YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
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Post by YL on Aug 8, 2020 12:56:20 GMT
The sudden outbreak of split wards of the '2019 electorates' thread has set me thinking about whether any rules, or guidelines, might be applicable here. I have very serious reservations about splitting wards, of course, but I acknowledge that it's likely to happen as part of the review. And the evidence of the other thread is that split wards are like sugar almonds: you think, "Oh, I'll just have one to taste," then, "One more won't hurt," and before you know it, half the packet has disappeared. So here are a few suggested rules or guidelines, just off the top of my head. - Whole wards are the norm and splits the exception.
- Any split must be justified, case by case, showing how it represents a significant improvement over the best possible non-split plan. The justification should be in terms of the stautory factors applying to boundary-drawing (respect for the existing map, for LA boundaries, &c).
- Splits should use Polling Districts.
- No ward should be split between more than two seats.
- No seat should involve more than one split ward.
- No 'orphan splits': that is, when the boundary of an authority is crossed, at least one whole ward should be taken.
The rationale for the last rule is that orphan wards are regarded as undesirable because of the risk that a single ward from an adjoining LA might be regarded as a peripheral and unimportant part of the seat to which little attention need be paid. A split ward, however, by definition will involve even fewer electors that a whole ward, so will be at even greater risk of being marginalized.
1. Yes. 2. Rather, I'd state what I'm trying to do and for what I think the splits are necessary. If you can then come up with a plan which achieves that and has no (or fewer) splits, fair enough. E.g. if you can find a plan for Sheffield and Rotherham combined, with only one boundary crossing, I'll happily drop my split ward. 3. Yes, mainly for reasons of practicality in the consultation. 4. I wouldn't put a blanket ban on this, but it would be very much the exception. 5. See 4. 6. See 4, though I'm struggling to think of anywhere I'd want to consider this. |
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Aug 8, 2020 13:19:01 GMT
I'm still hoping that we will break the will of the Commission, they'll change tack, and islington's defence of them will prove pointless. The line "Any split must be justified, case by case, showing how it represents a significant improvement over the best possible non-split plan" bespeaks a cultlike worship at the altar of Amorphous Blobbism (AB), whose Gang of Four were Sales, Elvin, Pringle and Reed.
The 1986 Act said: “So far as is practicable no county or any part of a county shall be included in a constituency which includes the whole or part of any other county.” Now, this was removed from the 2011 Act. Not because MPs didn't think it was a good principle but because it was suggested that it would be incompatible with the 5% rule. But notice that islington's, and Glenn Reed's, insistence on the use of wards was in neither the 1986 nor the 2011 Act. It is not part of the law. So why has it become such a totem?
For two reasons. One I mentioned in a recent post: the BCE were desperate to make the job as easy as possible. The other reason is a bit more murky: in introducing the 2011 Act the Tories were looking for electoral advantage. It was no coincidence that - at the time - it was calculated that the reduction to 600 seats would have more impact on the LibDems and Labour than on the Tories. And it was also felt that if the Commission could stick to the use of wards, the resulting Amorphous Blobbism would create more seats that favoured the Tories. (Tory support is more evenly spread than Labour or LibDem support, which tends to be more concentrated in certain areas.)
Now, as it happened, the electoral effect that the 600 seats was partly designed to overcome was only a medium-term effect. (Psephologists could've told them this!) So the backroom bods stopped pushing for that change. Meanwhile the attempted move towards "cracking" rather than "packing" of seats may still favour the Tories, though even that is uncertain after the voting shifts of the last four years.
I have had a look a couple of times at whether AB favours the Tories and the results were inconclusive. (In which case they should stop angling for it!) In metropolitan areas it's quite difficult to create many seats that are semi-rural - despite the Commission's best (worst?) efforts - and creating more urban-suburban seats is usually just reshuffling wards that are already a mixture of types of voters. But there should be more research into this.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2020 13:40:19 GMT
The other problem with the "no split wards" approach is that quite a lot of wards are arbitrary creations themselves that have completely torn up community links. Some should be automatically split regardless of anything else because that would provide better community links than keeping them whole
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Post by greenchristian on Aug 8, 2020 14:00:22 GMT
- Splits should use Polling Districts.
