High Peak Borough Council Boundary Proposals from Andrew Bingham MP
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High Peak Borough Council Boundary Proposals from Andrew Bingham MP As the Member of Parliament for the High Peak Constituency, the boundary of which is co- terminus with the boundary of High Peak Borough Council, I wish to submit proposals for ward boundaries. Having represented the High Peak for over three and a half years as the Member of Parliament, with 7 years prior to that as the parliamentary candidate, in addition to 12 years previous experience as a Councillor on High Peak Borough Council, as well as having lived in the High Peak all my life, I believe I am well qualified to comment on where communities are based across the High Peak, and how best to represent those communities in terms of Borough Council ward boundaries. The first thing to note is that there are four distinct areas of the High Peak. There is the area around Glossop and Glossopdale; the area around Buxton; the central area of the High Peak which includes Chapel-en-le-Frith, Chinley, Whaley Bridge, New Mills, Hayfield, and other smaller villages and settlements; and the Hope Valley area, which includes Castleton, Hope, Bamford and other smaller settlements, and is mostly very rural. The current boundaries do a good job of marking the boundaries between these four areas, and I don’t propose anything which would change this. Indeed, for convenience, my proposals are grouped into these four areas. Glossopdale proposals Summary of Glossopdale Proposals Dinting Old Total 1639 Transfer from Simmondley 70 Transfer from Howard Town 146 New Total 1855 New variance: +5.1% Gamesley Old Total 1792 Transfer from Hadfield South 76 New Total 1868 New variance: +5.84% Hadfield North (2 seat) (Create new 2 seat ward) Old Total 1530 Transfer from Padfield 354 Transfer from Hadfield South 1626 New Total 3510 New variance: -0.57% Hadfield South (Create new 1 seat ward) Old Total 3606 Transfer to Hadfield North 1626 Transfer to St John’s 80 Transfer to Gamesley 76 New Total 1824 New variance: +3.34% Howard Town (2 seat) Old Total 3696 Transfer to Dinting 146 Transfer to Whitfield 3 Transfer from Old Glossop 159 New Total 3706 New variance: +4.99% Old Glossop (Create 1 new seat ward) Old Total 3945 Transfer to Shirebrook 1899 Transfer to Howard Town 159 Transfer to Whitfield 25 Transfer to St. John’s 8 New Total 1854 New variance: +5.04% Padfield Old Total 2111 Transfer to Hadfield North 354 Transfer from Tintwistle 62 New Total 1819 New variance: +3.06% Shirebrook (Create new 1 seat ward) Old Total 0 Transfer from Old Glossop 1899 New Total 1899 New variance: +7.59% Simmondley (2 seat) Old Total 3889 Transfer to Whitfield 89 Transfer to Howard Town 70 New Total 3730 New variance: +5.67% St. John’s Old Total 1729 Transfer from Hadfield South 80 Transfer from Old Glossop 8 New Total 1817 New variance: +2.95% Tintwistle Old Total 1842 Transfer to Padfield 62 New Total 1780 New variance: +0.85% Whitfield Old Total 1711 Transfer from Simmondley 89 Transfer from Howard Town 3 Transfer from Old Glossop 25 New Total 1828 New variance: +3.57% Detail of Glossopdale Proposals It is clear that to satisfy electoral equality, there are a number of changes required to boundaries in the Glossop area. However, I also believe there are a number of strange boundary arrangements in Glossopdale – some of them longstanding – and now would be a good opportunity to rectify them. 1. St. John’s Starting with the largest ward, this ward includes part of Glossop Road in Gamesley, and to improve electoral equality, I propose that the rest of Glossop Road, including Copper Beech Drive and Orchard Drive (total of approx. 80 electors) be transferred from Hadfield South ward into St. John’s ward. This would help improve community cohesion, as they would then be in the same ward as the rest of the road. It also helps to address an arbitrary boundary in this area. Elsewhere in St. John’s ward, the boundary follows the Peak District National Park boundary in a circle around Glossop itself, and on the boundary with Old Glossop ward there are two small areas which are disadvantaged because of this. The first is the Jumble Farm area just off Derbyshire Level. This is contained in Old Glossop ward, despite having no links to it. I propose to move the 4 electors in that area into St. John’s ward, as that is the ward which the access road comes out into. Slightly further north, there are 4 electors on Derbyshire Level who are just outside the National Park boundary, leaving them in a different ward (Old Glossop) to their immediate neighbours. It seems to be to be obvious that they should also be moved into St. John’s ward. 2. Gamesley Gamesley estate has some of the strongest community ties in the High Peak, but Gamesley ward doesn’t include all of the estate, because the estate is – at the moment – too large to be a complete ward. However, I propose moving 76 electors on Edale Bank, Edale Close, Edale Fold, Litton Bank, Litton Fold, Litton Gardens and part of Calow Green from their current ward of Hadfield South to Gamesley ward. This would not increase electoral equality too much, but the positive effect it would have on community cohesion would greatly outweigh this, and having as much of Gamesley estate as possible represented by the same councillor would, I believe, ensure better and more effective representation for the residents. 