Post by YL on Apr 3, 2017 10:15:58 GMT
When there's discussion of bad existing constituency boundaries, someone always mentions Lancaster & Fleetwood. It's not hard to see why: the two places in its name are not very close together and don't seem to have much in common, the only way of getting from one to another staying in the constituency involves a passenger ferry, and it doesn't even include the parts of Lancaster north of the Lune.
So I had a play with the Fifth Review numbers in Lancashire to see what the alternatives were. The Fifth Review report does mention two counter-proposals; one included a horrendous-sounding "Ribble Estuary" constituency and so I won't look further into that, but the other one sounds more sensible, and I think the ideas I had were on similar lines to it.
Firstly, I removed the Fleetwood wards from the Lancaster seat and added the two Skerton wards (Lancaster north of the Lune) and all of the eastern rural part of Wyre district. I transferred Lower Lune Valley to Morecambe & Lunesdale to compensate it, although its electorate still ended up a bit low. (This low electorate may be why Skerton is in the "wrong" seat, I suppose, but I was trying to fix Lancaster & Fleetwood so I wanted to move them.) I presume this Lancaster seat would have retained the old Lancaster & Wyre name.
Including eastern Wyre with Lancaster rules out the Wyre & Preston North seat the Commission created. However, it leaves a tempting group of wards in western Wyre which are almost big enough for a constituency (in this context) and cover Fleetwood, Thornton-Cleveleys and Poulton-le-Fylde, so that's going to be my "new" constituency. It isn't quite big enough, so a little extra territory needs to be added. One possibility, which the counter-proposal actually made appears to have done, is to add the northernmost Blackpool ward, Anchorsholme. Blackpool North, shorn of its northern end, then pushes south and Blackpool South becomes the pitchforky Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's. The rest of the Fylde seat then joins with the parts of Preston the Commission actually put into Wyre & Preston North. As well as the Lytham pitchforks, the two crossings of the Blackpool boundary might have been a problem with this approach, given the way the Fifth Review treated unitaries.
Alternatively, I tried adding three wards of Fylde district south of Poulton-le-Fylde to the Poulton-le-Fylde & Fleetwood seat. That allows only one crossing of the Blackpool boundary, but it leaves the Fylde & Preston North seat a bit small, so it needs to take more of Preston, which probably forces Preston to take in a few wards south of the Ribble. You still get Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's.
If you want to avoid both Lancaster & Fleetwood and Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's, the obvious approach seems to me to be to maintain Fleetwood's link to north Blackpool and try to create a seat stretching round the edge of Blackpool from Thornton down to Lytham. It can be done, but its boundary with Blackpool North & Fleetwood in the Cleveleys area looks problematic.
So, yes, I think it was avoidable. But the alternatives, especially Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's, might have been just as unpopular...
So I had a play with the Fifth Review numbers in Lancashire to see what the alternatives were. The Fifth Review report does mention two counter-proposals; one included a horrendous-sounding "Ribble Estuary" constituency and so I won't look further into that, but the other one sounds more sensible, and I think the ideas I had were on similar lines to it.
Firstly, I removed the Fleetwood wards from the Lancaster seat and added the two Skerton wards (Lancaster north of the Lune) and all of the eastern rural part of Wyre district. I transferred Lower Lune Valley to Morecambe & Lunesdale to compensate it, although its electorate still ended up a bit low. (This low electorate may be why Skerton is in the "wrong" seat, I suppose, but I was trying to fix Lancaster & Fleetwood so I wanted to move them.) I presume this Lancaster seat would have retained the old Lancaster & Wyre name.
Including eastern Wyre with Lancaster rules out the Wyre & Preston North seat the Commission created. However, it leaves a tempting group of wards in western Wyre which are almost big enough for a constituency (in this context) and cover Fleetwood, Thornton-Cleveleys and Poulton-le-Fylde, so that's going to be my "new" constituency. It isn't quite big enough, so a little extra territory needs to be added. One possibility, which the counter-proposal actually made appears to have done, is to add the northernmost Blackpool ward, Anchorsholme. Blackpool North, shorn of its northern end, then pushes south and Blackpool South becomes the pitchforky Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's. The rest of the Fylde seat then joins with the parts of Preston the Commission actually put into Wyre & Preston North. As well as the Lytham pitchforks, the two crossings of the Blackpool boundary might have been a problem with this approach, given the way the Fifth Review treated unitaries.
Alternatively, I tried adding three wards of Fylde district south of Poulton-le-Fylde to the Poulton-le-Fylde & Fleetwood seat. That allows only one crossing of the Blackpool boundary, but it leaves the Fylde & Preston North seat a bit small, so it needs to take more of Preston, which probably forces Preston to take in a few wards south of the Ribble. You still get Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's.
If you want to avoid both Lancaster & Fleetwood and Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's, the obvious approach seems to me to be to maintain Fleetwood's link to north Blackpool and try to create a seat stretching round the edge of Blackpool from Thornton down to Lytham. It can be done, but its boundary with Blackpool North & Fleetwood in the Cleveleys area looks problematic.
So, yes, I think it was avoidable. But the alternatives, especially Blackpool South & Lytham St Anne's, might have been just as unpopular...