District Electoral Areas Commissioner PROVISIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS Local Government District Electoral Areas for Northern Ireland Richard H. Mackenzie CB May 2013 Published in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 2 to The District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) Order 1984 (SI 1984 No. 360) (as amended) Contents PAGE 1. Introduction 2 2. Procedure 4 3. Composition of District Electoral Areas 5 4. Provisional Recommendations 8 5. Next Steps 9 Appendices 1. Schedule of Provisional Recommendations 10 2. Assessors and Commissioner’s Secretariat 22 1 1 Introduction “...the grouping together of the wards… into electoral areas for the purpose of local government elections...” (Article 2 (2) of the District Electoral Areas Commissioner (NI) Order 1984, as amended) 1.1 The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, The Rt. Hon. Theresa Villiers MP, appointed me as District Electoral Areas Commissioner for Northern Ireland with effect from 21 January 2013. My task is to make recommendations for the grouping together of wards in each of the eleven new local government districts into District Electoral Areas (“DEAs”) for the purpose of future local government elections. 1.2 The legislative provisions concerning the appointment and function of the Commissioner, the procedures to be followed and the rules in accordance with which recommendations are to be made are contained in the District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) Order 1984 (“1984 Order”), as amended by the District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Orders of 2007 and 2009 and the District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) Order 2012. 1.3 The 1984 Order, as amended, designates three Assessors to provide advice and support to the Commissioner. They are the Registrar General of Births and Deaths in Northern Ireland, the Chief Survey Officer of Land and Property Services and the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland. The Assessors are listed in Appendix 2. 1.4 To assist me, I have the support of a small Secretariat. The team is led by the Secretary to the Commissioner, Liz Benson. I also have the assistance of professional and technical staff from Land and Property Services. The team members are listed in Appendix 2. 1.5 The 1984 Order provides that the Commissioner may ask the Secretary of State to appoint one or more Assistant Commissioners to inquire into, and report on, such matters as the Commissioner thinks fit. I have asked the Secretary of State to appoint Assistant Commissioners to preside over any public inquiries. 1.6 On 22 June 2009, in my capacity as Local Government Boundaries Commissioner for Northern Ireland, I submitted my Final Report to the Department of the Environment, setting out recommendations for the boundaries and names of eleven new local government districts and for the number, boundaries and names of the wards into which each district is to be divided, in accordance with the Local Government (Boundaries) Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 (“2008 Act”). 2 1.7 The 2008 Act provides for the reorganisation of the current 26 local government districts into eleven new districts which will incorporate, respectively, the whole or the major part of the following existing districts:- 1. Antrim; Newtownabbey. 2. Ards; North Down. 3. Armagh City and District; Banbridge; Craigavon. 4. Ballymena; Carrickfergus; Larne. 5. Ballymoney; Coleraine; Limavady; Moyle. 6. Belfast. 7. Castlereagh; Lisburn City. 8. Cookstown; Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough; Magherafelt. 9. Derry; Strabane. 10. Down; Newry and Mourne. 11. Fermanagh; Omagh. 1.8 The 2008 Act also provides presumptively that the number of wards in the Belfast local government district shall be 60 and in each of the other districts shall be 40. However, there was discretion to increase or decrease the number of wards by not more than 5, and this was exercised in relation to the Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon district and the Newry, Mourne and Down district where the number of wards is 41. 1.9 The Local Government (Boundaries) Order (Northern Ireland) 2012 (“2012 Order”) gave effect to the recommendations of the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner subject to two modifications relating to the boundary between the Belfast local government district and the Lisburn and Castlereagh local government district. 3 2 Procedure 2.1 The procedure to be followed by the Commissioner involves the publication of Provisional Recommendations setting out proposed DEAs for each local government district and inviting written representations within an eight week consultation period. The proposed DEAs are based on the districts and wards established under the 2012 Order. This Report presents my Provisional Recommendations which are set out in Appendix 1 and on the accompanying maps. Representations are now invited on these recommendations. 