|
|
Post by greenhert on Apr 30, 2016 19:44:25 GMT
I'll try to do a longer reply on the subject of ward splits if I have time later, but all I want to say now is that it would be easy to get the impression that ward splits are the solution to all ills and if only they were more freely adopted there would be no more awkward seats with ugly boundaries. Well, I have experimented with a few and it's not what I've found. The great majority of ugly or awkward boundaries aren't the result of a failure to split wards. They're the result of numbers - simply, too many voters in one place, or too few in another, to allow us to draw a better boundary. Sheffield's a classic example. Its entitlement is 5.10 (not 4.96 as stated upthread) so it could receive 5 whole seats with a degree of ward-splitting (over and above the single split that is clearly unavoidable). But then the entitlement of the rest of S Yorks is 7.64, which is impractical for 8 seats. Therefore you would have to cross the S Yorks boundary into W Yorks, N Yorks, or Humberside (take your pick) thus disrupting the satisfactory schemes that we already have for treating each of those areas by itself - all for the sake of protecting the Sheffield city boundary. Whereas if you add Sheffield's 5.10 to the rest of S Yorks, you get an entitlement of 12.74 for 13 seats. This is tricky but doable, and the other parts of Y&H can be left alone. So it's all about numbers, not ward-splitting - it would almost certainly still be necessary to cross the Sheffield boundary even if the city could be divided into five whole seats without any ward-splitting at all. And bear in mind that we already have plans that, with the barest minimum of ward-splitting (one ward in Sheffield), offer boundaries for the whole of England that are pretty reasonable on the whole - of course, with their awkwardnesses here and there but a substantial improvement (I suggest) on what the BCE came up with at the zombie review. (Actually, I liked Minion's phrase the other day: 'Legal and not completely horrid'.) So I think the onus is on ward-splitters to show us that splitting allows a map that is a substantial (not marginal) improvement on what we have now, taking account not just of a specific city but of the ripple effects that are likely to extend over a much wider area. On the subject of dividing towns, YL suggested that when the numbers require wards to be hived off from a town, those wards should preferably go into the same seat. I agree this is desirable, although it has to take its place alongside other desirable things like minimum change; and admittedly (as he's probably about to point out) I couldn't achieve it in the case of Bradford and Birmingham. However, I don't see why it should matter whether the hived-off wards form a coherent bloc in themselves, since they are not going to function as a unit for any purpose. Crossing South Yorkshire into the right parts of West Yorkshire would actually be acceptable, though, since 'South Yorkshire' is really in the West Riding of Yorkshire traditionally, and so were the areas surrounding Goole, Selby, and Tadcaster. Combine South Yorkshire (outside the city of Sheffield) with Selby and the Goole Part of 'East Yorkshire' and you get a combined total of around 9.15 quotas, which should work out fine. |
|
|
|
Post by islington on May 1, 2016 9:31:35 GMT
A much more common problem occurs when a ward contains part of a town that mainly lies in one or more other wards. I have to say that I have much less compunction about dividing a town in these circumstances: I might try to avoid it, but probably not very hard if the seat pattern otherwise works well. But for me to feel (reasonably) comfortable about it, the ward in question must be mainly ‘something else’, i.e. the bulk of its electors should live in rural areas or other towns so that these are the main focus of the ward. Examples are Ossett in Yorkshire and Tiptree in Essex, where I was challenged over my readiness to draw a boundary separating the bulk of a town (including its centre) from some of its more peripheral areas in another ward. A third of the town, in that case. .... This is a major reason why the no ward splits policy is wrong, incidentally. If maintained It will mean wholesale rearrangements of all or most major urban areas at every single election . Christ almighty. I suppose the government figured that most of the affected would be Labour MPs anyways, so who care. Regarding 'a third of the town': In the interests of accuracy (or pedantry), I think it's more like a quarter of the town in the case of Ossett and rather less than that for Tiptree. But even so, I accept it as fair criticism because I agree that such things are better avoided; but sometimes they are the byproduct of getting the best map overall. (And if we're criticising, I'd point out that your own suggestion for the Wakefield area includes a 'Normanton' seat that takes much more than a quarter out of Castleford (a far bigger town than Ossett) and puts a line straight