I can't agree with that. Polling districts are complete artificial fabrications, completely nothing to do with communities of interest, entirely for convenience of getting to a polling station. That's what got us a boundary running though the backs of gardens in 1983, and slicing through a block of flats in 2010. Also, polling district boundaries are often not actually lines on a map, but simply collections of addresses. A line may be drawn on a map as a convenience between two groups of addresses, but often than is nothing more than "west of here is XA, east of here is XB". If some houses get built in the middle of that area they very well may get assigned to the polling district that is most convenient for them resulting in the "line" moving.
For instance, if somebody appeared on the register living at Sheffield Airport, would they really really be put in Tinsley polling district, or would the line that arbitarily goes through the airport be "moved" north to put the new resident in Greenland five minute's walk away.
In the First Zombie Review, one of the best arrangements for Sheffield was YL's model that sliced the top off Burngreave along a natural boundary rather than the arbitary polling district boundary. But (as I've said several times before) almost all of this is equally true of wards in most of the areas where ward sizes are large enough for ward splitting to be worth it (the only bit that isn't is the lack of clearly-defined boundaries). In Coventry I'd find it easier to avoid crossing community boundaries using polling districts as building blocks than I would using wards, though doing this does require more local knowledge than the BCE are likely to have, but obviously not everywhere has polling districts as well-drawn for this purpose as ours are. |
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ilerda
Conservative
Posts: 1,111
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Post by ilerda on Aug 8, 2020 16:48:21 GMT
The sudden outbreak of split wards of the '2019 electorates' thread has set me thinking about whether any rules, or guidelines, might be applicable here.
I have very serious reservations about splitting wards, of course, but I acknowledge that it's likely to happen as part of the review. And the evidence of the other thread is that split wards are like sugar almonds: you think, "Oh, I'll just have one to taste," then, "One more won't hurt," and before you know it, half the packet has disappeared. So here are a few suggested rules or guidelines, just off the top of my head.
- Whole wards are the norm and splits the exception.
- Any split must be justified, case by case, showing how it represents a significant improvement over the best possible non-split plan. The justification should be in terms of the stautory factors applying to boundary-drawing (respect for the existing map, for LA boundaries, &c).
- Splits should use Polling Districts.
- No ward should be split between more than two seats.
- No seat should involve more than one split ward.
- No 'orphan splits': that is, when the boundary of an authority is crossed, at least one whole ward should be taken.
The rationale for the last rule is that orphan wards are regarded as undesirable because of the risk that a single ward from an adjoining LA might be regarded as a peripheral and unimportant part of the seat to which little attention need be paid. A split ward, however, by definition will involve even fewer electors that a whole ward, so will be at even greater risk of being marginalized.
I take some issue with 5 and 6 here. I don't think there's necessarily a problem from an electoral administration perspective of having more than one split ward in a constituency, whereas there would be if a ward were split between 3+ constituencies. Nor would it necessarily make much difference to have an orphan split. Orphan wards are not something to be avoided under any statutory definition, it's just that some people don't like the idea of them. The idea of an orphan ward being marginalised lacks empirical evidence and is based either on anecdotes or imagined thinking. The current Rugby seat includes the Bulkington ward from Nuneaton and Bedworth council, and I know the MP there makes a special effort to include it and pays it special attention because he knows it feels somewhat out of place being lumped in with Rugby Borough. I think the first four rules are sensible, but the last two are more down to the personal taste of the person making the map than anything else. |
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Post by greenchristian on Aug 8, 2020 17:03:06 GMT
The sudden outbreak of split wards of the '2019 electorates' thread has set me thinking about whether any rules, or guidelines, might be applicable here.
I have very serious reservations about splitting wards, of course, but I acknowledge that it's likely to happen as part of the review. And the evidence of the other thread is that split wards are like sugar almonds: you think, "Oh, I'll just have one to taste," then, "One more won't hurt," and before you know it, half the packet has disappeared. So here are a few suggested rules or guidelines, just off the top of my head.
