Local residents’ submissions to the Milton Keynes Council electoral review This PDF document contains 46 submissions from local residents. Some versions of Adobe allow the viewer to move quickly between bookmarks. Click on the submission you would like to view. If you are not taken to that page, please scroll through the document. Page 1 of 1 Skerten, Alex From: Sabine Weyler [ Sent: 12 October 2012 12:13 To: Re views@ Subject: Milton Keynes Boundary Review - Woughton on the Green & Middleton Ward To: The review Officer (Milton Keynes) Local Government Boundary Commission for Englans Layden House Turnmill Street London EC1M 5LG As a resident since 1990 in Woughton on the Green, Milton Keynes I wish to support the proposal that sees us sharing our ward councillors with our neighbours in Middleton ward. I strongly belief that the parish must stay together and be warded with people with whom we share a common interest.. Our area has been in Middleton ward since 2002 and since that time received an excellent service from our ward councillors who truly managed to allow the residents to take an active interest in our local issues. A change in boundary would be a turn backwards to a time where we received very limited support and assistance and would be a loss of the currently well working community spirit! So please do not make a change of our ward boundary thus allowing the people of Woughton on the Green to stay where they wish to be and that is with our neighbours in the Middleton Ward. Thank you for considering and supporting our local interest Regards S.Weyler 17/10/2012 Page 1 of 1 Skerten, Alex From: Stuart Bennett [ Sent: 12 October 2012 14:38 To: Re views@ Subject: Milton Keynes Boundary Review The Review Officer (Milton Keynes) Local Government Boundary Commission for England Layden House Turnmill Street London EC1M 5LG Dear Sir/Madam I should like to object most strongly to the proposal to move the Milton Keynes Ward boundaries such that the new parish of Old Woughton will move from the Middleton Ward to Woughton Ward. We have been served well by Middleton Ward in the past. The new parish came about as we in Woughton Park were served so badly by Woughton Community Council. We have no confidence that the interests of local residents would be served effectively if Woughton Park (in Old Woughton Community Parish) were to be moved to the Woughton Ward. Yours sincerely Stuart W Bennett 17/10/2012 Page 1 of 1 Skerten, Alex From: Sam Crooks Sent: 15 October 2012 15:40 To: Skerten, Alex Subject: Milton Keynes Boundary Review Dear Mr Skerten I came off Milton Keynes Council in May but have been an elected Member from 1980 - 1993 and again from 2002. In that capacity, as the then Deputy Leader, I steered the Final Report of the Parish Boundary Review through the Council on Tuesday 19 October 2010 preceded by two days of negotiations to ensure the widest possible measure of agreement. The Council approved nem.con new boundaries and /or warding arrangements for 23 parishes. In only two was there a failure to reach agreement. Decisions on these were postponed until 2011. The situation in one has subsequently been resolved. The other is currently subject to judicial review. The Final Report was the outcome of a review that lasted over three years including two significant public consultations. The very detailed and comprehensive involvement of parish councillors led to a largely non-political process that placed great weight on identifiable communities of interest such as historic ties or school catchment areas, and on natural boundaries such as our main distributor roads, the Grand Union canal or the river Ouzel. I encourage you therefore to rely on the evidence of the Parish review to the greatest extent that your numerical quotas permit, and only to split parishes between wards where absolutely essential. A further consideration is that of continuity. As the city stabilises - its central north/south axis is essentially complete - it helps to avoid electoral confusion if the areas in which residents vote remain broadly similar, particularly in an Authority where electors vote three times in every four years. Yours sincerely Sam Crooks 17/10/2012 Page 1 of 1 Skerten, Alex From: jm.h owson Sent: 14 October 2012 20:20 To: Re views@ Subject: Ward Boundary Review To The Review Officer (Milton Keynes) Dear Sir, I write to protest in the strongest possible terms against the proposal that has been put forward to move the new Parish of Old Woughton back into Woughton Ward. I have been a resident of Passmore for over 29 years and was part of the campaign team that fought to have the three estates of Woughton on the Green, Woughton Park and Passmore removed from the Parish of Woughton Community Council. The reasons behind our campaign