through the middle of Outwood. Pot, kettle, black, &c.) It's a fascinating speculation about the extent of likely changes between quinquennial reviews. The obvious comparison is with the zombie review but possibly this is distorted by the introduction of IER. Even so, I'm guessing that the degree of change between reviews will be rather less than you suggest: most regions are likely to keep the same overall numbers from each review to the next, so I imagine the Commission will invoke 'minimum change' and seek to deal with over- or undersize seats on a case-by-case basis by shuffling wards around. Bigger changes will be needed, of course, when a region gains or loses a seat, but judging by the shifts between the zombie review and this one (even with IER), that will be the exception rather than the rule. (Although London, having missed out so narrowly this time, must be hot favourite to gain a 69th seat at the next review; possibly at the expense of North West or Y&H, or even Scotland or NI.) All this assumes, of course, that the system remains in place, which is looking likelier but still far from certain. |
|
|
|
Post by islington on May 1, 2016 9:49:02 GMT
I'll try to do a longer reply on the subject of ward splits if I have time later, but all I want to say now is that it would be easy to get the impression that ward splits are the solution to all ills and if only they were more freely adopted there would be no more awkward seats with ugly boundaries. Well, I have experimented with a few and it's not what I've found. The great majority of ugly or awkward boundaries aren't the result of a failure to split wards. They're the result of numbers - simply, too many voters in one place, or too few in another, to allow us to draw a better boundary. Sheffield's a classic example. Its entitlement is 5.10 (not 4.96 as stated upthread) so it could receive 5 whole seats with a degree of ward-splitting (over and above the single split that is clearly unavoidable). But then the entitlement of the rest of S Yorks is 7.64, which is impractical for 8 seats. Therefore you would have to cross the S Yorks boundary into W Yorks, N Yorks, or Humberside (take your pick) thus disrupting the satisfactory schemes that we already have for treating each of those areas by itself - all for the sake of protecting the Sheffield city boundary. Whereas if you add Sheffield's 5.10 to the rest of S Yorks, you get an entitlement of 12.74 for 13 seats. This is tricky but doable, and the other parts of Y&H can be left alone. So it's all about numbers, not ward-splitting - it would almost certainly still be necessary to cross the Sheffield boundary even if the city could be divided into five whole seats without any ward-splitting at all. And bear in mind that we already have plans that, with the barest minimum of ward-splitting (one ward in Sheffield), offer boundaries for the whole of England that are pretty reasonable on the whole - of course, with their awkwardnesses here and there but a substantial improvement (I suggest) on what the BCE came up with at the zombie review. (Actually, I liked Minion's phrase the other day: 'Legal and not completely horrid'.) So I think the onus is on ward-splitters to show us that splitting allows a map that is a substantial (not marginal) improvement on what we have now, taking account not just of a specific city but of the ripple effects that are likely to extend over a much wider area. On the subject of dividing towns, YL suggested that when the numbers require wards to be hived off from a town, those wards should preferably go into the same seat. I agree this is desirable, although it has to take its place alongside other desirable things like minimum change; and admittedly (as he's probably about to point out) I couldn't achieve it in the case of Bradford and Birmingham. However, I don't see why it should matter whether the hived-off wards form a coherent bloc in themselves, since they are not going to function as a unit for any purpose. Crossing South Yorkshire into the right parts of West Yorkshire would actually be acceptable, though, since 'South Yorkshire' is really in the West Riding of Yorkshire traditionally, and so were the areas surrounding Goole, Selby, and Tadcaster. Combine South Yorkshire (outside the city of Sheffield) with Selby and the Goole Part of 'East Yorkshire' and you get a combined total of around 9.15 quotas, which should work out fine. I've no wish to offend Greenhert (and I've no idea where he stands on the EU), but this reminds me of a Brexiter argument: "Just do what I want, and there's no need to worry about what happens next; just take my word for it, everything will work out fine." Well, sorry, but detailed non-splitting proposals have been put forward for all parts of the country so we know what this approach looks like. What we need to see, in similar detail, is a different plan based on ward splits - for the whole area affected by the policy, not just one individual authority within it. Then we can fairly compare the merits of the two plans. But in effect, Greenhert (and he is not alone among splitting advocates) is simply saying, "You don't need to see the details, just go ahead and split, it will all be fine." |
