Basildon Council votes through initial proposals
New wards to be considered by Boundary Commission
Some of you may recall that I wrote a blog last month about the boundary review being undertaken in Basildon Borough by the Local Government Boundary Commission looking at the warding arrangements for Basildon Council.
This is the first boundary review in Basildon in 20 years and is seeking to ensure each borough councillor represents a similar number of electors. In particular, the Commission are looking to eliminate 2-member wards so that, in future, all wards will have 3 members. This means, in effect, that Basildon will go from 16 wards to 14.
In my previous blog, I outlined a bit of the history of the warding arrangements since the Council was established in 1974 and the previous reviews in 1979, 1984 and most recently in 2002. The consultation closed last month and Basildon Council agreed its own formal submission to the Commission at a meeting of Full Council on July 21st. You can watch the webcast of the meeting here.
The Full Council meeting was interesting because the Labour Group submitted their own alternative proposals and I thought it would be useful to share this with residents ahead of the next consultation, which will be on the Commission’s draft recommendations.
Firstly, just a quick reminder of the current ward boundaries:
CURRENT WARD BOUNDARIES (since 2002):
Looking at the above and considering how best to reorganise the boundaries, however, probably does not make sense unless you know the polling districts, which are smaller geographical sub-divisions of an electoral area. For voting purposes, each ward is divided into several polling districts and, in essence, the boundary review will entail moving polling districts between wards to make their electorates more equal in size. They are labelled BA through to EI but also have names to make them more identifiable. For ease, the map below just uses the alphabetical label. Billericay East, for example, is currently made up of four polling districts - Chantry (BA), Norsey (BB), St. Mary’s (BC) and Sunnymede (BD).
BASILDON BOROUGH POLLING DISTRICTS:
I shall first outline the Conservative proposals and deal with Labour’s counterproposals at the end.
Our plan would leave both Billericay East and Billericay West as they are now, coterminous with the East and West wards of Billericay Town Council. Burstead Ward, despite its physical size, is quite sparsely populated – currently comprising the south-west of Billericay, known as Summerdale (the BL polling district) and Tye Common (BM), as well as the villages of Great Burstead (BI) and South Green (BK) and Little Burstead (BJ). Summerdale and Tye Common are coterminous with the South-West Ward of the Town Council, while the other areas have their own parish councils. Given that the two-member Crouch Ward must be abolished, under the Conservative proposals it is suggested that Steeple View (BS), which currently forms the westernmost part of Crouch, be added to Burstead to create an enlarged Burstead Ward.
The Southend Arterial Road (A127) makes for a natural southern boundary and Steeple View has good links to Burstead – the name itself being in part derived from their views of St. Mary Magdalene Church in Great Burstead.
The rest of Crouch, namely the parishes of Noak Bridge (BN), Ramsden Bellhouse (BO and BP) and Ramsden Crays (BQ and BR), could then merge with most of the current two-member Wickford Castledon Ward to form a new three-member ‘Crouch’ ward.
Part of the Bromfords (EA) polling district of Wickford Castledon would need to be moved into the current two-member Wickford Park Ward to make that a three-member ward (which it would probably make sense to call ‘Wickford South’). The current Wickford North Ward could be left unchanged.
That would take care of the wards north of the Arterial. Moving south, we propose that the current Laindon Park, Lee Chapel North, Pitsea North-West and Pitsea South-East wards all be left as they are.
There are three two-member wards in Basildon – St. Martin’s, Vange and Langdon Hills. Under our proposals, three polling districts would be taken from the current Fryerns Ward – namely Honeypot (BU), Whitmore (BW) and Willows (BX) – and combined with part of the current St. Martin’s Ward – namely Fairhouse (CH) and Ghyllgrove (CI) – to form a new ward, which has provisionally been called ‘St. Martin's’. The remainder of Fryerns and St. Martin’s – namely Craylands (BT), St. Andrew’s (BV) and Timberlog (CJ) – could then be combined with the northern part of the current Vange Ward – namely Bardfield (DS) and Luncies (DT) – to form a new ward, which is provisionally being called ‘Vange’.
To deal with the current two-member Langdon Hills Ward, we propose to add Lee Chapel South (DF), which is currently part of Nethermayne Ward, to create a new three-member ‘Langdon Hills’ Ward.
The remainder of Nethermayne could then be combined with the southern part of Vange – St. Chad’s (DU) and Vange Hill (DV) – to form a new ‘Nethermayne’.
So, all told, the new boundaries would appear thus:
PROPOSED NEW BOUNDARIES (Conservative Administration):
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Labour Counterproposals
As I mentioned earlier, at Full Council the Labour Group presented counterproposals, which were far more radical in terms of the sheer scale of change to ward boundaries.
In Billericay, they proposed that Billericay West take in Summerdale from Burstead whilst Billericay East strike out westwards to take in Tye Common. This would effectively make them ‘Billericay North’ and ‘Billericay South’ respectively but Labour have retained the existing names. Burstead, meanwhile, would be combined with much of Crouch and Wickford Castledon to create a massive and unwieldy ‘uber-ward’, which would stretch all the way from Little Burstead and the western borough boundary with Brentwood, eastwards across almost the entire length of the borough into Wickford. As for the rest of Wickford, like us they would leave Wickford North as is and create a new ‘Wickford South’ Ward out of Wickford Park and the Bromfords area of Castledon.
