Newcastle Conservative Federation

Newcastle Conservative Federation Newcastle City Council Electoral Review – Draft Boundaries Submission August 2016 This is a response from the Newcastle Conservative Federation to the Local Government Boundary Commission’s draft proposals for electoral ward boundaries within Newcastle upon Tyne. It draws on the views expressed to us by our members and local residents. We have chosen not to submit a full alternative response to the Commission’s proposals but would like to offer some thoughts on some specific ward proposals where we have received feedback from our members or residents. Newcastle Conservatives responded to the original consultation on warding arrangements by expressing its view that the number of councillors should reduce from the current level of seventy-eight. Our original proposal was to reduce the number of councillors to fifty-two representing fifty-two single member wards. However we acknowledged that were the Council and the Commission to continue to divide the number of councillors by three then the reduction should be to fifty-four councillors with three members each representing one of eighteen wards. We set out our reasons for this in detail which we have attached as an appendix to this submission. The strong arguments in favour of a reduction appeared initially to have been accepted by the Commission, however the Commission then changed its mind after protests from the City Council. We remain disappointed that the Commission chose to cave in to pressure from Labour councillors and declined to take this opportunity to reduce the cost of politics in Newcastle and provide the City with an adequate level of representation. We continue to believe the case for reduction is strong and we will continue to pursue this point in our political campaigns. We are broadly supportive of the proposals that the Commission have proposed for Newcastle and appreciate that drawing electoral boundaries is never an easy task and it is always difficult to satisfy all interested parties. We would like to thank the Commission and the staff at the City Council – whose proposals have largely been adopted unchanged by the Commission – for their hard work. We wish to offer to principal observations about the proposals as a whole: the robustness of the population projections used and the large disparities in elector numbers that will continue to exist between wards. We understand that the Commission uses population projections to calculate ward boundaries looking ahead to 2021. This is welcome as, unlike parliamentary boundaries, local government ward boundaries tend to remain static for longer periods. However we do not believe that the projections used by the Commission are entirely robust. Some of the proposed housing expansion that has been used in these calculations remains earmarked for development but development is not yet guaranteed to go ahead. Sadly, there is a history in Newcastle of proposed housing developments never materialising such as those proposed in the Benwell and Scotswood areas several years ago. We would therefore urge the Commission to continue to review the development of populations in Newcastle in order to ensure that warding arrangements reflect actual houses that are built rather than hypothetical houses that never materialise. We are also concerned about the large disparities that will continue to exist between wards even if the 2021 figures prove to be accurate. Although we accept that the Commission’s guidance requires wards to be within 10% each of the average – Newcastle will have six wards which are either +/- 8 or 9% from the average. This means there will be a variance of 18% between the largest and smallest wards in Newcastle after this review. We understand that this is acceptable under the Commission’s working practices but we believe that this difference remains too large. We believe that the Commission should strive for further equality between wards so the number of electors in each ward is more equal. In addition to feedback received about the proposals in their entirety we would like to offer some observations on a number of specific ward proposals that the Commission has produced. We do not wish to comment on every ward that has been proposed or offer a full alternative scheme for the City. Instead we wish to make four specific representations to the Commission both supporting and opposing the wards they have proposed. Ward Number 6 – Castle We support the idea of keeping the three northern villages in a single ward. We believe that these villages each have distinct identities individually but also a shared identity as being on the periphery of the city. We also welcome the fact that this ward keeps the Great Park development in a single ward. Although it is disappointing that the Kingston Park area will be divided between this ward and Cheviot ward, we understand that inclusion of Kingston Park in a single ward would result in unacceptable levels of electoral inequality. We support this proposed ward. Ward Number 7 – Chapel We welcome the split of the current Westerhope ward which allows the uniting of the Chapel Park and Chapel House areas into a single ward. Local residents have suggested this idea for a number of years and it seems sensible to place Westerhope Village in a ward with Denton whilst the similar communities of Chapel Park and Chapel House are kept together. We support this proposed ward. Ward Numbers 9 & 18 – Dene and Manor Park The wards proposed for the South Gosforth, Benton and High Heaton areas have generated the most concerns and responses from residents and Conservative representatives in Newcastle. The Commission has proposed to unite the communities in High West Jesmond and South Gosforth with those in High Heaton despite these being entirely distinct from each other. The separation of South Gosforth and High West Jesmond from the rest of Gosforth does not appear to make any logical sense when these communities are linked in many ways. Similarly the artificial boundaries that have been used to divide the communities east of Jesmond Dene in Benton and High Heaton do not appear to have taken into account community links in these areas. We would suggest an alternative arrangement where the communities east of Jesmond Dene are kept together. We would note that both Dene and Manor Park wards are below the electoral quota whereas Heaton and Ouseburn wards – both south of this area but east of Jesmond Dene are above the quota. We therefore believe that it would be possible to construct a wards that stretched further southwards without breaching the natural boundary of Jesmond Dene. We appreciate that the Commission has sought to use the Coast Road as a boundary to create wards however this is not a significant boundary that defines communities on either side of it. Residents living in the Holystone estate and Cochrane Park, for example, regularly use facilities south of the Coast Road such as the local primary school and facilities on and surrounding Chillingham Road. We would also note that if the current proposal is to go ahead that we believe that a reference to ‘South Gosforth’ should be included in the name of the ward. We therefore oppose this ward and would support an alternative proposal that kept the communities on each side of Jesmond Dene in separate wards. Ward Number 19 – Monument We understand the rationale behind the Commission’s decision to create a single ward which includes all of Newcastle’s central business district and the immediate residential areas which border this. Newcastle City Centre has been fragmented between four different wards since the last boundary review and this has often made it difficult for City-centre issues to be dealt with uniformly. We are however concerned that the new Monument ward is a very artificial construction and that it is not likely to lead to any community identity being fostered around this electoral area. We neither support nor oppose this ward but would like the Commission to consider how it can best ensure that wards lead to the generation of a better sense of community when they reconsider their draft arrangements. We wish to reiterate that we are broadly supportive of the Commission’s overall proposals for Newcastle. We do feel there are a few areas where these could be re-examined and we believe we have offered some reasonable observations in this regard and we hope the Commission will consider these in the next stage of their review. Newcastle Conservative Federation For more information on this submission please contact: Mr James Bartle (Chairman) ATTACHMENT 1 Newcastle Conservative Federation Newcastle City Council Electoral Review – Council Size Submission September 2015 This is the submission of the Conservative Party in Newcastle upon Tyne to the City Council’s consultation on the size of the City Council ahead of its own submission to the Boundary Commission. This document sets out our preferred number of councillors for a future City Council and the reasons why we believe this should be the preferred size. Although the City Council’s Constitutional Committee has already agreed that the Council’s submission to the Boundary Commission should be based on wards with three members we wish to suggest an alternative to this proposal. We propose that instead of retaining the current model of wards with three members, the City Council should instead be composed of a larger number of wards each represented by a single councillor. We believe that the total number of councillors should be reduced to fifty- two each representing one of fifty-two single member wards. This represents a reduction of a third of the current size of the City Council. We set out our general arguments in favour of a reduction in the number of councillors below, but we believe that the Council should adopt our proposal for single member wards for two key reasons.

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