2018 Review - Greater London

[Davıd Boothroyd]

1) The City will not have itself linked with Islington. Made that perfectly clear last time.

2) Westminster and Paddington is bonkers. The Royal Parks effectively cut the seat in two, and Paddington doesn't link to south Westminster.

[islington]

Longmonty -

Regarding Hackney, I see it like this.

A 'central London' combination of Haringey, Islington, Camden, Westminster and the City sums to 522892, which is almost perfect (6.99) for 7 seats. We have workable plans upthread that do exactly this (Greenhert's scheme, back on page 5, I think is the
best, with a much better division of Westminster than in my original suggestion way back on page 2). And any scheme that assigns 7 whole seats to the 'central' grouping means, of course, that the Hackney boundary need not be crossed.

But you've loaded the central area with two Barnet wards as well, and you've had to balance this by shifting a ward out somewhere - hence the inclusion of a Haringey ward in Hackney N. So the question I'd ask is what value is added by crossing the Camden/Barnet boundary? 

[islington]

Oh yes, I meant to add -

Longmonty, I completely agree about getting Woodford all in one seat but you don't need to disrupt Ilford South (or create a triborough seat).

All four Woodford wards can be accommodated in Ilford N if you swap Clayhall into Leyton & Wanstead. I acknowledge it's not an especially good fit but it's no worse than Green Street W as in your revised plan.

In this case the name of the seat would be 'Ilford North and Woodford' (although, if you go for this arrangement, there's a decent case for calling it simply 'Woodford' and Ilford South would then just be 'Ilford').

[greenhert]

Jun 3, 2016 9:45:21 GMT islington said:

Oh yes, I meant to add -

Longmonty, I completely agree about getting Woodford all in one seat but you don't need to disrupt Ilford South (or create a triborough seat).

All four Woodford wards can be accommodated in Ilford N if you swap Clayhall into Leyton & Wanstead. I acknowledge it's not an especially good fit but it's no worse than Green Street W as in your revised plan.

In this case the name of the seat would be 'Ilford North and Woodford' (although, if you go for this arrangement, there's a decent case for calling it simply 'Woodford' and Ilford South would then just be 'Ilford').

Especially when Ilford town itself is entirely within Ilford South. The Woodford seat stretches quite far east, so Woodford & Hainault might be a better name.

[longmonty]

Jun 3, 2016 6:55:14 GMT islington said:

Longmonty -

Regarding Hackney, I see it like this.

A 'central London' combination of Haringey, Islington, Camden, Westminster and the City sums to 522892, which is almost perfect (6.99) for 7 seats. We have workable plans upthread that do exactly this (Greenhert's scheme, back on page 5, I think is the
best, with a much better division of Westminster than in my original suggestion way back on page 2). And any scheme that assigns 7 whole seats to the 'central' grouping means, of course, that the Hackney boundary need not be crossed.

But you've loaded the central area with two Barnet wards as well, and you've had to balance this by shifting a ward out somewhere - hence the inclusion of a Haringey ward in Hackney N. So the question I'd ask is what value is added by crossing the Camden/Barnet boundary? 

Well ... As I said right at the start, I deliberately didn't create groupings of boroughs before I started - so it wasn't something I specifically wanted to do or to avoid - although I think it is fine in community terms.
The point is I am happy with the seats I have created throughout Middlesex, from Enfield right round to Twickenham - but in the scheme I have, and with the relatively large ward sizes in outer London, none of my existing seats can take a whole extra ward. If I have some spare wards me that then leaves me with essentially three options:
1. Substantially re-draw some or all of the seats;
2. Split a ward or two; or
3. Find a way to absorb the remaining wards in other seats. 
I have done no.3, taking advantage of the relatively smaller ward sizes in inner London (but still mindful of community links).  
My own judgement is this is worth it to get coherent seats in the scheme as a whole - but I accept this may not find favour with the Commission (!) or other people. 

You have made me reconsider whether I should revisit this - will see if I get some time to have another look at some point ...
 

