've been tinkering further with the areas either side of the lower Lea and I've come up with the following, which I think I'm now going to go with. All changes are compared with the big map I posted on 18 Sep.

WALTHAMSTOW - Gains Lea Bridge; loses Grove Green, Leytonstone (and thus 'and Leytonstone' from its name). I'm happy with this, it's a much more solid-looking Walthamstow seat, albeit only just over the minimum. 71280
WEST HAM AND LEYTON - Gains Grove Green, Leytonstone; loses Lea Bridge, Plaistow North. Much better - it keeps Leyton and Leytonstone together and avoids the ugly division of Plaistow that was a feature of my earlier plan (and of the BCE scheme). 74379
POPLAR AND CANNING TOWN - Gains Plaistow North; loses Bromley South. Now contains the whole of Plaistow and none of Bromley-by-Bow. 78073
STEPNEY AND BOW - Gains Bromley South; loses Spitalfields. Contains the whole of Bromley-by-Bow and is generally a more compact shape. 77554
SHOREDITCH AND BETHNAL GREEN - Gains Spitalfields, Dalston; loses Victoria. The swap of Dalston and Victoria wards with the following seat is not strictly necessary but it gets the South Hackney area out of this seat, hence the change of name. 75449
HACKNEY - Gains Victoria, loses Dalston. Now includes South Hackney (the Well Street area), thus losing 'North' from its name. 75824

Moving west, I'm generally happy with the BCE proposals subject to the realignments suggested by Pete Whitehead affecting the Ealing/Southall seats and the Finchley/Barnet area; also, the changes Pete and I hammered out between us for the three seats in the Wembley/Harrow area. In Islington, I think I prefer the BCE proposal to Pete's alternative (sorry, Pete). 

All this is assuming that the BCE won't be shifted on crossing the Lea between TH and Newham. I think I'm resigned to this.

I don't know why you are resigned to this - in the Zombie proposals they originally suggested an Edmonton-Chingford seat, and were persuaded to shift it to the lower Lea. I am not sure why they couldn't be persuaded to do the reverse if the logic was good enough (which I think that most of us on this board believe that it is). Presumably you could submit 2 plans - one with a crossing in each place - this then shows why A is better than B, but allows them to use the good aspects of your overall plan (in for eg West London) if that's your concern?

[Pete Whitehead]

FWIW I am strongly in favour of crossing the Lea between Tower Hamlets and Newham

[islington]

Sept 28, 2016 8:38:47 GMT lennon said:

Sept 28, 2016 8:07:09 GMT islington said:

I'm generally happy with my proposals for east London but in the light of Pete's comments about my suggestion for the Leyton area, I've been tinkering further with the areas either side of the lower Lea and I've come up with the following, which I think I'm now going to go with. All changes are compared with the big map I posted on 18 Sep.

WALTHAMSTOW - Gains Lea Bridge; loses Grove Green, Leytonstone (and thus 'and Leytonstone' from its name). I'm happy with this, it's a much more solid-looking Walthamstow seat, albeit only just over the minimum. 71280
WEST HAM AND LEYTON - Gains Grove Green, Leytonstone; loses Lea Bridge, Plaistow North. Much better - it keeps Leyton and Leytonstone together and avoids the ugly division of Plaistow that was a feature of my earlier plan (and of the BCE scheme). 74379
POPLAR AND CANNING TOWN - Gains Plaistow North; loses Bromley South. Now contains the whole of Plaistow and none of Bromley-by-Bow. 78073
STEPNEY AND BOW - Gains Bromley South; loses Spitalfields. Contains the whole of Bromley-by-Bow and is generally a more compact shape. 77554
SHOREDITCH AND BETHNAL GREEN - Gains Spitalfields, Dalston; loses Victoria. The swap of Dalston and Victoria wards with the following seat is not strictly necessary but it gets the South Hackney area out of this seat, hence the change of name. 75449
HACKNEY - Gains Victoria, loses Dalston. Now includes South Hackney (the Well Street area), thus losing 'North' from its name. 75824

Moving west, I'm generally happy with the BCE proposals subject to the realignments suggested by Pete Whitehead affecting the Ealing/Southall seats and the Finchley/Barnet area; also, the changes Pete and I hammered out between us for the three seats in the Wembley/Harrow area. In Islington, I think I prefer the BCE proposal to Pete's alternative (sorry, Pete). 

All this is assuming that the BCE won't be shifted on crossing the Lea between TH and Newham. I think I'm resigned to this.

I don't know why you are resigned to this - in the Zombie proposals they originally suggested an Edmonton-Chingford seat, and were persuaded to shift it to the lower Lea. I am not sure why they couldn't be persuaded to do the reverse if the logic was good enough (which I think that most of us on this board believe that it is). Presumably you could submit 2 plans - one with a crossing in each place - this then shows why A is better than B, but allows them to use the good aspects of your overall plan (in for eg West London) if that's your concern?

Lennon

I agree if we were starting with a clean slate I'd prefer to cross the Lea between Chingford and Edmonton. On that basis, I'd be happy to stand by my 'Plan A' that was posted way back upthread on page 8. If you want to take this plan over and submit it, please go ahead. (Not that you need my permission.)

But for my own part - and not without a pang - I'm abandoning this plan. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the BCE's proposals for north London west of the Lea are actually not that bad. Their Hounslow, for instance, is excellent; and some of the less satisfactory seats can be adjusted by relatively minor changes that affect only limited areas and do not disturb the plan overall. So I'm going to concentrate on those and also on the area east of the Lea (and TH) where I think more substantial changes are called for. A further point is that the BCE, as you say, put forward Edmonton-Chingford in the zombie, and as I recall took a real shellacking over it. I think it will be very hard to persuade the BCE that it wants to repeat this experience. So I'm focusing my efforts on changes I think might be easier to achieve.