- Whole wards are the norm and splits the exception.
- Any split must be justified, case by case, showing how it represents a significant improvement over the best possible non-split plan. The justification should be in terms of the stautory factors applying to boundary-drawing (respect for the existing map, for LA boundaries, &c).
- Splits should use Polling Districts.
- No ward should be split between more than two seats.
- No seat should involve more than one split ward.
- No 'orphan splits': that is, when the boundary of an authority is crossed, at least one whole ward should be taken.
The rationale for the last rule is that orphan wards are regarded as undesirable because of the risk that a single ward from an adjoining LA might be regarded as a peripheral and unimportant part of the seat to which little attention need be paid. A split ward, however, by definition will involve even fewer electors that a whole ward, so will be at even greater risk of being marginalized.
I take some issue with 5 and 6 here. I don't think there's necessarily a problem from an electoral administration perspective of having more than one split ward in a constituency, whereas there would be if a ward were split between 3+ constituencies. Nor would it necessarily make much difference to have an orphan split. Orphan wards are not something to be avoided under any statutory definition, it's just that some people don't like the idea of them. The idea of an orphan ward being marginalised lacks empirical evidence and is based either on anecdotes or imagined thinking. The current Rugby seat includes the Bulkington ward from Nuneaton and Bedworth council, and I know the MP there makes a special effort to include it and pays it special attention because he knows it feels somewhat out of place being lumped in with Rugby Borough. I think the first four rules are sensible, but the last two are more down to the personal taste of the person making the map than anything else. I'd largely agree with this, but it is worth pointing out that if you have the choice between an orphan ward and seats that are entirely within local authority boundaries,avoiding orphan wards makes things much easier for electoral services departments. It is always going to be easier to deal with a ward split within a local authority than it is to deal with cross-boundary seats, especially when Westminster elections coincide with local authority elections. So there is a very practical reason to avoid orphan wards or orphan splits in some circumstances.
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Post by islington on Aug 8, 2020 18:03:31 GMT
Why a *significant* improvement? It needs only to represent an overall improvement based on all the factors. You continue to treat ward integrity as the paramount statutory factor. It isn’t - it ranks equally with the other factors. Parliament were made aware of the law and its likely consequences for split wards and criticism of the BCE for not splitting wards in previous reviews. The House of Commons approved the law and the BCE should take note. 'Significant' because splitting a ward is in itself a serious drawback in a plan so it needs to result in a substantial (not slight) improvement by way of justification.
This isn't about ward integrity; it's about respecting local government boundaries (which include wards).
In just the same way, if you chose to break an authority boundary when the numbers didn't require it, or chose to have two seats crossing an authority boundary when it would have been possible to have only one, you'd expect to have to show some pretty solid gain as a result.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2020 18:09:43 GMT
Why a *significant* improvement? It needs only to represent an overall improvement based on all the factors. You continue to treat ward integrity as the paramount statutory factor. It isn’t - it ranks equally with the other factors. Parliament were made aware of the law and its likely consequences for split wards and criticism of the BCE for not splitting wards in previous reviews. The House of Commons approved the law and the BCE should take note. 'Significant' because splitting a ward is in itself a serious drawback in a plan No it isn't |
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Post by emidsanorak on Aug 8, 2020 19:50:01 GMT
The sudden outbreak of split wards of the '2019 electorates' thread has set me thinking about whether any rules, or guidelines, might be applicable here. I have very serious reservations about splitting wards, of course, but I acknowledge that it's likely to happen as part of the review. And the evidence of the other thread is that split wards are like sugar almonds: you think, "Oh, I'll just have one to taste," then, "One more won't hurt," and before you know it, half the packet has disappeared. So here are a few suggested rules or guidelines, just off the top of my head. - Whole wards are the norm and splits the exception.