3. Padfield and Tintwistle I believe Padfield ward works very well as a single-seat ward, however it’s obvious that it is far too large. Fortunately, it is easy to remove from it areas of the ward that are in Hadfield, bringing it down to size. The first area contains 286 electors on Station Road, Bankbottom, Albert Street, Hazelwood Close, Waterside, Jones Street and Osborne Place. The second area contains 68 electors on Church Street, Gladstone Street and Queen Street. I believe that both should be moved out of the ward into an expanded Hadfield North ward (see section 4 below). This would help the communities in that area, as residents would be in their more natural ward of Hadfield North. I also propose to rectify the arbitrary boundary between Padfield and Tintwistle wards, by moving the boundary that currently runs up the middle of Brosscroft so that the whole of Brosscroft is contained in Padfield ward. This would move 62 electors from Tintwistle to Padfield, ensuring that the whole of the road is in one ward, rather than split between them. This would also more evenly equalise the numbers between Tintwistle and Padfield. 4. Hadfield North and Hadfield South In my work as an MP, is it obvious to me that Hadfield has two separate and distinct areas – a northern part and a southern part. However, it is also obvious to me that the current boundary between them is arbitrary and does not in any way reflect the two parts of Hadfield. In my experience, a more logical and cohesive boundary would be more to the south, and would be ideally based on the river running between Lower Barn Road and Higher Barn Road. This is an obvious geographical feature, and I believe it is a far more natural boundary than the current one, which splits two sides of a road. Running a boundary along here would transfer approximately 1626 electors from Hadfield South to Hadfield North, and would result in Hadfield North becoming a two-seat ward, with Hadfield South becoming a single-seat ward. The roads which would transfer would be as follows: Bankswood Close Hawthorn Bank Queen Street Barleycroft Higher Barn Road Stanyforth Street Beech House Hordern Close The Avenue Brookside Close Ivycroft The Grove Burnside Littlebrook Close The Rushes Castle Street Newlands Drive Thorncliffe Road Church Street Newshaw Lane Walker Street Cross Street North Brook Road Wheatcroft Goddard Road Peak View Woolley Bridge Green Lane (part of) Pear Tree Close Woolley Bridge Road Hadfield Road I believe that this would be a better arrangement for local residents, and would be more in line with the local communities. This is in addition to the changes proposed in section 1 (80 electors transferred from Hadfield South to St. John’s), section 2 (76 electors transferred from Hadfield South to Gamesley) and section 3 (a total of 354 electors transferred from Padfield to Hadfield North). 5. Simmondley and Whitfield With Simmondley currently having too many electors, I propose two changes to make it more electorally equal. Both changes would also improve community cohesion in the affected areas. My first proposal is to move 70 electors in the Dinting Vale area (on Dinting Lane and Dinting Vale) from Simmondley into Dinting. Simmondley is a fairly self-contained estate, and Dinting Vale is not part of that estate, so to move it into Dinting ward itself will help improve community cohesion in that area. Similarly, my second proposal is to move 89 electors in the Charlestown area (including Chunal Lane and Charlestown) from Simmondley to Whitfield. This area is quite far from Simmondley itself, and would find a better sense of community were it to be included in Whitfield. Turning to Whitfield, I also propose to move 25 electors from Old Glossop and 3 electors from Howard Town into Whitfield, in the area of Cliffe Road/Cross Cliffe/Lower Bank/Lower Barn Farm. The25 electors in this area who are currently in Old Glossop ward have nothing to do with that ward, are cut off from that ward, and would have their interests better served if they were in Whitfield instead.