The Boundary Commission started to propose new constituency boundaries in 2012, but the process was stopped when parliament voted against continuation with it. This was because the Liberal Democrats in the coalition withdrew their support. All the posts on this page cover this period and are for historical interest only. Some of the links will have expired.
All the information on this page is from the 2012 process, and has no bearing on the current - 2016 - process
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I've just heard that the House of Commons has just voted by a majority of 42 to delay boundary changes for five years. This means they cannot be considered till after the next general election. Phew!!!!!!
You can read more on the BBC news pages here
(. . . later . . ) So what happens now to the Boundary Commission's process? This is quite independent of parliament but will the Commission complete its task? - ie will it produce its final draft of parliamentary boundaries as required by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, and include them in its report which is due to go to the Deputy Prime Minster by the statutory deadline of 1st October 2013. The Commission submitted a 'statutory annual update on the progress of the current Review' to the Speaker of the House of Commons on 23 January 2013, highlighting the progress during the preceding 12 months.
You can read this report here, but one interesting snippet from it is that during the eight-week period of consultation last autumn (till 10 December 2012) they "received in excess of 3,800 unique representations" about the Revised Proposals - ie the proposals which included the abolition of Walthamstow.
They go on to say "We are now commencing the process of considering those written representations. If we decide that the evidence submitted to us requires further revisions to be made to our proposals, we will include those changes in our final recommendations report to the Deputy Prime Minister." This leaves open the possibility they will not make any further revision.
Clearly there are questions about those '3800 unique representations'; for starters we estimated that Walthamstow residents sent in somewhere between 750 and 1000 representations, (see this earlier post) which if all were considered as 'unique' only leaves 2800 for the rest of England. All we can do is speculate at present, and right now I'm also unsure about what I hope will happen.
If for example they did revise the proposals, and re-instated a Walthamstow constituency that would (a) show the power and effectiveness of our campaign (b) set a marker for any further boundary reviews in the medium term that accepted the validity of the Stow as a community meriting coherent representation by a single MP, rather than as the minority interest of two other MPs.
The 5 year delay does mean that any third set of proposals will be invalid, as the law will require any redrawn boundaries in 2018 (ie 5 years time) to be based on electorate sizes as at 2015; the predictable levels of population movement in London are pretty well guaranteed to render boundaries based on the 2010 electorate as illegal - so tight are the rules for constituency sizes in the 2011 Constituencies Act mentioned above.
On the other hand they might revise the proposals and NOT re-instate Walthamstow, or they might not revise the proposals, or they might bring the whole process to an early end in view of the futility of continuing - would the law allow that?
If you have any thoughts it would be great to hear them!
You can read more on the BBC news pages here
(. . . later . . ) So what happens now to the Boundary Commission's process? This is quite independent of parliament but will the Commission complete its task? - ie will it produce its final draft of parliamentary boundaries as required by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, and include them in its report which is due to go to the Deputy Prime Minster by the statutory deadline of 1st October 2013. The Commission submitted a 'statutory annual update on the progress of the current Review' to the Speaker of the House of Commons on 23 January 2013, highlighting the progress during the preceding 12 months.
You can read this report here, but one interesting snippet from it is that during the eight-week period of consultation last autumn (till 10 December 2012) they "received in excess of 3,800 unique representations" about the Revised Proposals - ie the proposals which included the abolition of Walthamstow.
They go on to say "We are now commencing the process of considering those written representations. If we decide that the evidence submitted to us requires further revisions to be made to our proposals, we will include those changes in our final recommendations report to the Deputy Prime Minister." This leaves open the possibility they will not make any further revision.
Clearly there are questions about those '3800 unique representations'; for starters we estimated that Walthamstow residents sent in somewhere between 750 and 1000 representations, (see this earlier post) which if all were considered as 'unique' only leaves 2800 for the rest of England. All we can do is speculate at present, and right now I'm also unsure about what I hope will happen.
If for example they did revise the proposals, and re-instated a Walthamstow constituency that would (a) show the power and effectiveness of our campaign (b) set a marker for any further boundary reviews in the medium term that accepted the validity of the Stow as a community meriting coherent representation by a single MP, rather than as the minority interest of two other MPs.
The 5 year delay does mean that any third set of proposals will be invalid, as the law will require any redrawn boundaries in 2018 (ie 5 years time) to be based on electorate sizes as at 2015; the predictable levels of population movement in London are pretty well guaranteed to render boundaries based on the 2010 electorate as illegal - so tight are the rules for constituency sizes in the 2011 Constituencies Act mentioned above.
On the other hand they might revise the proposals and NOT re-instate Walthamstow, or they might not revise the proposals, or they might bring the whole process to an early end in view of the futility of continuing - would the law allow that?
If you have any thoughts it would be great to hear them!
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