were threefold: we put plenty of money into Woughton Community Council but were consistently refused when we needed anything doing in our part of the Parish, our then two Parish councillors were ignored at the meetings of the Woughton Community Council, and quite clearly we were considered by WCC to be a different kind of people. I sat in the Council chambers and listened as the residents of Woughton on the Green, Woughton Park and Passmore were publicly maligned and insulted by members of WCC, including the ward councillors. Since we have been in Middleton Ward, we have received help from our ward councillors when we have needed it ,and maintained good communication with them. This relationship has grown since we have become a Parish in our own right. This is the complete opposite of the situation when we were part of Woughton Ward prior to 2002. Then we were almost completely ignored. Surely it is a retrograde step to send us back and I am appalled that the proposal should even be put forward for consideration. Yours faithfully, Mrs J M. Howson ( 17/10/2012 Page 1 of 3 Skerten, Alex From: Re views@ Sent: 14 October 2012 19:52 To: Re views@ Subject: Custom Form Submission Received - Custom Form Submission Notification Custom Form Submission Received Review Editor, A new custom form submission has been received. The details of the form submission are as follows: Submission Information Custom Form: Online submissions form (#183) Form URL: http://www.lgbce.org.uk/current-consultations/online- submissions-form Submission ID: 1518 Time of Submission: Oct 14th 2012 at 6:51pm IP Address: ::ffff:78.145.79.6 Form Answers Name: Irene & Euan Henderson Address 1: Area your Milton Keynes submission refers to: Organisation you other (please specify in your submission) belong to: Your feedback: Dear Sir/Madam, We are writing to request, in the strongest possible terms, that the town and parish of Newport Pagnell, on its existing boundaries, should constitute one of the new three-member wards of Milton Keynes Council when the current boundary review is implemented. One of us (Irene Henderson) represented Newport Pagnell on Milton Keynes Council from 1982 to 2010. The other (Euan Henderson) represented Newport Pagnell on Buckinghamshire County Council from 1981 to 1997 and on Milton Keynes Council from 1996 to 2010. Newport Pagnell is an historic market town which for many 17/10/2012 Page 2 of 3 centuries, served the north of Buckinghamshire as the centre of the Newport Hundred. It was governed by an Urban District Council from 1897 to 1974 and also housed the offices of the Newport Pagnell Rural District Council, which merged (with two other urban districts) into Milton Keynes Borough Council. The latter became a unitary authority as the County and Borough of Milton Keynes in 1997. The town’s geographical boundaries are very clearly defined – by the M1 in the west, the by-pass (A422) in the south, and the river Ouse to the north and east. Earlier boundary reviews in the 1990s tidied up these boundaries by transferring a few properties south of the by-pass to Sherington ward and the Blakelands development to the west of the M1 to Linford North ward. Despite growing from a population of less than 5,000 up to the late 1960s to around 14,000 at the millennium (since when the population has been relatively stable) the town has retained a very strong sense of identity and a pride in its heritage. This is demonstrated in many ways, including: • The local campaign, begun in the late 1970s, to secure a Parish (now Town) Council, which achieved its objective in 1985 • The existence of an active Newport Pagnell Partnership (with local government, business and voluntary sector representation) which, since its creation in the mid-1990s, has been successful in attracting significant investment into the town centre and thus in reversing the decline of the High Street • The annual Strawberry Fayre, Carnival, Horticultural Show, Muster, and Christmas Lights – all organised entirely by local volunteers • A wide range of voluntary organisations, of which Brooklands (a facility or older residents which recently raised over a million pounds for a complete rebuild) and the very active Historical Society (which celebrates the town’s remarkable heritage) are two outstanding examples. It is vital for the future of Newport Pagnell that it is not fragmented. It must continue to have clear representation at Milton Keynes Council, and that can only be achieved by combining the present North and South wards (the boundaries of which are essentially arbitrary, into a single three-member ward. We were shocked to hear last week that Milton Keynes Council’s submission to the Boundary Commission proposes that Newport Pagnell should be carved up between several wards.