The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries

Boundary Commission for England The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries Volume one: Report September 2018 Boundary Commission for England The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 3(5) of the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 © Crown copyright 2018 This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. This publication is available at www.gov.uk/government/publications Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at [email protected]. ISBN 978-1-5286-0678-3 CCS0718012798 09/18 Printed on paper containing 75% recycled fibre content minimum Printed in the UK by the APS Group on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Volume one Contents Foreword 3 The administration of the 2018 Review 5 Final recommendations 21 Eastern 23 East Midlands 43 London 59 North East 81 North West 95 South East 123 South West 145 West Midlands 169 Yorkshire and the Humber 189 Appendix A: Membership of the Boundary Commission for England 211 1 The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Volume one Foreword I became the Deputy Chair of the Boundary Commission for England in sad circumstances. My predecessor was Dame Frances Patterson DBE. Tragically, she died in 2016. The Report that follows is the culmination of over two years of hard work that began under Frances’ tenure. As we explain in the first chapter, there are some absolute requirements to which the Commission must work. First, the number of constituencies must be reduced. Throughout the UK there are now 650. Across the UK that number must be reduced to 600. For England, that means a reduction from 533 to 501. Next, with two exceptions, the English constituencies that we propose must be within 5% of the electoral quota. This means that the number of electors registered on the electoral roll for each constituency in England must be between 71,031 and 78,507. The exceptions are on the Isle of Wight, which by law must have two constituencies. Third, our proposals must satisfy these requirements across England. It would be no good for us to say that we think we have done a pretty good job by meeting those requirements in say, 97% of the constituencies. Every constituency must meet them. But, subject to those overriding considerations, we have to make choices. We are guided by other factors that Parliament told us we may take into account. These are set out in the first chapter of this report. As we say there, the one factor that has attracted a great deal of attention is ‘local ties’. The process that Parliament requires us to undertake for each review places considerable emphasis on consultation. We have followed that process and each consultation has led to a great many responses — about 35,000 in total. Very many of those responses addressed the issue of local ties — most commonly expressed in the context of the cultural and social ties in the area — and whether, in the view of the consultee, our proposals respected or disregarded those ties. Unsurprisingly, it is not unusual for those responses to be contradictory, emphasising the different views individuals hold as to what unites their local community. We have taken account of all the responses we received, but, even if they are cogently argued, it has not always been possible to incorporate them into our final recommendations because of the other factors. The first chapter also emphasises that our role is entirely non-political. That does not mean that all those who commented on our proposals did so from a non-partisan perspective. Far from it. Indeed, it was often (though not exclusively) the political parties who had the resources to put forward counter- proposals that paid attention, as we must, to the bigger picture and who could look at a whole region, sub-region or area rather than suggesting an adjustment to a single constituency, disregarding knock- on consequences for others. However, whatever the motives of the proponents of suggestions, what the Commission is proposing is entirely without regard to any party political advantage or disadvantage that it may cause. 3 The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Volume one All members of the Commission extend warm thanks and appreciation to the staff of the Commission (superbly led by our Secretary, Sam Hartley, his Deputy, Tony Bellringer, and the Head of Reviews, Tim Bowden) and to our assistant commissioners. Our task would have been impossible without their skill, dedication, hard work and good humour. I personally want to express extra thanks to my fellow commissioners, David Elvin QC and Neil Pringle, who began this review under Frances and who have brought to it a wealth of experience and insight for which I am extremely grateful. The Hon. Mr Justice Nicol 4 The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Volume one The administration of the 2018 Review Legislative framework and source data 1. The Boundary Commission for England (BCE) is an independent and impartial advisory non- departmental public body, established under the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 to keep under review Parliamentary constituency boundaries in England. Similar commissions conduct equivalent work for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The members of the BCE and other key positions are listed at Appendix A. 2. The statutory rules governing the conduct of our work are contained within the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 (as amended1). These rules require a review of all UK Parliament constituencies to be conducted every five years, with a report and recommendations to be submitted to the Government by each commission at the end of the review, detailing the extent, name and designation of all constituencies in that commission’s area (as far as it recommends change). ‘Designation’ means whether the constituency should be a ‘county constituency’ or a ‘borough constituency’. This last task is perhaps the least controversial of all the tasks that the Commission has to perform. 3. The statutory rules establish a fixed number of 600 constituencies for the UK, from which elections are to be held for the House of Commons (a reduction from the existing 650). From this total, four constituencies (two in the Scottish islands, and two for the Isle of Wight) are ‘protected’, in the sense that they are reserved for the specified areas and thereby not subject to some of the criteria and statistical calculations applied to all other constituencies (in particular as regards electorate size). The electorate for the 2018 Review 4. For a given review, the rules specify a particular UK electorate figure that is to be used throughout that review. For the 2018 Review, this is the figure from the register of Parliamentary electors required to be published by the local electoral registration officers following the autumn 2015 canvass (these were mostly published in December 2015, but some were delayed until February 2016). Distribution of constituencies across the UK 5. The legislation then specifies a mathematical formula (set out in Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act and referred to as the Sainte-Laguë formula) to determine how the 596 unprotected constituencies are allocated to each part of the UK for a given review, taking into account the relative sizes of the respective Parliamentary electorates of each part of the UK (not including the electorates of the four protected constituencies). The statutory distribution formula applied to the electorate figures for the 2018 Review resulted in the allocation set out in the table overleaf. 1 The statutory rules in the 1986 Act were significantly revised by Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. 5 The 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Volume one Part of the UK Constituencies allocated England 499 (+2 Isle of Wight) Scotland 51 (+2 Scottish islands) Wales 29 Northern Ireland 17 Total United Kingdom 596 (+4 protected) The electoral quota and the permitted electorate range 6. The legislation requires all recommended unprotected constituencies to be broadly similar in electorate size. Specifically, they must all be within 5% of an ‘electoral quota’ figure, which is the median average Parliamentary electorate for the 596 unprotected constituencies. We refer to this as the ‘permitted electorate range’. Using the 2018 Review electorate data, the electoral quota figure is 74,769, meaning the permitted electorate range for this review is between 71,031 (minimum) and 78,507 (maximum). Local government boundaries 7. Where the commissions wish to take account of local government boundaries (see statutory factors in the BCE policies section below), the statute requires us to have regard to such boundaries as they were at a specified point in time. For the 2018 Review, the local government boundaries are those that were in place on 7 May 2015. Geographical size of constituencies 8. The statute also requires all unprotected constituencies to be no larger than 13,000 square kilometres in size (except in prescribed circumstances). In England, this does not become a concern, as even in its most sparsely populated areas, constituency sizes do not come near this figure. Requirements for public consultation 9. The legislation requires the commissions to conduct a 12-week public consultation on initial proposals for new constituencies during a review. We must display hard copy materials in each proposed constituency, and we must hold public hearings between weeks five and ten of the consultation period. In England, the legislation requires between two and five public hearings to be held in each of its nine administrative regions.

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