|
YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
|
Post by YL on May 1, 2016 17:11:27 GMT
I'll try to do a longer reply on the subject of ward splits if I have time later, but all I want to say now is that it would be easy to get the impression that ward splits are the solution to all ills and if only they were more freely adopted there would be no more awkward seats with ugly boundaries. Well, I have experimented with a few and it's not what I've found. The great majority of ugly or awkward boundaries aren't the result of a failure to split wards. They're the result of numbers - simply, too many voters in one place, or too few in another, to allow us to draw a better boundary. That is often the case, true. However, as I said before, it clearly wasn't the case for many of the worst constituencies in the zombie review (and it was the awfulness of the zombie review's proposals in West and South Yorkshire which convinced me on this issue). The numbers didn't force Mersey Banks; indeed there were ward-splitting counterexamples there (one from the Lib Dems) which didn't have anything like it. The numbers gave Leeds pretty much 7 whole constituencies and the neighbouring boroughs worked fine without it, so there was no need to cross the Leeds border at all. Again, there was a counterproposal (from Kirklees Labour) with split wards in West Yorkshire which had a lot less change, a lot less crossing of borough boundaries and nothing like "Leeds Metropolitan & Ossett". (Is it still possible to find specific responses to the zombie review?) |
|
|
|
Post by islington on May 2, 2016 9:46:11 GMT
I'll try to do a longer reply on the subject of ward splits if I have time later, but all I want to say now is that it would be easy to get the impression that ward splits are the solution to all ills and if only they were more freely adopted there would be no more awkward seats with ugly boundaries. Well, I have experimented with a few and it's not what I've found. The great majority of ugly or awkward boundaries aren't the result of a failure to split wards. They're the result of numbers - simply, too many voters in one place, or too few in another, to allow us to draw a better boundary. That is often the case, true. However, as I said before, it clearly wasn't the case for many of the worst constituencies in the zombie review (and it was the awfulness of the zombie review's proposals in West and South Yorkshire which convinced me on this issue). The numbers didn't force Mersey Banks; indeed there were ward-splitting counterexamples there (one from the Lib Dems) which didn't have anything like it. The numbers gave Leeds pretty much 7 whole constituencies and the neighbouring boroughs worked fine without it, so there was no need to cross the Leeds border at all. Again, there was a counterproposal (from Kirklees Labour) with split wards in West Yorkshire which had a lot less change, a lot less crossing of borough boundaries and nothing like "Leeds Metropolitan & Ossett". (Is it still possible to find specific responses to the zombie review?) Well, yes, but that was then and this is now. Judging by the non-splitting proposals put forward on this forum, there's nothing in prospect in the present review that's anything like so gruesome as Mersey Banks or Leeds Met & (three-quarters of) Ossett. If there were, and if splitting were necessary to avert it, then I'd agree with you because I've no wish to see seats of that kind. I'm a pragmatic non-splitter, not an ideological one. My argument is that, in the circumstances of the present review, there's no need for it (except in one case in Sheffield). |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 2, 2016 10:45:30 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by andrewteale on May 2, 2016 11:01:12 GMT
2a) For districts and unitary authorities with an electorate of the number N or less and for all shire counties, the number of councillors shall be equal to the cube-root of the electorate, rounded to the nearest whole number. (Avoids pissing contests along the lines of "It's more advantageous to Party X for there to be 45 councillors, not 44!" This number should theoretically be close to the status quo, inasmuch as we haven't already seen councillor inflation.)I've always thought a rule along those lines would be a good idea, but what you've written here would lead to substantial councillor deflation even if you were to change "electorate" to "population". Most councils (certainly mets) tend to have seat numbers in the range of the cube root of 1.8 to 2 times the electorate. |
|
|
|
Post by greatkingrat on May 2, 2016 13:05:38 GMT
If there was a formula for councillor numbers, I would say unitaries should have more councillors than an equivalent sized shire district, to reflect their greater responsibilities.
