A note on this project

You have landed on a page that forms part of my project to suggest more equal parliamentary constituencies for England. If you would like to know why I am doing this, page back to my explanatory opening posts.

Please feel free to leave comments on how clever or daft you think my suggestions are.

Also, all the original thought in this project is Copyright C.M. Read. I’m not looking for financial reward but if this is of interest and worth quoting, please reference me! 

Berkshire

Berkshire doesn’t have a county council now; all the boroughs are Unitary Authorities. Also, the boundaries have changed over time, especially around Slough and the border with Oxfordshire.

My solution does cross the former boundary, with Buckinghamshire, and also the one with Surrey as my chain continues around the South East Region. The boundaries with Hampshire and Oxfordshire are not crossed.

The area of (former) Berkshire is long from east to west but narrow from north to south. Some of the borders between authorities are a bit contorted and there are two cross border seats at the east end of the county, where it did take a while to find a sensible proposal.

My new constituency of Ascot(SE67) breaks one of my rules by being a new suggestion that includes territory from three different boroughs as well as being a cross-county seat – I spent a considerable time looking for better alternatives. My main justification is that Ascot and its neighbour Sunningdale form a rather detached part of the Maidenhead and Windsor Borough, with no transport links to the rest of the Authority that don’t pass through other areas. There are parts of Surrey that have better connections with this Ascot/Sunningdale area, and it is surrounded on three sides by Bracknell Forest borough, which also includes an area called North Ascot.  So, this new seat covers South Ascot/Sunningdale,  most of the area of Bracknell Forest Authority that is outside Bracknell itself (North Ascot, Sandhurst, Crowthorne) and also Bagshot and Chobham from Surrey. That reads like a bit of ragbag but it’s a reasonably compact arrangement on the map, and the best of a bad situation.

Bracknell, having lost the areas of the borough of Bracknell Forest outside the town, is combined with its neighbour in the fairly tightly drawn Wokingham and Bracknell(SE68). Apart from the wards that make up the two towns this also includes one linking ward, Wokingham Without.

The rest of Wokingham borough can be split into three parts. A long finger pointing to the north, covering Twyford and the south bank of the Thames almost to Henley is already included in Maidenhead (which I will describe in detail later).  The other two parts, a rural area around the south of Reading and a collection of suburbs that could perhaps be included in Reading borough form a new seat named after the largest of those suburbs Earley(SE69).  The current Wokingham curls further around Reading than its borough to take in three wards from West Berkshire – Earley includes only two of these (Burghfield and Mortimer), and it also includes Finchampstead which is in Wokingham borough but currently in the Bracknell seat.

There are moderate changes to the Reading seats, which both move slightly to the west. Reading East(SE70) currently includes two wards from Wokingham borough, but these are now split between Earley and Maidenhead constituencies. In their place East gets a ward and half from the other Reading seat and now includes all the town centre. Reading West(SE71) moves even further out into the Berkshire countryside past Theale and Pangbourne, both already in the seat, now adding Fulhamstead, removed from Wokingham and a couple more from West Berkshire. It now reaches to the edge of Thatcham. This reflects the fact that Reading, although it has had two seats named after it since 1974, has electorate enough for only 1½. My initial plan was to include more of the Earley area in a Reading seat. That would have been a better fit in some ways, but would have left me with a surplus of voters in the west of the county.

The current Newbury(SE72) is about 3000 voters over the upper limit so can lose those two wards to Reading West and remain otherwise unchanged.

Back to the east of the county, Maidenhead(SE73) takes in one extra ward from Reading East, as already mentioned. This puts a seat – already at the top end of the permitted electorate range – over quota, so two wards, including Bray and its exclusive restaurants, move to Windsor.

This brings us to the most dramtic change in Berkshire and that affects Slough.  The borough is a long east- west presence in the far east of the area and can’t all be fitted into one constituency. That would leave it 10,000 voters over quota. To the south is Windsor, now shorn of the Ascot area (see above) and to the north is the Buckinghamshire border that curles around Slough at both ends of the town. Though I tried to find an alternative, I realised the only way was to split Slough. Five wards from the east, from Upton to the slightly detached Colnbrook with Poyle, which is already included in the Windsor seat  are added to Windsor (and Bray) to make Slough East and Windsor(SE74). The rest of the town, including Central ward, is supplemented by six wards from South Buckinghamshire to make Slough West and Burnham(SE75).

Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes

Buckinghamshire is a sparsely populated county by South East standards, particularly in its north, and is worth 5 ¼ seats. It is also effected by cross border seats.  Milton Keynes, now a Unitary Authority though originally in the county, is worth 2 1/3, so there needs to be one seat that combines MK and Buckinghamshire wards. As already mentioned, there is a cross border seat with Berkshire, and that accounts for 1/5 of a seat. 1/3 of a seat is ‘leant’ to Oxfordshire, which is worth 6.7 seats. This means there are only 4 seats entirely within Bucks, but seven that include at least part of the county

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The easiest choice in the county was to leave Chesham and Amersham(SE76) as it is, as the whole of the Chiltern district and no more.

The current Beaconsfield(SE77)  has a shape rather like a man on horseback, with the eponymous town where the rider sits on the back, Marlow at the head and the two legs either side of Slough.  My new version has lost the front leg to Slough West but still has the back leg, down by Iver near the M4/M25 junction; now the head is bigger stretching way past Marlow almost to Henley, and the horse has acquired another rider at Loudwater at the edge of Wycombe. The whole seat is strung out along the first 25 miles of the M40.  Wycombe(SE78) has lost Loudwater and the area between Marlow and Henley to Beaconsfield, and takes in two extra wards – to the north west, Stokenchurch and to the north, Hughenden Valley.

If the current shape of Beaconsfield constituency is equine, the current shape of the  Aylesbury seat is just odd. There is an area around the eponymous town, then the constituency runs to the south east to Wendover and some countryside around that secondary town, then it turns sharply to the west where a narrow neck of land joins to an area of small villages within Wycombe borough, shaped like a rectangle with concave sides. With Stokenchurch and Hughenden removed from the south of that shape, I can add a much larger linking area, around Princes Risborough to make an Aylesbury(SE79) that is a far more regular shape for a constituency.

The northern part of Aylesbury Vale district council is the Buckingham Constituency, the seat of the current speaker. Apart from the small eponymous town, there really aren’t any large places; just open countryside and a few villages. In my plan the seat has lost the Princes Risborough area(see above). The rest I divide up between two cross border seats.  The south western corner, either side of the A41 from Aylesbury to Bicester is added to a new seat based on the latter, which will be described when I cover Oxfordshire. The North Eastern half, including Buckingham itself, will be added to part of Milton Keynes.

There is a large chunk of the Milton Keynes Authority that is rural but that is to the north, past Newport Pagnall and well away from the border with Buckinghamshire, so it is the town of Bletchley that I detach from the rest of MK and add to Buckingham and Bletchley(SW80).   Bletchley provides 1/3 of the electorate to this new seat despite being much the smaller part by area.

Milton Keynes South(SE81) needs a couple of wards from Milton Keynes North(SE82). Here I can only give an approximation of how the borough should be divided dues to differences in ward names between my sources.

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire currently has six constituencies, but by ‘borrowing’ a rural tract of Buckinghamshire, can now have seven

 

Since the electorate for 6.7 constituencies is currently squeezed in to 6, its not a surprise these are all oversized. By far the biggest change is the creation of the new constituency of Bicester(SE83), which takes electorate from two current Bucks seats (Buckingham and Aylesbury) and three current Oxfordshire seats(Banbury, Oxford West and Abingdon and small amount from Henley). That sounds complicated but its actually a tidier solution to the current one.  The wards for the new seat come from only two district Authorities – Aylesbury Vale on the Bucks side and Cherwell on the Oxfordshire side.

Banbury(SE84) is currently about 10,000 voters oversized but loses about 25,000 to the new Bicester. To compensate, it takes four wards from West Oxfordshire District (and Witney constituency) including Chipping Norton.

Witney(SE85) is also oversized, by about 4000, and only needs to replace the Chipping Norton area with the Faringdon area from Vale of the White Horse District, which in turn leaves Wantage(SE86) with the right number of voters.

Oxford West and Abingdon(SE87) has lost Kidlington to the new Beicester seat – and so now includes territory from two councils rather than the current three. It takes two wards in the historic centre from Oxford East(SE88), another greatly overpopulated seat which is now in range after this change. Finally, Henley(SE89) now has an electorate in range after losing two large but sparsely populated wards to Bicester

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