Boundary Commission REVIEW OF WALTHAM FOREST COUNCIL: FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS

The Boundary Commission has published its final recommendations for new electoral arrangements for Waltham Forest Council. 

Click here for the final recommendations

It proposes that Waltham Forest should be represented by 60 councillors in future (no change), representing 16 three-councillor wards and six two-councillor wards across the borough.  

The Commission considered all the evidence received during the consultation period, before finalising these recommendations. 

The recommendations only become law once they have received parliamentary approval. The formal document (a draft Order) to start that process will be laid in Parliament shortly. The draft Order will provide for the new electoral arrangements for Waltham Forest to come into effect for local elections in 2022. 

Government abandons boundary shakeup to cut number of MPs to 600

On 25th March 2020 the Independent reported:

The government will abandon coalition-era plans to radically redraw parliamentary boundaries to cut the number of MPs in the House of Commons from 650 to 600. 

Cabinet office minister Chloe Smith revealed that minister were planning to ditch the shake-up of UK constituencies as the UK parliament faces a "greater workload" after Brexit. 

Parliament approved plans to slash the number of constituencies to 600 in 2011 but moves to implement the changes has been repeatedly delayed.

The full report is here

Under the 2011 plans Jeremy Corbyn's constituency could have been axed and Boris Johnson would have faced challenge to hold onto his seat.

The two main effects of the changes would have been to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600, and to specify tight limits (+ or - 5%) for the size of the electorate in all but a couple of geographically special constituencies. Whilst setting limits for constituency size has merits in evening out the amount of representation in parliament for each citizen, nevertheless the tight limits, combined with population 'churn' especially in dense urban areas, would have led to substantial changes to constituency boundaries every 5 years. A serious drawback to this would have been to compromise any sense of community or sense of place that had built up over time within constituencies.

The other significant effect of the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act (FTPA) was to set a fixed term of 5 years between general elections for parliaments. This has however been honoured far more in the breach than the observance - only the coalition parliament lasted the full term fro 2010 to 2015.