[longmonty]

Jun 3, 2016 9:45:21 GMT islington said:

Oh yes, I meant to add -

Longmonty, I completely agree about getting Woodford all in one seat but you don't need to disrupt Ilford South (or create a triborough seat).

All four Woodford wards can be accommodated in Ilford N if you swap Clayhall into Leyton & Wanstead. I acknowledge it's not an especially good fit but it's no worse than Green Street W as in your revised plan.

In this case the name of the seat would be 'Ilford North and Woodford' (although, if you go for this arrangement, there's a decent case for calling it simply 'Woodford' and Ilford South would then just be 'Ilford').

Actually that works fine for Leyton & Wanstead, and also nicely resolves the tri-borough issue. 
But if you're leaving Ilford untouched, you then need to find two Newham wards to add to Barking. Assuming you avoid splitting East Ham itself, that leaves you with Barking & Royal Docks or some such - which is no better than my original Harrold Wood & Hainault creation that started all this off in the first place. Or am I missing something?
 

[greenhert]

The Royal Docks connect reasonably well with Barking; I have found no problem creating a Barking & Beckton seat to keep the communities of West Ham and East Ham intact; the Royal Docks area does not really belong to either.

[Adrian]

I've been having a go at London, using similar groupings to the ones some of you have already posted. London SSW:

Lambeth & Clapham 78350
Brixton-Norwood 75074
Battersea 71624*
Streatham & Tooting 75180
Putney 71205*
Richmond Park 74740
Kingston 77995
Croydon South 73179*
Croydon East 77141*
Croydon North 73341*
Sutton & Cheam 75223
Mitcham & Morden 72649
Carshalton & Wallington 71308
Wimbledon & Earlsfield 75106*
*=accurate estimate
split wards: Wandsworth Common, South Norwood, Heathfield

I've disappointed myself by coming up with a minimum-change-style plan! Earlsfield draws the short straw and gets added to a Merton seat to make up the numbers. I did try Putney-Wimbledon and Mitcham-Streatham but it was too messy.

[Adrian]

London SE

I think there are 3 natural areas here. Bromley for 3 seats, Southwark & Deptford for 3 seats, and the rest for 6 seats. If you think it's important that Bermondsey is all in one seat you can put Telegraph Hill in the Dulwich seat, though that means an additional cross-border seat and an orphan ward.

[Edit: I've changed my mind about Southwark. Better would be Southwark & Bermondsey (+polling district LIV1) 71330, Dulwich & Camberwell 78070, Deptford & Peckham 75547.]

Bexley/Greenwich/Lewisham

1. Bexleyheath is v slightly over quota, so needs to give away a
solitary polling district. Eltham is split. I'd like to swap Crofton
Park and Grove Park to get all of Lee in one seat, but the numbers don't
quite work.

2. Erith & Thamesmead separated

[Adrian]

East London. For a long time I wanted to cross the Lea at Stratford but the great minds in this forum have gradually convinced me to go north. The fact that TH and Hackney are in quota is a very good argument, as is the fact that Enfield is needed to make an East London grouping that's in quota. To show what kind of nonsense I was coming up with before, here's a plan I can't believe I thought I could present as a serious proposal:

Anyway, my current plan is similar to several seen already in this thread. I forget who first suggested Barking & Beckton, but it's a goodie. PD EM2 (2297 voters) needs to be transferred from Hornchurch to Romford, and PD EC (1323 voters) from Barking to Dagenham.

[islington]

Jun 3, 2016 20:07:12 GMT longmonty said:

Jun 3, 2016 6:55:14 GMT islington said:

Longmonty -

Regarding Hackney, I see it like this.

A 'central London' combination of Haringey, Islington, Camden, Westminster and the City sums to 522892, which is almost perfect (6.99) for 7 seats. We have workable plans upthread that do exactly this (Greenhert's scheme, back on page 5, I think is the
best, with a much better division of Westminster than in my original suggestion way back on page 2). And any scheme that assigns 7 whole seats to the 'central' grouping means, of course, that the Hackney boundary need not be crossed.

