Scarborough

[J.G.Harston]

Review of council size, followed by boundary review. Preliminary outline is to reduce from 50 to 40. Cube root of electorate would give 45.
Council report

Rubs hands and digs out maps and plans of newbuild housing developments.

[J.G.Harston]

Officially started last week with LGBC meetings with SBC members and officers. We had a briefing for Town/Parish councillors yesterday. Timetable is:
Jan/Feb/Mar: consultation on council size
May/Jun/Jul: consultation on wards
Oct/Nov/Dec: consultation on draft wards
Jan/Feb 2018: final publication, laid before Parliament
May 2019: borough elections on new wards

Tied in with this SBC will also be doing a governance review in 2020 to review town/parish councils and wards once the new borough wards are in place. This will include the option to merge some tiny parishes where there aren't even any parish councillors. New parish wards to be used in 2023.

[Foggy]

I've never been to your stretch of coastline (although it looks wonderful in photos), so I have no opinion on the ward boundaries, but the reduction in the number of councillors here seems too extreme. I think setting it at 45 would be a reasonable compromise.

[J.G.Harston]

Feb 7, 2017 18:29:14 GMT Foggy said:

I've never been to your stretch of coastline (although it looks wonderful in photos), so I have no opinion on the ward boundaries, but the reduction in the number of councillors here seems too extreme. I think setting it at 45 would be a reasonable compromise.

As it turns out, the cube root rule does suggest about 45.

[J.G.Harston]

LGBCE have published initial recommendations for Scarborough Borough.

www.lgbce.org.uk/current-reviews/yorkshire-and-the-humber/north-yorkshire/scarborough

My/WTC's recommendations for Whitby have been used (slightly tweeked) as an improvement over SBC's recommendation. They've dropped the minor "tidy-up" tweeks, but I think that's live-with-able. I think WTC can recommend full acceptance.

In Scarborough Town they have taken SBC's recommendation to have wards coterminal with the county divisions, which also makes sense in the absense of any strong geographical groupings in the town to base wards on.

Filey is also re-united into a single borough ward.

Even with the few remaining oddities (breaching the Whitby/Scarborough rural boundary) I think it's close enough to a good job to accept in full.

[johnloony]

May 15, 2016 17:02:37 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Review of council size, followed by boundary review. Preliminary outline is to reduce from 50 to 40. Cube root of electorate would give 45.

What has the cube root of the electorate got to do with anything?

[J.G.Harston]

Oct 31, 2017 14:22:08 GMT johnloony said:

May 15, 2016 17:02:37 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Review of council size, followed by boundary review. Preliminary outline is to reduce from 50 to 40. Cube root of electorate would give 45.

What has the cube root of the electorate got to do with anything?

In discussion on "how many members 'should' a council have" there is the observation that a lot of councils have a number of members that is proportional to something between the square root of the electorate and the cube root of the electorate. Eg, Sheffield is four times the size of Barnsley and has twice the number of councillors, Birmingham is twice the size of Sheffield and has (had?) 1.4-ish times the number of councillors. The observations was also that mets tend to be nearer to K*SQR and non-mets closer to 1*CUBE.

If all councils had a country-wide uniform electorate/councillor ratio then you'd either get Barnsley with 12 councillors or Birmingham with 240.