2.2 Where representations are received objecting to the Provisional Recommendations, the Commissioner may cause a public inquiry to be held as to the grouping of the wards in a district, and must do so if the representations are made by an existing district council or by not less than 100 registered local government electors in the district. After consideration of the representations – written and oral - and the recommendations of Assistant Commissioners who preside over any inquiries, the Commissioner submits a report to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland setting out Final Recommendations. 2.3 The legislation provides that as soon as may be after a Commissioner has submitted a report, the Secretary of State shall lay the report before Parliament. 4 3 Composition of District Electoral Areas Rules 3.1 Schedule 3 to the District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) Order 1984 (“1984 Order”) prescribes four rules in accordance with which recommendations of the Commissioner are to be made. These are:- 1. No ward shall be included partly in one electoral area and partly in another. 2. Each electoral area shall consist of not less than five, and not more than seven, wards. 3. Each ward in an electoral area shall have at least one boundary in common with another ward in that area, except where the ward consists of an island. 4. A name shall be given to each electoral area. Method of Approach 3.2 These statutory rules are fundamental to the delineation of DEAs but the 1984 Order does not provide any guidance as to factors which could or should be taken into account in formulating proposals for DEAs or whether the number of wards to be included in any electoral area should be 5, 6 or 7. In the absence of such guidance, I considered it reasonable to establish a range of factors which would inform my approach to the grouping of wards as DEAs. 3.3 The requirement to group wards into DEAs is a consequence of the establishment of local government wards by the Local Government (Boundaries) Order (NI) 2012 which was made under the provisions of section 50 of the Local Government Act (NI) 1972, as amended. I took the view, therefore, that it would be reasonable to have regard to the Rules for the delineation of districts and wards as set out in Part III of Schedule 4 to the 1972 Act which informed the recommendations of the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner. Some of these Rules are not relevant to the grouping of wards as DEAs, as they relate solely to the initial creation of wards and districts, but those which I consider to have relevance are:- Regard shall be had to the desirability of determining district and ward boundaries which are readily identifiable (Paragraph 14). In determining the number and boundaries of wards within a district regard shall be had to- (a) the size, population and physical diversity of the district; (b) the desirability that there should be a proper representation of the rural and urban electorate within the district (Paragraph 17). Within any one district there shall, as far as is reasonably practical having regard to Paragraph 17, be substantially the same number of local electors in each ward (Paragraph 19 (1)). 5 3.4 As the then Local Government Boundaries Commissioner, I indicated in my Final Recommendations Report of June 2009, that the concept of a readily identifiable boundary means a boundary that can be known or ascertained easily, or with relatively little effort. I took the view that the phrase included ground features such as road and railway lines; estuaries, lakes, rivers and upland areas; footpaths, cycle paths, garden and field boundaries and walls; and the boundaries of open space such as parks, cemeteries and golf courses. 3.5 I also took the view, in my 2009 Report, that the phrase “substantially the same number of electors in each ward” should be construed as not more than 10% from the electoral average for the district. The figures used in that Report were taken from the electoral register as at 1 July 2008. For the purposes of the grouping of wards into DEAs, I have used updated electorate figures as at December 2012 (the most recent figures prior to my appointment) supplied by the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland. 3.6 On the basis of the above considerations, the approach which I adopted in the grouping of wards into DEAs was, where possible, to have regard to the following:- the use of physical features such as loughs, estuaries, rivers, hill ranges, and major roads as DEA boundaries; the creation of distinct urban and rural DEAs; the inclusion of complete settlements within a DEA; the creation of geographically compact DEAs; the creation of DEAs where the ratio of electorate to each councillor is not more than 10% from the overall ratio for the district as a whole. 3.7 The statutory requirement that a DEA must contain 5, 6 or 7 wards is a constraint in the consideration of which factors can be applied in particular circumstances.