2/4/2019 Local Government Boundary Commission for England Consultation Portal Enfield London Borough Personal Details: Name: Organisation Name: Enfield Southgate Conservative Association Comment text: The Enfield Southgate Conservative Association takes the view that the boundaries of the 7 wards in the constituency: Bowes, Cockfosters, Grange, Palmers Green, Southgate, Southgate Green and Winchmore Hill should remain unchanged. This view is based on the 2024 forecast of ward electors produced by the Electoral Services Department of the London Borough of Enfield. This forecast of the number of electors in each ward of the constituency of Enfield Southgate in 2024 shows that the ward variance in every case is less than10% of the ward average for the whole of the Borough of Enfield (11,564). There is no justification, therefore, in changing any of the ward boundaries in Enfield Southgate which have been in place for many years and are familiar to local residents. Uploaded Documents: None Uploaded https://consultation.lgbce.org.uk/node/print/informed-representation/15701 1/1 Enfield Council Boundary Review Warding Arrangements Submission Enfield North Conservative Association https://www.enfieldnorthconservatives.org.uk/ Section 1: Introduction 1.1 LGBCE Review The Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) is undertaking a review of the London Borough of Enfield’s electoral arrangements. The outcome of the review will be implemented for the 2022 Council elections. The review will cover the entire borough. The statutory criteria that the LGBCE will apply when making its proposals are: 1. Electoral equality (a consistent number of electors per Councillor); 2. Community identity (strong ward boundaries that reflect communities); and 3. Effective and convenient local government (coherent wards with good internal transport links). The review was initiated in March 2018. The outcome of the preliminary stage of the review was that the Commission recommended that Enfield Council should remain with 63 councillors. 1.2 Current Warding Arrangements The current Council size was determined by the previous review in 2000, before the introduction in the Local Government Act 2000 of Executive Arrangements, which streamlined local authorities’ political management arrangements. The Council currently consists of 63 Councillors across 21 wards. Enfield has a uniform pattern of three-member wards. The number of electors per councillor is approx. 3300. All Councillors are elected for a four-year term and sit on Full Council, which is the ‘sovereign body’ of the council and is chaired by the Mayor. NOTE: This is a compressed version of the document, to meet the upload size limit. An uncompressed version, with higher-quality images, can be obtained from https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1KasuPpiZiTD6iD21RG9FHhS4WFyvRp a5. - 1 - Section 2: New Warding Arrangements 2.1 Methodology The number of electors per councillor is calculated using the figures provided by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England and the proposed council size of 63 members. For 2018, the electorate is calculated at 213,665, giving an average electorate per councillor of 3,392. For 2024, the Commission's projection has an electorate of 242,846, giving an average electorate per councillor of 3,855. Hence a 2-member ward should have on average 6,783 in 2018 and 7,709 in 2024, and a 3-member ward should have 10,175 in 2018 and 11,564 in 2024. (All these are rounded to the nearest whole number.) To calculate the variances in our proposal, we have compared the number of electors per councillor we propose for each ward with the above per-councillor figures and expressed the difference as a percentage. The fundamental data used in producing this proposal consists of postcode-level electorate figures and the location of the postcodes. A snapshot of anonymized electoral roll data was used to get counts of local government electors in each postcode, and then publicly available geocoding information for the centre of each postcode was used to locate these electors spatially within the borough. From this, it is then possible to count the electors in any area of the borough proposed to be used as a ward. NOTE: Use of postcode-level data in this way could lead to some errors, around the boundaries. Some 33 postcodes of the 5635 covering the borough are currently split between wards, around 0.5% of the total. If half of the electors are then counted by our analysis as part of the “wrong” ward when a new boundary is drawn, this could introduce errors of around 0.25% overall. This is not significant compared with the likely errors in forward projections over the next five years for electorates of each new ward. 2018 data For 2018 electorate counts, the raw dataset obtained as above was then adjusted so that the numbers of electors allocated to each existing polling district matched the figures from the LGBCE (http://s3-eu-west 2.amazonaws.com/lgbce/Reviews/Greater%20London/Enfield/Warding/Enfield%20elector ate%20proforma%20-%20for%20website.xlsx). 