Southwark Labour Group of Councillors and Its Representatives from Across Southwark
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Local Government Boundary Commission for England Electoral Review of Southwark Council Southwark Group of Labour Councillors Submission November 2015 1 Introduction The Labour Party in Southwark welcomes the Local Government Boundary Commission for England’s review of the warding arrangements in Southwark and their decision that Southwark Council should retain 63 Members for future elections. We now welcome the opportunity to submit evidence to the Commission. Labour has 48 of the 63 councillors on Southwark Council, holds all three parliamentary seats and the GLA seat. This document sets out the thinking of the Southwark Labour Group of Councillors and its representatives from across Southwark. We have used our knowledge of working in communities in every part of the borough to set out our proposals for warding patterns and the communities which make up the details of this proposal. In this paper we set out our joint approach, how that meets the criteria set out in law and information to support these claims. We are very happy to discuss the details of this further with the Commission or provide any additional information that is required. 2 Our approach The Commission set out three statutory criteria to the Council’s Chief Executive in their letter of 8 September 2015. 1. To deliver electoral equality where each councillor represents roughly the same number of electors as others across the borough. The LGBCE’s letter to the Chief Executive agrees the council’s own recommendation that the authority retains its current 63 members. The projected electorate figures mean that each councillor would represent 3,862 electors on average in 2021. Our proposals seek to limit variations from that average to 5 percent in 2021. We believe that this parameter ensures electoral equality whilst providing sufficient flexibility to address the other two statutory criteria. A significant challenge in achieving this, however, is the scale of development of new homes in the borough. This has already resulted in the disparities that the review seeks to address, but those disparities become even greater over the period to 2021. The figures provided on electorate projections show that four wards will have experienced an increase in their number of electors of greater than 30% by 2021 (Cathedrals, East Walworth, Faraday and Surrey Docks wards). On the 2015 electorate figures provided, there are currently seven wards that deviate from the borough’s average number of electors per member by more than 10 percent and twelve that deviate by more than 5 percent. By 2021, the projections show that eleven of the current wards would deviate by more than 10 percent and seventeen (that is, all but four) by more than 5 percent. The rate of this growth makes it impossible in some parts of the borough to achieve electoral equality both using the current electorate figures and the 2021 projections without using boundaries that ran counter to the other two statutory criteria in producing wards that looked gerrymandered. In Cathedrals ward, for example, the current electorate would justify 3.5 councillors whilst the 2021 projection would justify 4.9 councillors within that area. Given the differences set out above, our proposals focus on achieving electoral equality in 2021 rather than in 2015. 2. That the pattern of wards should, as far as possible, reflect the interests and identities of local communities. The ward boundary review conducted in 1998 sought to create a pattern of 21 three-member wards. This restriction to only have three-member wards meant that some of the resulting entities poorly reflected local communities. In particular, Livesey ward, Peckham Rye ward and South Camberwell ward divided natural communities and brought together communities that had little common interest. Our proposals therefore use a combination of one-, two- and three-member wards to ensure that electoral equality constraints do not create similar problems through this review. Our proposals use clear boundaries where possible. Whilst an urban area such as Southwark does not have communities separated by large stretches of open fields, it does have distinct communities divided by some of our large parks. All four of the borough’s large parks (Burgess Park, Dulwich Park, Peckham Rye and Southwark Park) have been utilised as boundaries in these proposals. The railway lines that traverse the borough also provide boundaries that tend to divide communities in parts of the borough, as do major roads. We have therefore put more emphasis on these boundaries to divide wards than the current arrangements. In other areas, boundaries are less clear but it is clear that in parts of some polling districts or wards the residents would describe themselves as being part of a different community to those living in 3 other parts of the same district or ward. Our proposals put a greater emphasis on these identity distinctions than the current warding pattern and seek to have names that better describe the area that they represent. For example, the current South Camberwell ward not only includes people who would consider themselves as living in Camberwell but also many that would describe themselves as living in either East Dulwich and Peckham. Our proposals seek to better meet local identities than the current arrangements. 3. That the electoral arrangements should provide for effective and convenient local government. Whilst this criterion is often used for rural councils to ensure that wards do not become too far spread or illogical, our proposals take account of this criteria to ensure that wards are not too geographically diverse in size and to make improvements on the current arrangements. The current ward boundaries often divide council estates and, in some cases, individual blocks of flats (in the case of Lucey Way in Grange and South Bermondsey wards and St Helena Way in Livesey and Rotherhithe wards. The latter has consequently also become a parliamentary constituency boundary dividing a block of flats). Our proposals therefore seek as far as possible to keep council estates within a single ward. This should improve the effectiveness of local government by ensuring that residents of an estate are within a single ward and that when the council needs to consult with residents of one of its estates that it only needs to involve one set of local councillors rather than having toing-and-froing involving representatives from different wards. Our proposals have used the current twenty one wards as a starting point, and each of those wards has an identifiable successor. However, given the three statutory criteria, in some cases these have been reduced from the current three-member arrangement to having two or a single representative. This approach has therefore also resulted in the creation of two new wards, bringing the total number of wards to 23. Eighteen of these wards would have three members, four would have two members and one a single member. We have also addressed those wards which do not make community sense for example Peckham Rye, South Camberwell and Livesey, where we have kept those areas of common interest together. We have also identified ease of travel around and across wards, and grouping areas which have common interests for matters such as consultation or the administration of shared community facilities. Areas Our proposals look at seven areas across the borough, each comprising a number of wards. This is based on the broad communities which exist. We have focused on the historic areas of the borough and within each of these areas proposed wards which group communities through housing estates, community activity and society as well as shared history and identity. We have considered factors such as commercial activity, schools, shopping centres and places of worship. We have then broken these areas down into wards which make up each area. These are, working roughly south to north: • Dulwich • Camberwell and Herne Hill • Peckham and Nunhead • Walworth • Bermondsey and Old Kent Road • Rotherhithe • Borough and Bankside 4 Proposed Boundaries 5 Dulwich Introduction Dulwich covers the most southern part of the London Borough of Southwark. It is made up of a number of distinct areas including Dulwich Village: the traditional village centre, with East Dulwich and West Dulwich on either side, each with their own character and history. The Lambeth/Southwark boundary means that much of West Dulwich lies in Lambeth. South of the village lies Dulwich College and then in the southern ‘point’, communities which border town centres in neighbouring boroughs – Sydenham (Lewisham), Crystal Palace (Croydon) and Gipsy Hill (Lambeth). These Dulwich communities around the Dulwich Woods are all in Southwark but share interests across the borough borders as well as with Dulwich itself. The current Dulwich community council covers three wards: College, East Dulwich and Village wards. However, as a definition of ‘Dulwich’ this poses a number of problems: there are significant parts of what is often considered as East Dulwich that lie outside this boundary, in particular in Peckham Rye and South Camberwell wards, but also The Lane ward. Furthermore, Herne Hill also lies across the Southwark/Lambeth boundary and residents in the Herne Hill part of Village positively identify with Herne Hill in preference to Dulwich. Dulwich has had less development than elsewhere in Southwark since the 1998 review, leaving its wards undersized in terms of its electorates. College ward currently has 11% fewer electors per member than the borough average, Village ward 10% fewer and East Dulwich ward 4% fewer. Dulwich will also have less new development in the period up to 2021 than the rest of the borough. As a consequence, these disparities in the electorate per member in the three wards will become still greater over time. By 2021, the current College ward will have 21% fewer electors per member, Village ward 20% fewer and East Dulwich ward 12% fewer than the 2021 borough average.