New South Glos wards confirmed

The Local Government Boundary Commission for England has published its final recommendations for the new wards for South Gloucestershire Council, to take effect from the elections in May next year. In the area covered by this blog:

• Charfield ward will be unchanged. 
• Westerleigh and Ladden Brook wards will disappear. 
• Frampton Cotterell ward will be enlarged to become a three member ward, covering the parishes of Frampton Cotterell, Iron Acton, Rangeworthy and Tytherington and the Coalpit Heath ward of Westerleigh Parish. 
• The Westerleigh ward of Westerleigh Parish and Dodington South ward of Dodington Parish, which are both currently in Westerleigh ward, will move into an enlarged Boyd Valley ward.
• Wickwar Parish will move into a new two member Chipping Sodbury and Cotswold Edge ward.

The external boundaries of the Parishes are unchanged. For example Westerleigh Parish will still cover Westerleigh village, most of Coalpit Heath, Henfield, Ram Hill, Kendleshire, Mayshill, Nibley (south of the River Frome) and the Stover Road area of Yate. However, instead of being in the one member Westerleigh ward, the Parish will now be covered partly by the 3 member Frampton Cotterell ward and partly by the 2 member Boyd Valley ward.

Last chance to have your say on South Glos ward boundaries

The South Glos Council wards will be changing at the next local elections in 2019, with the total number of councillors being cut from 70 to 61 and the number of voters being represented by each councillor becoming more equal.

The Local Government Boundary Commission for England has published their draft recommendations for the new boundaries. You can find all the details, including interactive maps, on their website.The consultation runs until 6th November 2017 and is your last chance to have your say before their proposals are finalised.

These are the criteria the Commission must follow when drawing up electoral arrangements:

• To deliver electoral equality where each councillor represents roughly the same number of electors as others across South Gloucestershire.
• That the pattern of wards should, as far as possible, reflect the interests and identities of local communities.
• That the electoral arrangements should provide for effective and convenient local government. 

You need to take account of these if you are suggesting different ward boundaries.

It's just as important to say if you like the changes proposed as if you don't. 

Note that the external boundary of South Gloucestershire won't change, just how the area within it is divided up into wards. Nor will they be changing external Parish boundaries.

However, Parishes and Parish wards within Parishes are being used as the building blocks of the new wards. Because of this, some Parishes will have their internal ward boundaries changed and others will have Parish wards created for the first time.  For example, they propose moving the boundary between the Coalpit Heath and Westerleigh wards of Westerleigh Parish so that all the houses on Henfield Road, The Hollows, Cook's Lane and Bitterwell Close are in the Coalpit Heath ward. There would still be 7 Parish Councillors for Coalpit Heath ward and 2 for Westerleigh ward.

How will it affect our area?

If these proposals go ahead:

• Charfield ward would be unchanged. 
• Westerleigh and Ladden Brook wards would disappear.
• Frampton Cotterell ward would be enlarged to become a three member ward, covering the parishes of Frampton Cotterell, Iron Acton, Rangeworthy and Tytherington and the (slightly enlarged) Coalpit Heath ward of Westerleigh Parish.
• The Westerleigh ward of Westerleigh Parish and Dodington South ward of Dodington Parish, which are both currently in Westerleigh ward, would move into an enlarged Boyd Valley ward.
• Wickwar Parish would move into a new Sodbury Vale ward, which also takes in large parts of the current Cotswold Edge ward.

Changes to boundaries proposed

There is still time to comment on the Boundary Commission proposals to change the constituency boundaries for electing our MPs. These are a result of the Conservative Government's plans to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and make sure there are roughly the same number of voters in each constituency.

Under the proposals, most of the existing Thornbury and Yate constituency will join with part of Gloucestershire, taking in areas such as Berkeley, Can, Dursley and Wotton-under-Edge, to form a new constituency of Dursley, Thornbury and Yate. Westerleigh ward would remain in this new constituency but the wards of Frampton Cotterell and Boyd Valley (the area including Pucklechurch, Wick and Marshfield) would move into neighbouring constituencies.

While the Boundary Commission is independent, it has to work with the strict rules set by the current Conservative Government. The 2 million people who registered to vote prior to the EU referendum are not included in these plans and they are not allowed to take into consideration any proposed new housing developments. The new constituencies could be wildly different in size by 2020.

You can read the full proposals and submit a response online until 5th December.

Parish boundary review

The review of Parish Boundaries in South Gloucestershire has been
completed.

• Proposals to move houses and industrial estates between Nibley and the railway line into the Yate Town Council area were rejected after representations from residents, the Parish Council and councillor Claire Young.
• There will be a small change to the southern boundary of Westerleigh Parish, an area south of the M4 will be added to the new Emerson's Green Town Council. No houses will be moving into Emerson's Green and there will be no loss of income for Westerleigh. All Westerleigh Parish's facilities, including Bitterwell Lake, remain in the Parish.
• Westerleigh will gain a small piece of countryside to the north of the M4 from Mangotsfield Parish.
• The houses on the Park side of Court Road will now all be in Frampton Cotterell Parish rather than Winterbourne.