2024 data No road-level projections were made available by the Council, so the polling-district-level information from the LGBCE figures referred to above was used to create postcode-level projections for 2024. This was done by scaling the number of local government electors in each postcode by the factor implied by the LGBCE population change for the existing polling district to which it was allocated, so that the total for the polling district as a whole matched the projections for 2024 from the LGBCE. - 2 - 2.2 Proposed Ward Pattern A pattern of 26 wards is proposed, consisting of 15 two-member wards and 11 three- member wards. The layout is shown in the overview map below. Acknowledgement: map data from mapbox.com, via code adapted from leafletjs.com. Also provided is a KML file showing the precise locations of the proposed wards. This can be downloaded from https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1cqd9k1WHACkPdF2C7tZjyGtq4fp2og H1, for display in (for example) Google Earth. - 3 - 2.3 Proposed Wards The details of the wards proposed are as shown in the table below. Names are suggestions, based on the neighbourhoods that they cover. --------------- 2018 --------------- --------------- 2024 --------------- Electors/ Electors/ Ward name Cllrs Electors Cllr Variance Electors Cllr Variance Arnos Grove 2 6,131 3,066 -9.6% 7,364 3,682 -4.5% Bowes 2 6,967 3,484 +2.7% 8,091 4,046 +5.0% Brimsdown 3 10,473 3,491 +2.9% 11,691 3,897 +1.1% Bullsmoor 2 7,162 3,581 +5.6% 8,002 4,001 +3.8% Bush Hill Park 2 6,934 3,467 +2.2% 7,689 3,845 -0.3% Cockfosters 2 6,264 3,132 -7.7% 7,266 3,633 -5.8% Edmonton Green 3 10,131 3,377 -0.4% 11,284 3,761 -2.4% Enfield Lock 3 10,721 3,574 +5.4% 11,933 3,978 +3.2% Raglan 2 6,618 3,309 -2.4% 7,369 3,685 -4.4% Grange Park 2 6,900 3,450 +1.7% 7,679 3,840 -0.4% Haselbury 3 10,854 3,618 +6.7% 12,068 4,023 +4.4% Highfield 2 6,814 3,407 +0.4% 7,569 3,785 -1.8% Hoe Lane 2 7,297 3,649 +7.6% 8,114 4,057 +5.2% Jubilee 3 9,948 3,316 -2.2% 11,141 3,714 -3.7% Kingsmead 2 6,653 3,327 -1.9% 7,332 3,666 -4.9% Lower Edmonton 3 10,004 3,335 -1.7% 11,021 3,674 -4.7% New Southgate 2 7,067 3,534 +4.2% 8,140 4,070 +5.6% Oakwood 2 6,734 3,367 -0.7% 7,764 3,882 +0.7% Palmers Green 2 6,685 3,343 -1.4% 7,476 3,738 -3.0% Ponders End 2 6,954 3,477 +2.5% 8,108 4,054 +5.2% Raglan 2 6,618 3,309 -2.4% 7,369 3,685 -4.4% Ridgeway 3 10,157 3,386 -0.2% 11,825 3,942 +2.3% Southgate 3 9,814 3,271 -3.6% 10,994 3,665 -4.9% Town 3 10,253 3,418 +0.8% 11,745 3,915 +1.6% Upper Edmonton 3 9,358 3,119 -8.0% 12,308 4,103 +6.4% Whitewebbs 3 9,964 3,321 -2.1% 11,254 3,751 -2.7% Winchmore Hill 2 6,808 3,404 +0.4% 7,619 3,810 -1.2% TOTAL 63 213,665 242,846 Key statistics about the proposal are as follows. 2018 2024 Average electors per councillor 3,392 3,855 Maximum variance 9.6% 6.4% Root-mean-square variance 4.2% 3.9% Number of wards with variance ≥20% 0 0 Number of wards with variance ≥10% 0 0 Number of wards with variance ≥5% 7 5 - 4 - 2.4 Context We believe there are three main defects with the current warding arrangements, which this proposal tries to address. Enfield Town is currently split along its main shopping street, Church Street, with the north side in Town ward and the south side in Grange. Strong local feeling has been expressed that the Town should be all in one ward. This was mirrored during the recent parliamentary boundary review, when there were many representations to the effect that the Town should be in one constituency, a viewpoint that was reflected in the Boundary Commission for England’s final recommendations, which included both Town and Grange wards in the proposed Enfield constituency. The current Southbury ward is unsatisfactory, as it contains two unconnected residential areas, one clustered around Southbury Road between Enfield Town station and the A10, and one clustered around Carterhatch Lane between the A10 and the A1010.