But you've loaded the central area with two Barnet wards as well, and you've had to balance this by shifting a ward out somewhere - hence the inclusion of a Haringey ward in Hackney N. So the question I'd ask is what value is added by crossing the Camden/Barnet boundary? 

Well ... As I said right at the start, I deliberately didn't create groupings of boroughs before I started - so it wasn't something I specifically wanted to do or to avoid - although I think it is fine in community terms.
The point is I am happy with the seats I have created throughout Middlesex, from Enfield right round to Twickenham - but in the scheme I have, and with the relatively large ward sizes in outer London, none of my existing seats can take a whole extra ward. If I have some spare wards me that then leaves me with essentially three options:
1. Substantially re-draw some or all of the seats;
2. Split a ward or two; or
3. Find a way to absorb the remaining wards in other seats. 
I have done no.3, taking advantage of the relatively smaller ward sizes in inner London (but still mindful of community links).  
My own judgement is this is worth it to get coherent seats in the scheme as a whole - but I accept this may not find favour with the Commission (!) or other people. 

You have made me reconsider whether I should revisit this - will see if I get some time to have another look at some point ...
 

Longmonty, this is a very interesting reply because it's made me think about why the 'grouping' strategy, which you decided not to adopt, is actually very helpful - basically, it breaks the task down into manageable chunks. For instance, your scheme effectively has a 'group' (I'm not saying you planned it this way, but it's the practical result of your approach) that consists of the whole of London north of the Thames and east of the Lea, except for: Enfield (which you treat with east London); Twickenham (which goes in with Richmond and Kingston); and Tower Hamlets (which you treat separately). This has a combined electorate of 1957329 = 26.18 = 26 seats. The trouble with such a large grouping, as you encountered, is that you can start at one end and draw up a reasonable pattern of seats only to find, as you did, that you emerge overloaded with electors at the other end. (Or, had you come out underloaded, it would be just as bad - either way, having to create a lot of contiguous seats well above (or well below) the average severely restricts your options.)

I'm not saying that a 'group' of 26 is out of the question (and I, in pursuing a consciously group-based approach, have ended up with two 25-seat groups in other parts of the country) but it's awkwardly large and I'd prefer to cut it down if possible. I have four groups in this area: Hackney and K&C by themselves with 2 and 1 respectively; 'central' as outlined above with 7; and (loosely) 'west' with 1209639 = 16.18 = 16 seats. And the last of these is larger than I'd like; I've looked seriously at splitting from it either Barnet/Harrow (369736 = 4.95 = 5) or Ealing/Hounslow (368486 = 4.93 = 5) but they both created more problems than they solved so in the end I stuck with the 16-seat group.  Another option I haven't looked at in detail would be to transfer Haringey from the 'central' group (which would then be left with 381622 = 5.10 = 5) into the 'west' group (1350909 = 18.07); but, however you do it, and with due respect to the many attractive features of your plan, this discussion has tended to confirm my view that 'groups' are the way to go.

[greenhert]

Adrian, I (greenhert) suggested a Barking & Beckton seat; it could also be called Barking & Docklands; I wonder how long the arguments over new constituencies' names will go on in the consultation.

[Adrian]

Central London, using the suggested W-I-C-H grouping. Not too dissimilar from EA Lefty's plan.

Split ward: Caledonian. 2125 voters in PD SCAA. Islington S 71278, Islington N 73054.

It seems so crass to disrupt the perfectly formed Hornsey & Wood Green seat - I'm half-minded to pair Haringey with Hackney instead, transferring either the Woodberry or Brownswood ward. (The latter was of course (!) once part of Hornsey, about 125 years ago!) But not only is that a rather gratuitous attack on Hackney, it would need a split ward.

I don't like the CLW seat going above the Westway, but it'd help if more of the people in Westminster were eligible to vote!

[Adrian]

Finally the trickiest bit of all - NW London.

