Cheshire East CGR electorate forecasts technical report V9 (7th August 2019) Cheshire East Council Community Governance Review (CGR) 2019: electorate forecasts technical report 1. Introduction As part of Cheshire East Council’s Community Governance Review (CGR), it is necessary to produce forecasts of the Borough’s future electorate for parishes and other small administrative areas. The main rationale for producing these forecasts is to assess how the size and geographical distribution of electors is likely to change in the coming years, so that electors can be fairly distributed between councillors. For example, housing developments can result in some small areas seeing much faster population and electorate growth than others – and hence the electors in these areas will be increasingly under-represented unless there is a change in electoral boundaries or the number of assigned councillors. Similarly, councillors representing areas of high population and electorate growth may become increasingly over-burdened unless boundaries or councillors numbers are revised. CGR and electorate guidance produced by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE)1 set out the requirements for these forecasts. In addition, Cheshire West & Chester Council recently (in 2017) carried out an electoral review of its council wards, which included electorate forecasts. Cheshire West & Chester produced a report on its methodology2, which the LGBCE reviewed and considered fit for purpose. Cheshire East Council has now produced its initial CGR forecasts, which take account of the LGBCE guidance and are based on Cheshire West & Chester’s approach.3 This technical report sets out Cheshire East’s methodology and the main results. The forecasts, and this report, were prepared by the Council’s Strategic Planning Team. The LGBCE recommends that electorate forecasts are constrained so that they are consistent with the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) population projections or with projections developed from another tested methodology.4 The chosen methodology does not constrain the electorate forecasts to ONS’ latest (2016-based) subnational population projections (SNPPs), but such a constraint was tested and this report 1 [1] ‘Guidance on community governance reviews’, LGBCE and Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), March 2010. [2] ‘Electorate Forecasts – A Guide for Practitioners’, LGBCE, October 2011. [3] ‘Electoral reviews: Technical guidance’, LGBCE, April 2014. 2 Cheshire West and Chester Electoral Review 2017: The Current and Forecast Electorate, Cheshire West & Chester Council, March 2017. 3 It will also be necessary to generate electorate forecasts for any alternative administrative boundaries that are proposed during the course of the CGR. 4 This advice is set out in the LGBCE’s ‘Electorate Forecasts – A Guide for Practitioners’. As noted above, the Council’s chosen methodology is based on Cheshire West & Chester’s approach, which has been tested and accepted by the LGBCE. OFFICIAL 1 Cheshire East CGR electorate forecasts technical report V9 (7th August 2019) highlights the effect of that constraint and explains why the SNPP-constrained electorate forecasts were not adopted as the Council’s chosen forecast. Cheshire East’s chosen forecasting methodology involves some separate treatment of dwellings (in which one or more households live) and communal establishments, such as care homes and student halls of accommodation. For the sake of clarity, this report uses the term “dwellings” to refer only to accommodation occupied by households with no care provision5; “residential properties” (or “properties”) means all accommodation, whether dwellings with extra care, dwellings without extra care or communal establishments.6 Section 2 of this report explains which geographical areas the forecasts were produced for (and why), Section 3 justifies the choice of the forecasting time period and Section 4 presents the forecasting methodology and summarises the forecast results. Section 5 explains why the base year (2018) forecast figure differs from that published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Section 6 highlights the results of constraining the forecasts so they are consistent with ONS’ latest (2016- based) subnational population projections. Annex 1 sets out how the underlying forecasts of future housing development were produced and Annex 2 contains the tables of electorate forecast results. 2. Geographical coverage of the forecasts The CGR involves a review of parish and parish ward boundaries, but the findings and resulting decisions may also involve a change to council ward boundaries. Hence there is a need to consider the current and future electorate at all these geographical tiers. This is complicated by that fact that, in many cases, council ward and parish boundaries do not align with each other very well. Parish wards are usually (though not in every case) subdivisions of both council ward and parishes. However, all polling districts are subdivisions of parish wards, parishes and council wards. Furthermore, Electoral Register data – which include statistics on both the number of electors and the number of properties – are readily available at polling district level. Cheshire West & Chester’s 2017 review of its council ward boundaries included forecasts at and above polling district level. The other key data input required for electorate forecasts – Council data on completed new build housing and on future development sites - includes site and 5 For the purposes of this report and the CGR electorate forecasts, “care homes” means forms of specialist housing for older people that fall within the C2 premises use class (https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/9/change_of_use ): namely residential care homes, nursing homes and extra care housing. Extra care housing is housing primarily for older people, where occupants have specific tenure rights to occupy self-contained dwellings and where they have agreements that cover the provision of care, support, domestic, social, community or other services. 6 This is consistent with the definitions in the 2011 Census Glossary of Terms (Office for National Statistics, May 2014). This defines a dwelling as “a unit of accommodation which may comprise one or more household spaces (a household space is the accommodation used or available for use by an individual household)…” OFFICIAL 2 Cheshire East CGR electorate forecasts technical report V9 (7th August 2019) individual property eastings and northings. Housing completions and expected future developments can therefore be mapped to any geographical area. Given all this, Cheshire East’s CGR electorate forecasts have been produced for five different geographical tiers: its 343 polling districts, 193 parish wards, 142 parishes, 52 council wards and the Borough as a whole.7 The chosen approach – following that taken by Cheshire West & Chester in its 2017 review - was to produce forecasts firstly for council wards and add these up to obtain a Borough-wide total, and then generate forecasts for polling districts. The forecasts for each polling district were calculated using (amongst other input data) estimates of the average number of electors per dwelling for the council ward in which polling district lay. The resulting electorate forecasts for each polling district were then constrained so that they summed to the electorate totals for each council ward. The polling district figures were then grouped into their constituent parish wards and parishes, in order to generate forecasts for these other geographical tiers that summed to the same sub-totals and overall (Borough) totals. For the Borough as a whole, the resulting forecast is an increase of around 26,300 (8.7%) in the electorate, from 302,000 (2018) to 328,300 (2025). 3. Time period for the forecasts LGBCE guidance on electorate forecasts states that there is a legal requirement that the review take into account changes in the electorate that are likely to occur within five years of the end of the review’s final recommendations. Hence the LGBCE asks that local authorities produce forecasts for six years from the start of the review.8 Cheshire East has decided that the review should commence in June 2019 and therefore forecasts are required up to 2025. For the forecasting starting point, LGBCE ideally requires authorities to use the electorate from the 1st of the month during which the review formally starts. However, the LGBCE is willing to consider use of the register from the previous December if the Council in question presents valid reasons for doing so.9 1st December 2018 was a Saturday, but Cheshire East had data available from the register as of the last working day prior to this, 30th November 2018. Because of the time lag involved in compiling and modelling data and desirability of having forecasts available for when the review commences, the Council decided to take the register as of 30th November 2018 as the baseline for its forecasts. The resulting forecasts are therefore for the period from (30th November) 2018 to 2025. 7 The figures quoted here for parishes and parish wards include 7 parish meetings, i.e. there are 186 town and parish council wards and 135 town and parish councils, plus the 7 parish meetings. 8 Paragraph 4.68, ‘Electoral reviews: Technical guidance’, LGBCE, April 2014. 9 Paragraph 4.67, ‘Electoral reviews: Technical guidance’, LGBCE, April 2014. OFFICIAL 3 Cheshire East CGR electorate forecasts technical report