We have published further details below, along with links to the BCE website, so that you can see how their proposals may affect our area, along with details of how to contact them with your comments:
On 24 February, 2016, the Boundary Commission for England (BCE) announced the start of a review of the Parliamentary Constituencies in England. The BCE is required to report to Parliament in September 2018.
As part of
the review, the BCE will look at current constituency boundaries and local
government patterns in redrawing the map of boundaries before making its
recommendation to Parliament. This will involve regularly consulting the public
for their views and refining proposals in a number of stages.
Parliament
has specified that the review must reduce the number of constituencies, and
therefore MPs, in the UK, to 600. It has asked the BCE to consider where the
boundaries of the new constituencies should be, ensuring that every new
constituency has roughly the same number of electors – no fewer than 71,031 and
no more than 78,507. England will have 501 constituencies, 32 fewer than there
are currently. With regards to the North East, BCE proposes to reduce the
number of constituencies from 29 to 25.
The BCE have today published
their Guide for this review, which you can find on their website at the link
below.
The Guide aims to explain:
·
The policies that the Commission will work to in conducting the
review within the statutory framework;
·
The changes that were most recently made to the law governing
Parliamentary constituency reviews by the Parliamentary Voting System and
Constituencies Act 2011 (‘the 2011 Act’). The 2011 Act has a major impact on
the way a review operates, and particularly the first review to be completed
following that legislation is likely to result in some degree of change to a
large number of existing constituencies; and
·
The details of the process that the 2018 Review will follow
including the number of public hearings that we will conduct around the country
this autumn.
The BCE have also announced that
they intend to publish Initial Proposals for new boundaries on Tuesday 13
September 2016. Although it should be noted that while this is the
Commission’s current intention, they reserve the right to revise that timetable
if necessary.