Feltham & Harlington 73782
- I know the mantra is always "No Cross-Heathrow Seat" but I tried for a while to keep Hillingdon and Hounslow separate and it wasn't working. These two areas add up nicely to a whole seat and make things neat further north too.
Hounslow 77932*
Brentford & Ealing South 76939*
- Split ward: Osterley. PD: O (2422 voters). Northern Isleworth is split between these seats.
Uxbridge & Hayes 77294
Ruislip-Northwood 72471
Ealing Southall 73666
Hammersmith & Fulham 77725
Acton & White City 72275
- All neat except Hanger Hill ward should be in Ealing, not Acton.
Kensington & Chelsea 76454
Harrow West 76393
Harrow East 77401
Greenford & Sudbury 73429
- Although it's a bit unfair to breach the Brent border in three places, the Wembley area is too big for a single seat, and Kenton, Sudbury and Kingsbury seem like good places to add/remove.
Wembley 76860*
Willesden 77127*
- Split ward: Welsh Harp. PDs CWH4/5/6 (3377 voters).
Edgware & Kingsbury 78075
Finchley 75790
- These two seats are effectively Hendon North and Hendon South.
Barnet 72480

I'm happy with the London seats I've worked out this weekend. They're certainly better than the ones I'd come up with on a couple of earlier sessions on Plan Builder, now that the wisdom of the forum has sunk in. How many split wards are there? 7? I think that's reasonable to get a good set of seats. I don't think I've seen a non-split London plan that I'd be happy to submit, though I dare say a better plan than mine is possible with 7 or fewer split wards.

[islington]

"I don't think I've seen a non-split London plan that I'd be happy to submit"

Adrian, it's interesting you should say that. Because I've been thinking that, for all these ward splits, you've come up with a plan that (apart from the splits) is perfectly fine, but not noticeably better than some of the non-split plans that have been posted here. There's a lot of good stuff in your plan, alongside some elements that are definitely less good; but you could say the same of any plan.

Given that it's been shown several times upthread that it's possible to produce workable plans for London with no ward splits at all, then the justification for any ward split - even a single one - has to be that it allows a markedly better plan than can be achieved without it. And the more splits you have, the greater the improvement you need to achieve. And without wanting to dismiss your scheme - because, as I say, there's plenty of good stuff in it - I honestly can't see how, looked at overall, it delivers a substantial improvement over the non-spit suggestions many of us have posted above.

[Adrian]

Partly my rationale is that suboptimal seats within LA boundaries are acceptable. Suboptimal seats across boundaries aren't. I don't want to do a fisk of everyone's plans, but a quick flick through the thread produces examples like these:

Minion - a Romford seat that includes single wards from B&D and Redbridge
Pete Whitehead - splitting Barnet, Southgate, Edgware
Islington - "several seats that will link Croydon wards with parts of adjacent boroughs"

To my mind, splitting wards is a much lesser evil than crossing LA boundaries (or splitting towns). It'd be interesting to tot up how many border crossings there are in each London plan, and praise those with the fewest. By contrast, praising yourself for making a plan without split wards is like being happy for finishing a 1000-piece jigsaw of London Bridge.

[islington]

OK, I'm game -

I don't want to fisk everyone's plan either, but I'm happy to fisk my own.

In its current incarnation, it's moved on somewhat from the version I originally posted because I have freely borrowed better ideas in certain areas put forward by Pete Whitehead, Greenhert, Minion. So I acknowledge my debt to these contributors and I apologize for omitting anyone else whose ideas I've lifted. Reducing the number of border crossings has been an important factor in the changes I've made.

As it stands, of the 68 seats I propose, I count 27 that contain parts of two boroughs (and I've been strict on myself, so I'm counting the City as a separate borough from Westminster). I haven't counted my original plan as posted here, but the total would have been higher. For instance (as you remind me), I originally had 5 seats crossing the Croydon boundary; I've now got this down to three (with two seats wholly in the borough), and I have a variation that gets it down to two (but I don't want to adopt it because it involves a much less satisfactory arrangement in Lambeth).