|
|
|
|
Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 2, 2016 13:18:45 GMT
Some of those on your over-represented list have recently been rewarded and the new council size is at or around the cube root level - certainly that applies for Colchester and Braintree.
|
|
|
|
Post by islington on May 3, 2016 6:46:12 GMT
OK, sorry, I did them an injustice; it was the whole of Ossett. |
|
YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
|
Post by YL on May 11, 2016 18:14:51 GMT
That is often the case, true. However, as I said before, it clearly wasn't the case for many of the worst constituencies in the zombie review (and it was the awfulness of the zombie review's proposals in West and South Yorkshire which convinced me on this issue). The numbers didn't force Mersey Banks; indeed there were ward-splitting counterexamples there (one from the Lib Dems) which didn't have anything like it. The numbers gave Leeds pretty much 7 whole constituencies and the neighbouring boroughs worked fine without it, so there was no need to cross the Leeds border at all. Again, there was a counterproposal (from Kirklees Labour) with split wards in West Yorkshire which had a lot less change, a lot less crossing of borough boundaries and nothing like "Leeds Metropolitan & Ossett". (Is it still possible to find specific responses to the zombie review?) Well, yes, but that was then and this is now. Judging by the non-splitting proposals put forward on this forum, there's nothing in prospect in the present review that's anything like so gruesome as Mersey Banks or Leeds Met & (three-quarters of) Ossett. If there were, and if splitting were necessary to avert it, then I'd agree with you because I've no wish to see seats of that kind. I'm a pragmatic non-splitter, not an ideological one. My argument is that, in the circumstances of the present review, there's no need for it (except in one case in Sheffield). I'm glad to hear there are some cases where you'd consider splitting. I'd still like to know why you dislike it so much, though, especially in cases like Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield where the wards being used will be abolished by 2020, so the arguments about the administrative convenience of coterminous wards and constituencies break down. (Not that I think those arguments are any stronger than the analogous ones for trying to minimise multi-borough seats in Met counties.) (And I really think you should review Bradford. It's slightly different from those examples from the zombie review in that any one of the problematic seats might be just about acceptable on its own if that made for a good map in the surrounding area, but the cumulative effect of the three orphan wards means you're doing something quite nasty to the city.) |
|
|
|
Post by islington on May 11, 2016 20:54:01 GMT
Well, yes, but that was then and this is now. Judging by the non-splitting proposals put forward on this forum, there's nothing in prospect in the present review that's anything like so gruesome as Mersey Banks or Leeds Met & (three-quarters of) Ossett. If there were, and if splitting were necessary to avert it, then I'd agree with you because I've no wish to see seats of that kind. I'm a pragmatic non-splitter, not an ideological one. My argument is that, in the circumstances of the present review, there's no need for it (except in one case in Sheffield). I'm glad to hear there are some cases where you'd consider splitting. I'd still like to know why you dislike it so much, though, especially in cases like Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield where the wards being used will be abolished by 2020, so the arguments about the administrative convenience of coterminous wards and constituencies break down. (Not that I think those arguments are any stronger than the analogous ones for trying to minimise multi-borough seats in Met counties.) (And I really think you should review Bradford. It's slightly different from those examples from the zombie review in that any one of the problematic seats might be just about acceptable on its own if that made for a good map in the surrounding area, but the cumulative effect of the three orphan wards means you're doing something quite nasty to the city.) YL, you may not credit this but I assure you that I embarked on this process with every expectation of suggesting several ward splits, precisely because I anticipated that it would be the only way of avoiding monstrosities of the Leeds Met & Ossett type. I was quite surprised to find, first in London then as I progressed to the rest of the UK, that in fact perfectly workable seats could be generated with hardly any need to split wards at all. I'm not saying that every seat I've suggested is a shining example of the boundary-draughtsman's art, because such is palpably not the case; but when I've suggested an admittedly ugly or unsatisfactory seat, it's not because of a refusal to split wards. It's because electors have perversely chosen to live in the wrong place, so that there are too many here, or too few there, to allow me to draw a better boundary. When might I recommend a ward split? Well, apart from an obvious case such as Sheffield where at least one split is mathematically unavoidable, the answer is that I'd recommend it