Boundary Review: Massive changes for Somerset

The long awaited report from the Boundary Commission has been published today, I should be fishing in the Channel Islands and unable to comment, but Hurricane Katya has forced us to postpone for 24 hrs and so there is no escape!!!!

However, the afore mentioned report has thrown up quite a few changes to the local Parliamentary Constituencies, so I thought I would just comment on the proposals so far. As part of the coalition agreement to hold a referendum on the voting process earlier this year, leading to the resounding No vote against the Lib Dem Alternative Vote proposal, the government pledged to reduce the number of MP's in Parliament to 600 from the current 650 and at the same time even up the sizes of each constituency in terms of voter numbers.

The last Labour government had successfully gerrymandered the constituencies to the point where they had a 6% benefit in their favour, in other words, the Conservatives would have to get at least 6% more of the popular vote, just to remain level with Labour in terms of seats!!!
The new proposals eliminate this inbuilt bias in favour of Labour, and means that all seats, except those on the Isle of Wight, have an electorate in the 73,000 to 77,000 range. Previously some Labour strongholds only had 40,000 voters and some Conservative seats had over 100,000, hardly fair I think you would agree.

So what does this mean locally? Well overall, the number of seats in this immediate region remains the same at 10, the South West as a whole loses 2 seats. However the boundaries of the seats have changed radically.

The new "North East Somerset" seat includes Shepton Mallet, Frome, Midsomer Norton, Radstock and Paulton, which is in effect part of the old Wells seat, part of the Somerton and Frome seat, both in Mendip, and part of Jacob Rees Mogg's seat in Bath and North East Somerset (BANES).

The rest of the old Somerton and Frome seat is now in a new "Wincanton and Glastonbury" seat, which includes Somerton and Ilminster. Finally the old Wells seat has changed radically, losing both Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury/Street and gaining parts of North Somerset to compensate.

Further afield Taunton Deane loses many of its surrounding villages and is proposed to be renamed Taunton, Bridgwater will be amalgamated with parts of West Somerset, leaving very little as it was.

These proposals are now subject to a 12 week consultation process, however, with the amount of work that has gone into this review, I would suspect and changes to boundaries will be fairly minor, though changes to Constituency names more likely. It will be interesting to see how our local MP's act over the coming months, if the complexion of the new seat doesn't look favourable, you will see a number trying to jump ship elsewhere.

Right that’s my lot until next week, The sign on the door says “Gone Fishin’ “and this time I mean it.