County Council electoral review

The make-up of Cambridgeshire County Council is up for review. The Local Government Boundary Commission for England is conducting a review into the Cambridgeshire County Council and has some proposals. What has our Parish Council got to say about this?

13. ELECTORAL REVIEW OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE
It was expressed that Cambourne should be a County Division in its own right
with one Councillor dedicated to Cambourne and not as part of the Bourn Ward.

It was:
RESOLVED that the Chairman and Parish Clerk would review the consultation
documents and present a report at the Council meeting on 13th January 2015.

Sounds good, but this is unachievable. Firstly, the number of County Councillors is likely to fall from 69 to 63. Therefore there will be more electors per Division. Then the population is set to increase anyway. (Data set here) The number of electors for a 63 member council is set out in the table below:

With a 10% range this gives the upper and lower electorates.

There is another dataset which gives all the numbers. This gives the number of electors for Cambourne in 2014 as 6094 and the predicted number of electors for 2020 is 6590. This is well below the minimum number of electors needed to have a county councillor for Cambourne.

This doesn't include the predicted number of electors for West Cambourne which is in the neighbouring Parish of Caxton. This would add 1488 to the Caxton numbers. Annexing West Cambourne from Caxton to Cambourne would add enough to make 8078 predicted electors. Still below average but within the lower 10% range.

Making a County Division of Cambourne + West Cambourne and maybe adding Caxton causes many problems. The main one will how this effects other Divisions. As set out in the Guidance:

2. Make it relevant
The Commission has three main criteria - set out in law - which it must follow when it produces a new pattern of wards or electoral divisions. They are:

# The new pattern of wards should mean that each councillor represents roughly the same number of voters as elected members elsewhere in the authority.
# Ward patterns should – as far as possible – reflect community interests and identities and boundaries should be identifiable.
# The electoral arrangements should promote effective and convenient local government and reflect the electoral cycle of the council.

Our decisions on new wards and boundaries will always be based on the criteria above. As such, the Commission is much more likely to accept your proposals if they are based on one or more of the criteria above. This guide sets out, in more detail, what the three criteria might mean in practice. 

If you redraw the the proposed boundaries for a Cambourne Division you need to look at all the other Divisions to make them fit. Just saying we want a Division for Cambourne isn't good enough. Any proposals will need to show electoral equality and how any proposals will fit with community identity. In essence, by redrawing one part of the proposals this will have an effect on other proposed Divisions and all these will need to be redrawn too.

Ron says: Having a County Division for Cambourne is a good idea but the numbers don't stack up. Adding in West Cambourne helps. In any case the main problem is redrawing all the proposed divisions to make this work plus doing all the community links to add strength to any redrawing.

Ron also says: Good Luck.

You too can have your say. Guidance to having your say is linked here.