Boundary Commission for England
Newsletter
No.1 of 2000 Issued 22 February 2000GENERAL REVIEW OF PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUENCY BOUNDARIES
- A review of the boundaries of all the parliamentary constituencies in England has been announced by the Boundary Commission.
- The Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, as amended by the Boundary Commissions Act 1992, requires the Commission to review the representation of England in the House of Commons and to submit a report to the Home Secretary not less than eight or more than twelve years from the date of the submission of their last such report. The Commission submitted their last report to the Home Secretary on 12 April 1995 and the next report must therefore be submitted before 12 April 2007.
- The Commission formulate their provisional recommendations for groups of constituencies in accordance with the Rules for Redistribution of Seats which are set out in Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act. The Rules have been reproduced overleaf. Notice of the Commission's provisional recommendations is published in at least one newspaper circulating in the constituencies affected, specifying where details of the recommendations are shown on a map and may be inspected.
- Representations in respect of the provisional recommendations are invited and these may be made within one month from publication of the notice. A local inquiry will be held if representations objecting to the provisional recommendations are received from an interested local authority or from a body of 100 or more electors. The Commission arrange for the local inquiry to be conducted by an Assistant Commissioner. The Assistant Commissioner will submit a report to the Commission, who may then decide to revise their recommendations.
- The revised recommendations will also be published and representations will be invited, but the Commission are not obliged to hold a further local inquiry. If the Commission decide to modify their revised recommendations, before submitting their final recommendations to the Home Secretary, the procedure of publication and inviting representations is repeated. The report containing the Commission's final recommendations relates to all the constituencies in England. Separate reports are not submitted for any group of constituencies.
- It is the Home Secretary's duty to lay the Commission's report before Parliament, together with a draft Order in Council giving effect to the recommendations, with or without modifications. The draft Order is submitted to both Houses of Parliament for approval and, after it is made, the new constituencies take effect at the next following general election.
- The Commission's recommendations throughout the review will be based on the 2000 electoral registers and will take account of the new wards resulting from the Periodic Electoral Reviews being conducted by the Local Government Commission for England. The Commission expect to publish their provisional recommendations for the first group of counties in June 2000.
Rules for Redistribution of Seats
The rules
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- The number of constituencies in Great Britain shall not be substantially greater or less than 613.
- Repealed by the Scotland Act 1998.
- The number of constituencies in Wales shall not be less than 35.
- The number of constituencies in Northern Ireland shall not be greater than 18 or less than 16, and shall be 17 unless it appears to the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland that Northern Ireland should for the time being be divided into 16 or (as the case may be) into 18 constituencies.
- Every constituency shall return a single member.
- There shall continue to be a constituency which shall include the whole of the City of London and the name of which shall refer to the City of London.
- A constituency which includes the Orkney Islands or the Shetland Islands shall not include the whole or any part of a local government area other than the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands.
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- So far as is practicable having regard to rules 1 to 3A-
- in England and Wales -
- no county or any part of a county shall be included in a constituency which includes the whole or part of any other county or the whole or part of a London borough,
- no London borough or any part of a London borough shall be included in a constituency which includes the whole or part of any other London borough,
- in Scotland, regard shall be had to the boundaries of local authority areas,
- in Northern Ireland, no ward shall be included partly in one constituency and partly in another.
- (In sub-paragraph (1)(a) above "county" means, in relation to Wales, a preserved county (as defined by section 64 of the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994).
- in England and Wales -
- In sub-paragraph (1)(b) above "area" and "local authority" have the same meanings as in the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.
- So far as is practicable having regard to rules 1 to 3A-
- The electorate of any constituency shall be as near the electoral quota as is practicable having regard to rules 1 to 4; and a Boundary Commission may depart from the strict application of rule 4 if it appears to them that a departure is desirable to avoid an excessive disparity between the electorate of any constituency and the electoral quota, or between the electorate of any constituency and that of neighbouring constituencies in the part of the United Kingdom with which they are concerned.
- A Boundary Commission may depart from the strict application of rules 4 and 5 if special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency, appear to them to render a departure desirable.
- It shall not be the duty of a Boundary Commission to aim at giving full effect in all circumstances to the above rules, except rule 3A, but they shall take account, so far as they reasonably can -
- of the inconveniences attendant on alterations of constituencies other than alterations made for the purposes of rule 4, and
- of any local ties which would be broken by such alterations.
- In the application of rule 5 to each part of the United Kingdom for which there is a Boundary Commission -
- the expression "electoral quota" means a number obtained by dividing the electorate for that part of the United Kingdom by the number of constituencies in it existing on the enumeration date,
- the expression "electorate" means -
- in relation to a constituency, the number of persons whose names appear on the register of parliamentary electors in force on the enumeration date under the Representation of the People Acts for the constituency,
- in relation to the part of the United Kingdom, the aggregate electorate as defined in sub-paragraph (i) above of all the constituencies in that part,
- the expression "enumeration date" means, in relation to any report of a Boundary Commission under this Act, the date on which the notice with respect to that report is published in accordance with section 5(1) of this Act.
- In this Schedule, a reference to a rule followed by a number is a reference to the rule set out in the correspondingly numbered paragraph of this Schedule.
General and supplementary