Westminster Labour submission to the Boundary Commission This submission on behalf of Westminster Labour Group, Westminster North CLP and Cities of London and Westminster CLP seeks to address some of the significant problems present in Westminster’s current ward boundaries. The present boundaries have seen massive disparities in electorate numbers develop between different wards. This new review provides an important opportunity to take the necessary corrective measures to ensure greater electoral equality and support natural communities of interest both now and into the future. Main assumptions underpinning this submission Westminster has a high turnover electorate. In the run up to all elections, there is significant influx of registrations which occurs without fail immediately prior to the deadline. Some wards are impacted more than others. This often makes 1 December ‘new’ registers routinely unreliable predictors of eligible electorates within each ward. Although the current situation is exacerbated by the challenges of individual voter registration and an increasing population movement the same issue was also experienced in the last boundary review where the overall 4 year projection for 2003 was close to forecast overall, but the quality of the ‘by ward’ forecasting being significantly adrift. In recent years we have been faced with the extremes of a three member ward with close to half the number of electors per elected member compared to the highest ratio ward (Knightsbridge and Belgravia ward which is currently almost half the size of larger wards in the north of Westminster such as Queens Park, Harrow Road, Westbourne and Church Street). This has resulted in a grave injustice within the borough in terms of representation and effective local government. We wish to make sure that a reoccurrence of this nature is not possible. Where a ward area has demonstrated a low rate of organic growth of the electorate, irrespective of notional development potential, we have allotted a slightly higher starting electorate to take account of the proven long term trend in population and electorate change. To do otherwise would be to risk under- representing areas which do have proven high rates of organic growth There are three fundamental reasons to be wary of assumptions of significant population growth in areas reliant on new build private properties. Firstly, as we have already shown to the LGBCE, the Westminster Council planning pipeline includes a lot of errors with a significant number of developments that have been scrapped entirely or replaced by office schemes. Westminster history also clearly shows that planning pipelines are not a reliable indicator of what will be built within a given period, with many schemes being built years after their initially scheduled timelines both for reasons of market conditions (something currently exacerbated by the uncertainty around Brexit) and the tendency towards ‘landbanking’ consented schemes in high value areas. Thirdly it is simply not the case from recent experience that new luxury developments within the borough have resulted in the same registration levels per new home created, as traditional properties. This is irrespective of whether these are owner occupied or for private rent, particularly given the explosion of short-lets (AirBnB) disrupting the private rental market and the prevalence of homes purchased for investment purposes, as high-end holiday homes for the super-wealthy and as residential properties for those not eligible to vote in UK elections. Many of these factors listed above explain why in existing properties, there has been a clear and fundamental shift in population density from the south to the north of Westminster as Central London property has become more of an investment or leisure asset for overseas investors, leading to many properties being unoccupied by eligible electors. This has led to fewer voters in south Westminster and therefore supports the case for an approach to setting ward boundaries that will maintain parity between real Ward electorates into the future. As well as creating some strong wards, the last review also created some disparate wards. St James is the most extreme of these – vast in size and with communities in the east having little or no relationship with communities in the west of the ward. Knightsbridge and Belgravia, as well as St James, Regent’s Park and a lot of West End struggle with huge patches of zero or small numbers of electors joined with remote clusters of denser residential population. Westbourne has also been a very difficult ward to manage under current boundaries. In the east, a significant population directly faces or is a short