Kingsley, Paul

From: Charles Gauntlett > Sent: 10 March 2016 14:04 To: Philip Coleman Cc: reviews Subject: District Council Boundary Review - Comments from West County Council Attachments: UA report appendix 2 consultation response.docx

Follow Up Flag: Follow up Flag Status: Completed

Dear Philip,

The County Council has considered Council’s work on its electoral boundary review. It has focussed on Chichester District Council’s proposed scheme and has answered the questions in the consultation document.

The County Council also makes a general comment about how it hopes that the Commission may adopt whole county reviews in future, if the pilot in East Sussex is successful, to give more chance of having better levels of co-terminosity between a county and districts.

Kind regards, Charles

Charles Gauntlett | Senior Advisor – Council and Member Support, County Council | Location:

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1 Response to Boundary Review Consultation from West Sussex County Council

West Sussex County Council has considered Chichester District Council’s Electoral Review 2016 Consultation Document and has agreed the following response to the consultation questions and also made some general comments regarding the proposals.

Question 1: We agree that Shopwhyke Lakes should be included in Oving ward.

Question 2: We agree that Chichester City should be dealt with as a separate unit and that district ward boundaries should not cross the city boundary.

Question 3: Our preference is for option 2, with a single-member ward for (comprising the village and the northern edge of ) and a three- member ward for the core community of Selsey. The proposed County Council division puts Sidlesham in with , so it will be better for a single member Sidlesham district ward to be 100% within the County Wtterings division.

Question 5: On balance, our preference is for option 2. We acknowledge that whilst the western end of / is within Parish, residents are oriented to the community facilities of East Wittering.

Question 6: No view

Question 7: In general, we have a preference for single member wards; however we recognise in this case that owing to the variance a two-member ward is preferable.

Question 8: In our view, either option is preferable to a ward that is over 15% above the norm. On balance, our preference is for option 1, as this would keep the defined community of Fishbourne intact.

Question 9: our preference is for Westbourne as the ward name.

Question 10: We suggest ‘’ as a more appropriate alternative ward name. the Goodwood estate is right across this ward and is preferable to a village at one end of the proposed ward.

Question 11: In our view the community connections for residents of & and lie to the west.

Question 12: No view

Question 13: In our view, should be included in the Ward as it is a largely rural settlement and also as will continue to experience considerable development pressure. This would provide better co-terminosity with the County Division.

General Comments: We note with concern the proliferation of wards spanning county division boundaries. A greater number of district wards than we are comfortable with will have their territory divided between two county councillors. We recognise that this is in part inevitable given the 25% reduction in the number of district councillors; however we strongly feel that a simultaneous, whole-county review would have produced a more sympathetic result, to the benefit of all our residents. This is particularly the case given that the County Council is currently in the later stages of its own review and Horsham and Crawley are also scheduled for review in the near future. We are aware that a pilot whole-county review of both districts wards and county divisions is currently underway in East Sussex and, pending successful completion, we hope that this will be adopted as standard practice in future.