I thought of putting forward two alternative plans, as you suggest, but I've decided not to because it would muddy the waters and cause confusion.

Regarding south London, this is another area where substantial changes are needed, but again, I'll be putting forward a single alternative, which will be the one I've hammered out in dialogue with Pete Whitehead over the last week or so. Again, it's (slightly) closer to the BCE scheme than my 'Plan A' for south London, and it has the merit (compared with my Plan A and with the BCE scheme) of keeping Tooting unchanged.

As an aside, I find it interesting, as I've commented before, that every time I revise my plans I edge that little bit closer to the BCE scheme. For instance, I've noticed that in the latest iteration for TH and Hackney (see above) I now have two more seats (Hackney and Shoreditch & BG) whose boundaries coincide exactly with the BCE proposals.

[hullenedge]

Has there been mention of this:-

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/exclusive-london-labours-secret-boundary-plans-would-save-jeremy-corbyn-seat-but-oust-senior-labour-mps_uk_57ee73afe4b0397f73b98537?i7q5x6f1nxd730udi

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Those 'in the know' got the full thing including the ward breakdown.

But I'm not going to share it.

[greatkingrat]

Sept 30, 2016 21:28:14 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Those 'in the know' got the full thing including the ward breakdown.

But I'm not going to share it.

So what has Karen Buck done to offend Corbyn and get placed in a notionally Conservative seat?

[Adrian]

Sept 30, 2016 21:28:14 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Those 'in the know' got the full thing including the ward breakdown.

But I'm not going to share it.

Well there's a few of us here who could make a good go at reconstructing the proposals from the information given.

There's a few seats I recognise from my own ideas: Sudbury & Harrow South, Hamstead & Camden Town, Brixton & West Norwood.

The most embarrassing thing here of course is that everyone can see that the political polarity of each seat is a major factor in Labour's thinking - although it doesn't look like Labour's reconfigurations are much better for them really.

[greenhert]

Sept 27, 2016 19:54:49 GMT islington said:

Greenhert -

I don't agree with splitting a ward either (you won't be surprised to hear) but if you're going to propose it, there's no longer any need for this '+x' and '-x' business. It's a simple matter to get the numbers from the BCE site, which allows me to tell you that the area of Cockfosters ward south of the A110 has 5007 electors. So you could have given the exact numbers for your scheme, which are 77005 for the Barnet seat and 77670 for Southgate.

Specifically, the polling districts in Cockfosters south of the A110 are YDD and YDE -this needs to be specified when writing to the BCE.

And to round up the rest of my proposals for North London (NB: I have mentioned some of these before in earlier posts):

1. Chelsea and Cities of London & Westminster (74,332)., The City of London, the Westminster wards of St James's, Vincent Square, Tachbrook, Warwick, Knightsbridge & Belgravia, Churchill and West End, plus the Kensington & Chelsea wards of Courtfield, Redcliffe, Royal Hospital, Earl's Court, Brompton & Hans Town, Stanley, and Chelsea Riverside.

2. Paddington & St Marylebone (74,894) As Westminster North plus Marylebone High Street, Bryanston & Dorset Square, and Hyde Park wards.

3. Hammersmith & Fulham (77,725) As per BCE proposal.

4. Kensington & Shepherd's Bush (72,441) The Kensington & Chelsea wards of Queen's Gate, Abingdon, Campden, Holland, Golborne, Norland, Pembridge, Colville, Notting Dale, Dalgarno, and St Helen's, and the Hammersmith & Fulham wards of College Park & Old Oak, Wormholt & White City, Shepherd's Bush Green, and Askew.

5. Southall & Heston  (78,143) As per BCE proposal.

6. Brentford & Chiswick (72,875) As per BCE proposal.

7. Feltham & Hounslow (72,678) As per BCE proposal.

8. Ealing North (73,703) Unchanged.

9. Ealing Central & Acton (71,087) Loses Southfields ward, gains Elthorne ward.

10. Hayes & Harlington (78,097) As per BCE proposal.

11. Uxbridge & Ruislip (76,242) As Uxbridge & South Ruislip minus Yiewsley ward, but plus West Ruislip and Eastcote & East Ruislip wards.

12. Northwood & Harrow West (76,347) As Ruislip, Northwood & Pinner minus the Hillingdon wards of West Ruislip and Eastcote & East Ruislip, but plus the Harrow wards of Rayners Lane, Roxeth and Roxbourne.

13. Harrow Central (76,946) The Harrow wards of Headstone North, Headstone South, West Harrow, Wealdstone, Greenhill, Marlborough, Harrow Weald, and Harrow on the Hill, plus the Brent wards of Northwick Park and Sudbury. Succeeds Harrow West in practice.

14. Harrow East & Kenton (73,352) As Harrow East minus the Harrow ward of Harrow Weald, but plus the Brent wards of Kenton & Queensbury.

15. Wembley (72,375). The Brent wards of Stonebridge, Tokyngton, Alperton, Wembley Central, Preston, Barnhill, Welsh Harp, and Fryent. Succeeds Brent North.

16. Willesden (73,750). The Brent wards of Queens Park, Kilburn, Kensal Green, Mapesbury, Brondesbury Park, Dudden Hill, Dollis Hill, and Harlesden. Succeeds Brent Central.