Dear Mr Ashby, Draft recommendations for Windsor and Maidenhead – input from Ascot Branch Labour Party Thank you for your March 2018 report containing your draft recommendations for new electoral arrangements, in which you made the point that the Commission would be ‘particularly interested to hear local views relating to the proposed wards during this consultation’ [ParaGraph 75]. I write to convey the views of Ascot Branch Labour Party in response to that request. Number of councillors - overall To beGin, we do not aGree with your overall recommendation to move to 42 councillors, as this introduces an unnecessary inequality between Maidenhead and Windsor in terms of the number of electors per councillor. Your earlier proposal was for 43 councillors, which was less iniquitous, reGardinG one of your principal statutory criteria, electoral equality. In fact, numerically we believe an even better solution would be to have a reduced council of 41 members, comprisinG 22 from Maidenhead and 19 from Windsor. This achieves much better equality than either 42 or 43. Number of councillors – Ascot, Sunninghill and Sunningdale Secondly, whether there are 41, 42 or 43 councillors overall, the Ascot area (Ascot, Sunninghill, Sunningdale and Cheapside) cannot equitably sustain 6 councillors, when compared to the rest of the borough. We believe your own fiGures show this quite clearly, with both of your proposed wards having a variance of -13% by 2023. Moreover, you have only achieved this by ‘encroaching’ into Old Windsor, an area which does not look to Ascot for its identity, and in fact does not have easy transport links to Ascot. If the overall council is reduced to 41 instead of 42, this would make the variance from having 6 councillors even worse, at approximately -15%. We see no convincing reason to discriminate in this way, and we are surprised that you state your recommendations are broadly based on those of the Council and the Windsor Conservative Association. We question what do either of those bodies know about the community identity and interests of the Ascot area, and what these proposals were based on? Neither the Council nor the Windsor Conservative Association have attempted to approximate electoral equality for our area. Ascot and the related villaGes currently have 7 councillors in a 57-member council. As there are reductions in the number of councillors proposed in the whole of the Royal BorouGh, we can be served very well by having 5 councillors covering this area in the future. This would reduce the variance here to +4.4% if there are 42 councillors overall, and to +1.9% if there are 41 overall. You quite riGhtly refer in your report to “the isolated nature of this area in relation to the rest of the borouGh” [ParaGraph --]. , but we do not think you have reached the riGht preliminary conclusions from this. Your comment that “the consequential effects of adoptinG a five-member scheme for the area on proposed wards across the rest of the borouGh was siGnificant” is not explained. However, the consequential effects of a six-member scheme are that electoral equality is lost, and we do not believe that our isolation justifies this. Warding Pattern Your recommendation states that you were “unable to provide a warding pattern which was able to both reflect community identities and minimise electoral variances”. We respectfully suGGest that such a wardinG pattern can be identified, and indeed has already been outlined very convincinGly by Parish Councillor Humphrey durinG your consultation on new boundaries late last year. Sunningdale We believe that SunninGdale Parish Council and a number of other contributors to the consultation arGued for the maintenance of a 2-member ward that is co-terminous as far as is possible with the boundaries of Sunningdale Parish Council itself. We support this, and in our view there are small areas of Sunninghill and South Ascot, currently bordering on Sunningdale, which do have great affinity with Sunningdale and which sensibly can (and should) be added to the Sunningdale borough ward to help achieve electoral equality. BrinGinG the whole of Silwood Road, Larch Avenue and Lynwood – along with Heathfield Avenue – into SunninGdale ward, would establish a clear area of undeveloped land markinG the division between Sunningdale and Sunninghill; this is something which is important to residents on both sides of the divide. Similarly, the green areas around St Mary’s school and St Francis church on Coronation Road would present a more natural boundary between Sunningdale and South Ascot than the current straiGht line cuttinG across the BaGshot Road. The specific addresses currently listed in South Ascot, which we propose as having good links to Sunningdale are: the remainder of Bagshot Road, Brockenhurst Road, Friary Road, Greyfriars Drive, Horse Gate Ride, Kelsall Place, Monks Close/Drive/Walk, ReGents Walk and St Mary’s Road. We aGree entirely