Boundary Commission Review of Constituencies

At midnight last night the Boundary Commission's review of parliamentary constituency boundaries was published - although it was leaked and was available on line way before that.  The implications for Whittlesey and Fenland are huge.


Basically, North East Cambridgeshire will be no more.  It is proposed that; Whittlesey will move into Peterborough South; March and Wisbech will move into a new Wisbech and Downham Market constituency and; Chatteris and surrounding area will move into Huntingdonshire.

Of course these are just proposals at the moment and, indeed, only affect Parliamentary Constituencies - but it is important that people respond to the consultation.  One serious issue that comes from this is that any subsequent review of Council Boundaries could lead to Whittlesey moving out of Fenland and into Peterborough City Council.

Whilst I have huge concerns about what this means for the people I serve, I am adamant that the reasons behind the review are absolutely right - that the sizes of constituencies need to be evened out so that we end the ludicrous situation where the Conservatives need to poll loads more votes than the Labour Party in order to get a majority in Parliament.  Largely because inner city parliamentary seats are smaller than rural ones - despite the fact that geography means that rural Constituencies are much harder to manage.

I could talk and type about this for hours - certainly there are lots of questions that need to be answered - such as how much future housing growth has been taken into account and how much of this has been the Boundary Commission simply playing with numbers without understand or asking questions about the implications for the tax payers who fund politicians and, indeed, the Boundary Commission itself.