What is the Labour response?

The BCE will hold public hearings, across England, at which individuals can make  oral representations. Equal consideration will be given to all representations (more here). At each ‘lead’ public hearing – the first in the region – the five political parties with English seats in the UK Parliament will be offered a longer speaking slot at the start of the hearing to set out their proposals for the whole region.

For the London region the first public hearing is on 17-18 October in Westminster: Aldersgate Room, Central Hall, Westminster, Storey's Gate Westminster. The longer speaking slot allows the political parties to address the whole region, but the BCE places no more weight on the representations from the political parties than from anyone else.

The London Regional party is currently holding briefing meetings for MPs and CLP officers, and will present a draft counter response to the initial proposals at a special NEC meeting ahead of the Westminster public hearing. This will reflect three principles the BCE is observing: to take account of existing boundaries, local authority boundaries, and local ties. The regional party counter proposal for Walthamstow retains the constituency in its current form, but with the addition of Forest ward, making 9 wards in all, giving an electorate of 71,280 (the minimum is 71,031). This would much more closely follow the existing constituency boundaries for both wards: for Chapel End it would retain the local ties with Walthamstow as 90% of it lies to the south of the A406 (under the initial BCE proposals Chapel End becomes part of Chingford & Woodford Green, but most of it would be cut off by what is effectively a motorway); for Wood Street it would retain the local ties, in particular with Walthamstow Village of which it is a large part (under the initial BCE proposals Wood Street becomes part of the new 'Leytonstone & Wanstead' constituency, but it has virtually no population toward the eastern boundary joining Snaresbrook - the land is all part of Epping Forest). All three wards lie in LBWF, so the local authority boundaries are retained.