- Any split must be justified, case by case, showing how it represents a significant improvement over the best possible non-split plan. The justification should be in terms of the stautory factors applying to boundary-drawing (respect for the existing map, for LA boundaries, &c).
- Splits should use Polling Districts.
- No ward should be split between more than two seats.
- No seat should involve more than one split ward.
- No 'orphan splits': that is, when the boundary of an authority is crossed, at least one whole ward should be taken.
The rationale for the last rule is that orphan wards are regarded as undesirable because of the risk that a single ward from an adjoining LA might be regarded as a peripheral and unimportant part of the seat to which little attention need be paid. A split ward, however, by definition will involve even fewer electors that a whole ward, so will be at even greater risk of being marginalized.
While I agree with all your points, we need to work out what constitutes "the best possible non-split plan". |
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Khunanup
Lib Dem
Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
Posts: 12,055
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Post by Khunanup on Aug 8, 2020 19:58:24 GMT
Why a *significant* improvement? It needs only to represent an overall improvement based on all the factors. You continue to treat ward integrity as the paramount statutory factor. It isn’t - it ranks equally with the other factors. Parliament were made aware of the law and its likely consequences for split wards and criticism of the BCE for not splitting wards in previous reviews. The House of Commons approved the law and the BCE should take note. Be that as it may, I doubt the BCE will indulge in widespread ward splitting, especially with initial recommendations, as they will do as straightforward a map as they can. The responsibilities of people at the hearings this time will be to convince the commissioners of the community interests in splitting wards that they should be more freely open to rather than the ridiculous hoops to split wards last time. |
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Aug 8, 2020 21:55:34 GMT
The other problem with the "no split wards" approach is that quite a lot of wards are arbitrary creations themselves that have completely torn up community links. Some should be automatically split regardless of anything else because that would provide better community links than keeping them whole Part of me really likes the idea of empowering the parliamentary commission to take excessively large multi-member wards and split them into two or more single-member wards at their discretion. That way the ward would no longer be split, and the local government commissions would be deterred from drawing mega-blobs that favour machine politics, as the parliamentary review would serve as an interim review of their monstrosities. |
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Post by greatkingrat on Aug 8, 2020 22:40:40 GMT
The other problem with the "no split wards" approach is that quite a lot of wards are arbitrary creations themselves that have completely torn up community links. Some should be automatically split regardless of anything else because that would provide better community links than keeping them whole Part of me really likes the idea of empowering the parliamentary commission to take excessively large multi-member wards and split them into two or more single-member wards at their discretion. That way the ward would no longer be split, and the local government commissions would be deterred from drawing mega-blobs that favour machine politics, as the parliamentary review would serve as an interim review of their monstrosities. I'm not sure it is always the fault of LGBCE. In the Met boroughs / London, there has been a presumption in favour of 3-member wards, so it is inevitable the wards are going to be large. Even when you move to a mixture of ward sizes, like in Birmingham, you are never going to be able to perfectly reflect community boundaries, assuming you want to keep to a reasonable level of deviation from the quota. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Aug 8, 2020 22:57:28 GMT
I strongly disagree with point 6, for the simple reason that it means that authorities that currently have an integer number of constituencies wholly within them but are now slightly outside the quota are easily fixed with a split ward, whereas if you have to move an entire ward then it gets much more difficult.
Barnet is a good example here - if you shift any whole ward out, you're going to cause a lot of disruption to existing seats and probably have to send a ward from a neighbouring authority the other way. On the other hand, by splitting polling districts you can leave one seat unchanged and two other seats unchanged bar the polling district split.
I would suggest that you modify that point so that orphan splits are only acceptable where the areas being split have strong community ties with areas in the seats they're being combined with, that are no worse than their ties with the seat they're currently in.