that a community Governance review for SunninGdale and its relationship to SunninGhill and Ascot is due. While this is clearly outside the scope of the present Local Government Boundary review, we would suGGest that ward boundaries now should aim to reflect the local understandinG of where the loGical boundaries are. The proposed ‘South Ascot & Sunningdale’ ward is too arbitrary and takes us back to the old, ineffective ward pattern which we thouGht we had left behind in 2003. Sunningdale & Cheapside A solution achievinG ‘perfect’ equality would be explicitly to add Cheapside to Sunningdale as well as the sections of SunninGhill and South Ascot mentioned above. We fully support doinG so, and we believe that Cheapside has far greater community of interest and identity with Sunningdale than South Ascot does, taken altoGether. For example, the main access to the Windsor Great Park from Sunningdale is via Blacknest Gate, which is in fact in the Cheapside pollinG district; while many parents in Cheapside brinG their children to the Broomhall Lane Recreational Ground; and Cheapside residents frequently dine and shop in SunninGdale. Overview - Ascot and Sunninghill If a 2-member ward is established for SunninGdale and Cheapside, this would then leave 3 councillors (we suGGest, rather than 4) to be shared out across Ascot and SunninGhill. The question which follows would be whether to combine them into a single ward, or into 2 or 3 separate wards. To take into account the interests and identities of local communities, we think it is clear that 3 separate wards would provide the better solution. One of the strikinG features of our area is that we consider ourselves to be made up of a collection of distinct villaGes. This was a core theme of the NeiGhbourhood Plan (NP) made for the Ascot, Sunninghill and Sunningdale area in 2014 (e.G. see p.14); and the principle of maintaining the separation between villages received a very high degree of agreement in the NP consultation (p.27). We believe this should be taken into account when decidinG the wardinG pattern here. In addition, the fact that sinGle-member wards are well suited to more rural areas would provide further reason to support the creation of three new, single-member wards. South Ascot As evidence of this, please note that South Ascot was quite riGhtly acknowledged as a distinct area in the NP (e.G. p.3), and we believe this should be reflected in the final wardinG pattern by havinG a sinGle- member ward servinG South Ascot. The community ‘hub’, which has lonG served as the pollinG station, is the church hall on Church Road, attached to the local church, All Souls. These, toGether with the South Ascot VillaGe School, the South Ascot Recreation Ground, and Allen’s Field, are the principal places where the South Ascot community comes toGether. We believe that South Ascot goes as far as the south side of the A329 (HiGh Street/London Road), rather than beinG bound by the railway line. To South Ascot residents, the local music club JaGz, Heatherwood hospital and the nearest GP surgery (at Ascot Medical Centre) are all part of South Ascot. Ascot Heath Quite distinct and separate from this is the residential area between Blackmoor Stream and the racecourse (north of the HiGh Street), currently served by the pollinG district called North Ascot. People in this part of Ascot attend All Saints Church, on London Road; its church hall is the venue for numerous local groups and classes; the young children in this neighbourhood play at Blythewood recreation area and woods, which they share with local nature lovers; and their local GP surGery is Green Meadows. By removinG the streets to the south of the HiGh Street/London Road (and puttinG them more correctly into South Ascot), the projected electorate in this area by 2023 would almost exactly match the number required for another sinGle-member ward, and we believe this would further help to build the sense of community identity and shared interests in this part of Ascot. We think Ascot Heath would be a Good name for such a ward, in preference to North Ascot, which miGht produce some confusion with the common name for the neiGhbouring part of Bracknell Forest. Sunninghill Finally, Sunninghill, with its charming High Street, on which is situated the local primary school St Michael’s and community facility/playhouse in the Cordes Hall and next door Novello Theatre, undoubtedly has an individual character discrete from either South Ascot or the residential ‘Ascot Heath’ area we describe above. Again, it has its own GP surGery at KinGs Corner, and church (St Michael’s & All AnGels). The children’s play area, and football pitch for Sunninghill is the Victory Field, while the neiGhbouring Tom Green’s Field is developing into an excellent wild life sanctuary and peaceful walking area for the local population (the equivalent of Allen’s Field in South Ascot and Blythewood in ‘Ascot Heath’).