walk from a polling place they simply cannot vote at and must walk a significant distance in a direction that doesn’t have any natural footfall if they wish to cast their vote in person. It currently joins communities north and south of the railway line that have little in common and who have more naturally alliances with their close neighbours in other wards (in the south, with Bayswater, in the east with the current Little Venice and in the north to the Maida Hill area). Our submission seeks to redress as many of these anomalies as possible without creating change for the sake of change (even where odd boundaries exist). As such we believe a small number of 2 member wards is therefore important to fulfil the remit of effective and convenient local government. It is not met by the current ward structure, nor have we been able to model the borough in a way that it can be met by 18 x 3 member wards that make sense in terms of geography or community. We do however propose to retain 20 wards, so that whilst change is unavoidable, we are seeking to retain current borders and communities wherever possible, whilst redressing shortfalls where the opportunity must be grasped. Under our current boundary proposals (W1 to W20) we have 14 x3 member wards and 6 x2 member wards made up as follows: LG Boundary Review 2019 Ideal Variation to GIS Tool 2024 New Ward GIS ref Cllrs electorate ideal electorate Queen's Park W1 3 8,321 -4.9% 7916 Fernhead & Maida Hill W2 3 8,321 2.3% 8514 Maida Vale W3 3 8,321 -5.6% 7857 Abbey Road W4 3 8,321 0.6% 8373 Regent's Park W5 2 5,547 -4.8% 5281 Church Street W6 3 8,321 1.0% 8404 Little Venice W7 3 8,321 7.6% 8953 Grand Union W8 3 8,321 -6.1% 7815 Westbourne W9 3 8,321 6.8% 8890 Bayswater W10 3 8,321 5.2% 8751 Hyde Park W11 2 5,547 7.0% 5936 Baker Street & Bryanston W12 3 8,321 -4.9% 7915 Marylebone Village W13 2 5,547 -5.2% 5258 Fitzrovia, Soho & Covent Garden W14 3 8,321 -6.7% 7764 St James W15 2 5,547 3.1% 5721 Vincent Square W16 3 8,321 -5.2% 7892 Tachbrook W17 2 5,547 6.8% 5925 Churchill W18 3 8,321 -4.2% 7972 Knightsbridge & Mayfair W19 2 5,547 0.5% 5576 Belgravia & Pimlico W20 3 8,321 3.9% 8644 54 149,772 -0.28% 149,357 1 The projected population we have worked with is as advised – namely 149,772 though we believe that, as set out above, history would suggest that some of the planning assumptions are both ambitious (and possibly over-stated, a number of sites will not be developed for housing and others will not be completed by 2024) and simplistic (using existing elector per home averages rather than new development averages). Likewise some of the organic growth assumptions are modest and take little account of under registration. 149,772 electors assumed for 54 Council Members equates to 2,773.6 electors per Member (the basis for the calculation of the “ideal electorate” data below. The most over quota ward in 2024 according to the data provided is the new Little Venice but this ward has a huge planning growth assumption. We believe that this proposal combines strengthening communities, simplicity of boundaries (and access to established polling places) and new wards well within statistical tolerance assuming the ward electorate forecasts are reasonably robust. 1 Note there are some minute differences in the elector numbers generated by the Westminster Council GIS Tool and the Elector 2024 constrained to Borough Total. All relevant figures are included in the separate Excel sheet provided to the LGBCE. W1 - Queens Park (QP) – 3 members Our proposal simplifies (cleans up) Queens Park into a strong compact (and densely populated) trapezium using the borough boundaries to the north, west and south and the eastern border following Portnall Road from end to end and crossing the Harrow Road to run down Fermoy Road opposite to the small wharf on the canal which is a completely natural break in Fermoy Road. At present the boundary runs down Harrow Road between Fermoy Road and Halfpenny Steps bridge, placing the northern and southern sides in different wards. The southern side of Harrow Road here is mostly residential: since the fire in 413-419 there have been no retail units in this stretch, save for the pharmacy next to the medical centre. It therefore can be distinguished from the Harrow Road closer to Prince of Wales Junction (Great Western Road / Elgin Avenue) which has a very retail character. This change to the ward boundaries has had support from John McArdle of the Queens Park Community Council who said (in a personal capacity) ‘Your choice of Portnall as the new eastern boundary is sound and well explained. So too are your proposals for adjustments at Harrow Road to make the boundary clearer and more content.