if I thought it allowed a markedly better plan than could be achieved without it. I felt this situation arose in Glasgow, where two ward splits are needed to award the city six whole seats; but I came to this conclusion only after trying alternative approaches without splits. And they didn't work; they entailed multiple crossings of the city boundary and the creation of seats that not only were ugly and awkward in themselves, but also made it more difficult to draw satisfactory boundaries in the whole surrounding area. This is in contrast to the position in Sheffield, where the problem is not so much about ward-splitting as about numbers. You could probably get five seats into Sheffield with only one additional split; but you then run up against the numbers problem in S Yorks, as discussed before. So I prefer an approach involving limited (not wholesale) crossing of the city boundary: two wards in, two wards out. Again in Birmingham: you could certainly fit exactly nine seats into the city, but I think it would need at least four splits, besides creating significant adverse knock-on effects in Sandwell or Dudley (in practice, probably Dudley). So I prefer a solution involving, again, limited boundary crossing with two wards in and two out, allowing workable seats to be drawn elsewhere in the W Mids conurbation and no need for splits. (I'm leaving aside, as a special case, the double ward-split in the Scottish Highlands, which is about swapping land area rather than voters; it's a one-off solution to factors specific to this area, which is wholly untypical of the rest of the UK.) As for Bradford: the need to take wards out of Bradford arises from numbers, not from a refusal to split wards. And I felt it was fair criticism, I think by you, that it would be better to cross the boundary in the Wharfedale area and take contiguous wards rather than scattered ones. I attempted, I really did, to find a solution on these lines; but I felt that everything I tried, with or without ward-splitting, resulted in worse boundaries overall on both sides of the Leeds/Bradford boundary. So I reverted to my (Hullenedge-inspired) original scheme. I'd like to throw your question back at you. Why are you in favour of splits? I can see that they would avoid the need to cross the boundaries of cities like Sheffield and Birmingham - I get that - but that can't be the only consideration. Do you think they would generate a significantly better map overall, if it so why? |
|
YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
|
Post by YL on May 12, 2016 7:09:47 GMT
I just don't see why one particular consideration -- not splitting wards -- should be put on a pedestal. I think that the boundaries of cities like Sheffield and Birmingham are indeed more important in terms of local ties and practical matters than the integrity of their (already or soon to be abolished) wards. (I appreciate that considerations elsewhere mean that it may be necessary to cross the Sheffield boundary once, but only once.) More than that, though, it's an issue of the sort of constituencies you end up drawing if you refuse to split. As you obviously realise, in many areas where the ward sizes are large you end up with areas where it is very hard to draw legal seats made up of whole wards, for example in west Leeds where groups of four wards are always too small and groups of five wards are always too big. So you end up having to ignore just about every other criterion for good seat design, and grab a ward from a neighbouring authority without really thinking about whether it makes sense (see Tong or Eccleshill). Or you find a rare group within the city which does actually work, but then you find that it cuts a ward off from the rest of the city, so that ward has to be put with somewhere else (see Oscott). If you split wards, you can be more flexible in this sort of area. Yes, you probably ought to cross the Leeds/Bradford border once (there are other possibilities which allow Leeds to be treated on its own, but I'm not yet convinced by them) but you can do it in the right place (Wharfedale) and then work out plans for the rest of the two cities. I don't believe you when you say that you couldn't find anything better than the three nibbles at Bradford (which is pretty close to Leeds Met & Ossett on the badness scale) doing that. Did you see the reaction of Adrian -- who I believe lives there -- to your idea of taking Oscott out of Birmingham? |
|
|
|
Post by lennon on May 12, 2016 9:05:56 GMT
On the ward-splitting issue - the example that I keep coming back to as an example of 'good' splitting is in East Sussex. Specifically, Hove + the 2 Brighton seats. If you take the Brighton and Hove area + the coastal villages all the way to, and including the whole of Seaford, you have a natural area with enough electors for 3 seats pretty close to quota. However, to get the 3 seats well you have to split one of the Brighton wards as they are too large. What a number of people appear to have done instead is to have a slightly undersized Brighton seat, and just split Seaford town in 2. I fail to see why splitting the town of Seaford is better than splitting a ward in central Brighton in half - but then I favour natural communities over boundaries that happen to already exist.