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on Aug 9, 2020 13:33:40 GMT
I strongly disagree with point 6, for the simple reason that it means that authorities that currently have an integer number of constituencies wholly within them but are now slightly outside the quota are easily fixed with a split ward, whereas if you have to move an entire ward then it gets much more difficult. Barnet is a good example here - if you shift any whole ward out, you're going to cause a lot of disruption to existing seats and probably have to send a ward from a neighbouring authority the other way. On the other hand, by splitting polling districts you can leave one seat unchanged and two other seats unchanged bar the polling district split. I would suggest that you modify that point so that orphan splits are only acceptable where the areas being split have strong community ties with areas in the seats they're being combined with, that are no worse than their ties with the seat they're currently in. I am not (at least for now) proclaiming my support for point 6, but I only saw your original post on this a couple of hours ago, and Barnet is nothing like as good an example for your contention as you think. Of the two wards concerned, the one I know less well is West Hendon - but of the two polling districts you suggest moving, I do know that the population of the larger one (HRD) lives entirely or almost entirely to the east of the Silk Stream branch of Brent Reservoir, with the area to the west being open space. This ends up giving the population of that polling district far closer ties to the rest of Hendon, despite the A5, than to Kingsbury. A community ties argument might work for the other ward (HRE), but I don't think it has a population large enough by itself to keep both relevant seats within quota. So far as East Barnet ward is concerned, I lived for twenty years just metres outside the northernmost (CBA) of the polling districts you suggest transferring, and I never considered the half-hour uphill walk to Cockfosters station as being preferable to the five-minute walks to New Barnet station or the local bus stops. In fact, most of that polling district is closer, and probably more oriented, to New Barnet than Cockfosters and, even if I thought splitting East Barnet ward a good idea, I would be still be inclined not to transfer CBA - and I think that your numbers don't require it. Most of the neighbouring polling district (CBB), some of which is very close to Cockfosters station, does tend to have rather closer links to Cockfosters than to New Barnet or East Barnet, though most of Park Road near its western edge and the cul de sacs off it probably look more to East Barnet village. Some of the southernmost polling district (CBC), particularly its easternmost part around Oak Hill College, probably also relates more to neighbouring areas across the borough boundary than to the rest of Barnet - but CBC polling district also stretches right into East Barnet village, and most of the polling district looks more to there than to Cockfosters. In brief, if I were drawing boundaries between Barnet and Enfield based on community ties with complete disregard for administrative history, I would probably draw them rather to the west of the current ones - but only transferring half or less of the population you are suggesting, and not along current polling district boundaries. |
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,742
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Post by Adrian on Aug 9, 2020 18:23:54 GMT
fwiw the only ones of islington's rules that I possibly agree with are 1 and 3. The law is that constituencies have to have between 69,000 and 76,000 electors. The Commission's hands shouldn't be tied so that it makes it difficult to carry out the law. It's daft enough that they choose to tie their own feet.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Aug 9, 2020 20:30:43 GMT
In fact the BCE themselves broke islington's rule 5 in at least two places in the second zombie review, and I should have remembered sooner because I live in one of the wards in question. (And I would much rather they did that than tacking on random bits of Rotherham and Barnsley.) |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2020 20:43:19 GMT
Personally I think it would be better if the 5% threshold was a guideline like the one used for local government boundaries. You aim for 5% and only go over it if there if they have a very good reason. Avoiding a ward split would probably count if it still only left a seat out of quota by under 1000.
Of course, ward splits should still be allowed where they create a better balance of the various criteria, but it would reduce the need for them.
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Post by Wisconsin on Aug 9, 2020 20:57:44 GMT
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Post by greenchristian on Aug 9, 2020 21:16:02 GMT
One more consideration that ought to be taken into account with ward splits is local government boundary reviews that finish after the review starts. In a situation like Birmingham in zombie review 2, where there were radical boundary changes that were finalised too late to be officially included in the review, it will probably be impossible to draw a set of boundaries that don't split wards on one of the two sets of boundaries.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Aug 9, 2020 22:09:00 GMT
The law is about to give the PBCs power to "take account" of "local government boundaries which ... are prospective, on the review date" - which means new ward boundaries which are unimplemented but have been authorised in secondary legislation. I would expect the guidance to be quite clear that where ward boundary changes have been authorised in a statutory instrument, the PBCE will use them and not the current ward boundaries.
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