I could probably reduce the number elsewhere, for instance I currently have two seats that cross the Havering / B&D boundary and I'm sure I could reduce this to one, but only by disrupting the Hornchurch seat, which I've currently left unaltered ('least change').

So I have 41 seats out of 68 that fall within a single borough (or 42 if you follow BCE practice in treating the City as if it were a ward of Westminster). I've no doubt this could be increased substantially if keeping to LA boundaries trumped every other consideration - but it doesn't, it's only one of a number of factors including 'least change' and avoiding ward splits, so in the circumstances I think 41 (or 42) out of 68 is a reasonable proportion.

[greenhert]

By comparison, islington, I have managed a total of 45 single-borough seats (no split wards), which in my proposals are:

1. Orpington
2. Bromley & Chisleshurst
3. Beckenham
4. Lewisham West
5. Lewisham East
6. Bexley
7. Erith & Belvedere
8. Woolwich
9. Dulwich & Peckham
10. Bermondsey & Camberwell
11. Brixton
12. Streatham & Clapham
13. Wandsworth Central
14. Wimbledon South & Morden
15. City of London & Westminster South
16. Hampstead
17. Tottenham
18. Enfield North
19. Enfield Southgate
20. Walthamstow
21. Ilford South*
22. Hornchurch & Upminster*
23. Ilford North & Woodford
24. Hammersmith & Fulham
25. Kensington & Chelsea
26. Islington North
27. Finchley & Golders Green
28. Chipping Barnet*
29. Harrow West
30. Ruislip-Northwood
31. Ealing Central & Acton
32. West Ham
33. East Ham
34. Hackney North & Stoke Newington*
35. Hackney South & Shoreditch*
36. Kingston & Surbiton*
37. Twickenham*
38. Sutton & Cheam
39. Croydon North East
40. Croydon South
41. Bethnal Green & Bow*
42. Poplar & Limehouse
43. Uxbridge & Hayes
44. Brentford & Isleworth
45. Kingsbury

*Seat unchanged or only adjusted for internal ward boundary changes.

[Adrian]

Later in the summer, when I've got more time, I should make a chart for each plan:

nos. of: unchanged seats | boundary crossings | split towns | strange bedfellows | split wards

But whether it'd prove anything, I'm not sure!

[islington]

Jun 6, 2016 16:04:01 GMT greenhert said:

By comparison, islington , I have managed a total of 45 single-borough seats (no split wards), which in my proposals are:

1. Orpington
2. Bromley & Chisleshurst
3. Beckenham
4. Lewisham West
5. Lewisham East
6. Bexley
7. Erith & Belvedere
8. Woolwich
9. Dulwich & Peckham
10. Bermondsey & Camberwell
11. Brixton
12. Streatham & Clapham
13. Wandsworth Central
14. Wimbledon South & Morden
15. City of London & Westminster South
16. Hampstead
17. Tottenham
18. Enfield North
19. Enfield Southgate
20. Walthamstow
21. Ilford South*
22. Hornchurch & Upminster*
23. Ilford North & Woodford
24. Hammersmith & Fulham
25. Kensington & Chelsea
26. Islington North
27. Finchley & Golders Green
28. Chipping Barnet*
29. Harrow West
30. Ruislip-Northwood
31. Ealing Central & Acton
32. West Ham
33. East Ham
34. Hackney North & Stoke Newington*
35. Hackney South & Shoreditch*
36. Kingston & Surbiton*
37. Twickenham*
38. Sutton & Cheam
39. Croydon North East
40. Croydon South
41. Bethnal Green & Bow*
42. Poplar & Limehouse
43. Uxbridge & Hayes
44. Brentford & Isleworth
45. Kingsbury

*Seat unchanged or only adjusted for internal ward boundary changes.

Well, yes, but you have got at least one triborough seat (parts of Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich), and I'm not sure whether that's cricket.

But well done, anyway. Can anyone beat 45?