|
|
|
|
Post by islington on May 12, 2016 10:55:08 GMT
Let me reply to YL but first let me thank Lennon for raising the Brighton point because it nicely illustrates the issues involved. He's quite right: there's a very strong case for a ward split in Brighton. A division of East Brighton ward (perhaps along the line of Manor Road?) would do the trick. But why is this more persuasive than the arguments put forward for splits in Birmingham, &c? For two reasons, I suggest. First, it's only a single split as opposed to the multiple splits suggested in some other cases. And secondly, it demonstrably solves a difficulty elsewhere (the division of Seaford); as opposed to merely shifting a problem about (e.g. from Birmingham to Dudley). Turning to YL: I don't accept that I am elevating non-splitting above all other considerations. I'd argue that it is only one of several things we should try to achieve in drawing seats. Apart from the obvious legal requirements (71031-78507, &c), I feel we strive for: - Following LA boundaries
- Good internal comms
- Reasonable community of interest
- Avoiding divisions of distinct towns and other clearly recognizable communities
- Compactness (i.e. avoid long, straggly seats)
- Minimum change from the current map
- Use of whole wards as the basic building-block
I'm not putting these in order of priority. They are all important; but often, they are also incompatible so we have to balance them against each other to get the best map overall.
The reason I've almost always managed to avoid splitting wards isn't that I've given it priority over everything else; it's simply a reflection of the fact that it's almost always possible to achieve it, whereas some of the others are more difficult to achieve.
The obvious example of this is conformity to LA boundaries, and a glance at the BCE data is enough to show why: the great majority of LAs simply have too many or too few electors and boundary crossings are thus inevitable. But even when a boundary must be crossed, that doesn't mean that we should disregard it entirely. Indeed, it's ironic that YL, who stresses the importance of respecting LA borders, should be so critical of Hullenedge's W Yorks scheme; because I thought a compelling advantage of this plan is the fact that in all of W Yorks, only four wards (three in Bradford and one in Wakefield) are treated with the 'wrong' authority. These aside, the LA boundaries are followed throughout.
Likewise in Birmingham: yes, I've breached the LA boundary by swapping two wards in and two out; but this still means that of Brum's 40 wards, 38 find themselves in a seat that lies either wholly or mainly within the city boundary. Also in Sheffield: again, it's 'two in, two out' so that 26 of 28 wards are in a seat wholly or mainly in Sheffield. In both cities, the breaches are to achieve a better overall fit having regard not only to the city itself but also to the surrounding areas; and they are also, I acknowledge, intended to avoid ward splits, which is a legitimate and important consideration but not a paramount one. It's because I can't find a similarly efficient non-splitting scheme in Glasgow - say, swapping one Glasgow ward out and bringing two in from neighbouring authorities - that I accept the splits in that city.
On specifics, I accept that inclusion of Eccleshill in Pudsey, and Tong in Morley, are less than ideal. But surely YL is overstating his case when he suggests that they are in the same bracket as Leeds Met & Ossett, Mersey Banks, &c. And as for Oscott: yes, I did see Adrian's comment and I feel for him. But it's impossible to create a plan that will satisfy everyone - we have to strive for the best scheme overall.
(And just to return to Brighton for a moment: while I agree about the undesirability of dividing Seaford, there is a non-split solution that avoids this and still gets all the seats within range. I'll try to find time to post this in the SE thread.) |
|
|
|
Post by greenhert on May 12, 2016 11:12:12 GMT
I have found such a solution, islington, to that particular problem, but it is very awkward and the Boundary Commission would have serious reservations accepting it. |
|
Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,742 
|
Post by Adrian on May 12, 2016 13:32:24 GMT
My solution has been to form a seat with Lewes and part of Brighton. There's two or three ways of doing this, none of which are un-liveable-with. At this review, it'll be interesting to see how high the Commission sets the un-livable-with-ness bar :-) and whether they're consistent around the country. This consistency problem, when there are no objective standards, is one that the Commission has wanted desperately to dodge.
|
|
|
|
Post by lennon on May 12, 2016 14:27:14 GMT
My solution has been to form a seat with Lewes and part of Brighton. There's two or three ways of doing this, none of which are un-liveable-with. At this review, it'll be interesting to see how high the Commission sets the un-livable-with-ness bar :-) and whether they're consistent around the country. This consistency problem, when there are no objective standards, is one that the Commission has wanted desperately to dodge. And that is an acceptable way of dealing with the issue - as you say, that option isn't 'un-liveable' - but it puts a higher regard on avoiding ward splitting, and a lower regard on natural communities / natural boundaries. I would still question why avoiding ward-splitting should be a consideration at all? Sure, it doesn't solve lots of the problems, but it doesn't introduce any new ones either so I don't see the downside. If a ward-split improves the overall seat balance on any of the other criteria then why not do it? At the extreme - in urban areas where you have 2 contiguous seats with large wards where the boundaries are all somewhat artificial anyway - then if you have a seat at the low end of quota next to one at the high end - then even if both are in quota I would consider a ward split simply to 'even them up'. This clearly isn't 'needed' - but would improve one criteria (elector equality), with the only 'expense' being a ward-split. I genuinely don't see what the issue is with this - ask most people and they can't tell you what Parliamentary Constituency they are in, let alone which ward they happen to live in. If seats with the most natural community links and cohesion are best served by splitting wards, then it suggests that the ward-boundaries are "artificial" anyway. To take another example - consider the ward of Clatterbridge on the Wirral. This is a single ward that is clearly composed of 3 different communities: The area to the West of the M53 (Thornton Heath / Brimstage) which looks to Heswall. The area North of the Dibbinsdale Brook which is clearly a suburb of Bebington, and the remainder (ie South-East corner) which is clearly part of Bromborough. Just because the LGBCE combined the leftover bits of 3 communities into a single ward (clearly it should be call 'Mid South Wirral'...) why should we avoid splitting the ward when trying to recreate larger units of community cohesion. Far better to consider the area of 'Bromborough' being the Eastham ward, the portion of Bromborough ward south of the Dibbinsdale, and the aforementioned portion of Clatterbridge ward. This 'unit' can then be combined either with Port Sunlight (and thus 're-unite' Bromborough ward) or with Heswall as currently, or with Ellesmere Port - whichever combination of electors allows the best seats to be created as a whole. |
|
|
|
Post by greenhert on May 12, 2016 14:47:37 GMT
My solution has been to form a seat with Lewes and part of Brighton. There's two or three ways of doing this, none of which are un-liveable-with. At this review, it'll be interesting to see how high the Commission sets the un-livable-with-ness bar :-) and whether they're consistent around the country. This consistency problem, when there are no objective standards, is one that the Commission has wanted desperately to dodge. I did this in my solution for Brighton & Hove and the surrounding area as well; this way I only had to add Queen's Park ward to Brighton Pavilion and rename the seat Brighton West (to be fair on Brighton East & Lewes); as for Hove, just add an outlying nearby suburb of Shoreham-by-Sea if you want to avoid adding any integral part or suburb of Brighton to it. |
|
Crimson King
Lib Dem
Be nice to each other and sing in tune
Posts: 9,870
|
Post by Crimson King on May 12, 2016 15:17:26 GMT
I'd ask the question - what is wrong with/the problem with ward splitting - at all? (and I mean just that, not assumptions about what communities wards may represent)
|
|