Apart from the fact that the Billericay wards would no longer be coterminous with the Town Council wards, the new ‘Burstead & Crouch’ ward would be impractically enormous, containing several disparate villages, who may have little interaction with one another and vastly different priorities. It would be very difficult for three councillors to adequately represent a ward that includes a largely rural area like Little Burstead and an urban town centre like Wickford High Street.
Meanwhile, Labour’s proposal breaches the natural boundary of the A127 to bring Steeple View and Noak Bridge, both currently in Crouch, into Laindon Park. The latter loses the Merrylands (CA) and New Century (CC) polling districts to Langdon Hills and the former becomes a new ward, which they are calling ‘Laindon North’. This proposal is actually very similar to the old pre-2002 Laindon Ward. Personally, as a former Laindon resident myself, who grew up and now lives in Billericay, I am all for extending the boundary beyond the ‘127 if it means Labour and the so-called Independents are going to stop constantly trying to pit the residents either side of the arterial against one another but I think, on the whole, the road is an obvious boundary and I do not think it makes much sense to have a ward that straddles it.
Their proposals for the New Town are equally far-reaching, especially in Pitsea – seemingly in an effort to preserve their safe seats in Lee Chapel North (completely unchanged) and Fryerns. The latter only loses Honeypot to St. Martin’s, as in our plans, but the remainder stays as it is. St. Martin’s loses Timberlog to Vange, again as in our plans. Nethermayne remains largely unchanged, with only the Mistley polling district (DG) transferred to Vange, along with Ryedene (DQ) from Pitsea South-East. Luncies, meanwhile, gets transferred from Vange into a new ‘Pitsea Town’ Ward.
Their new ‘St. Martin’s’ would, I believe, have too great a population variance and would not meet the Commission’s requirements.
The changes in Pitsea are particularly striking. In addition to Luncies, Chalvedon (DI) and Tanswell (DL) are transferred from Pitsea North-West into the new ‘Pitsea Town’, along with Eversley (DO) and Rokescroft (DP) from Pitsea South-East. The large remaining area is used to create a new ‘Pitsea North & Bowers’ Ward. As with their proposed ‘Burstead & Crouch’, this new 'uber-ward' would be unmanageably large.
PROPOSED NEW BOUNDARIES (Labour Opposition):
Conclusion
Firstly, I note that while the Tory proposals entail no change for 7 of the current 16 wards, the Labour proposals are far more radical, leaving only Lee Chapel North and Wickford North completely untouched. Every other part of the borough endures some change. Whilst the boundaries the Conservatives have put forward as an Administration are not perfect, perfection is hard to attain in an exercise like this. There are necessary trade-offs when trying to satisfy the competing demands of boundaries that satisfy the numbers game but also make sense to residents and are respect their community identities. But, by and large, I think the Tory proposals achieve that less imperfectly than Labour’s alternative, so I voted in favour of the Administration’s formal proposals.
What's in a name?
I noted in one speech, namely that of Cllr. Allan Davies (Lab, Fryerns), a fairly decent fellow to be fair, the pitfalls incumbent in trying to name wards. He made a rather animated speech at Full Council opposing our proposals, principally it seemed to me because the name Fryerns would disappear and the area would now be called ‘Vange’. This was, with hindsight, a deficiency of our proposals because we defaulted to placeholder names with little thought and did not get into the nitty-gritty of what wards should be called. I did, actually, in my own personal submission to the Commission but never got into it with colleagues. Too fraught! But we probably should have hashed it out. Personally, I have always found it odd that none of the wards in Basildon Borough actually have the name 'Basildon' in them, even though that is the main town and administrative centre of the borough. For this reason, I preferred the name ‘Basildon Town East’ for the new 'Vange' ward. But, upon consideration, it could just as easily be called Fryerns or some variant thereof. In fact, the new boundaries are very similar to the old ‘Fryerns East’ ward that existed from 1979 to 2002. Likewise, for St. Martin’s I preferred 'Basildon Town North' but it could also be called ‘Fryerns Central’, another pre-2002 ward that existed on very similar boundaries. Personally, I would call the new 'Langdon Hills' Ward 'Langdon Hills & Lee Chapel South' to better respect the separate identifies of those two communities. We could also do with looking at the name of the new 'Crouch' Ward. It is an awkward assortment of villages, which is probably why they named it after the river. I am not sure it is a name that hugely resonates, however. I could not really come up with anything better but I think I suggested 'Castledon & Crouch'. Likewise, 'Nethermayne' is another of those 'compromise names'. The whole ward is named after the A176 (Nether Mayne), which runs through the ward. In my submission, I preferred the name ‘Basildon Town South’ – or, given that much of Vange proper will be in this new ward and the boundaries are actually not dissimilar to those of the old 1979-2002 Vange Ward, it might be a more sensible candidate to be called ‘Vange’.
What next?
You can read the full report to Full Council here. The Conservative proposals were adopted in a vote that, predictably, ran along party lines, with the Conservative Group voting in favour and Labour and the Independent Group voting against and the Wickford Independents abstaining. They have now become the formal submission of the Council to the Commission. For what it's worth, I honestly believe they present a better set of boundaries than those prepared by Labour but, obviously, the Labour Group will doubtless be submitting their counterproposals separately to the Commission.
The Commission will now consider the submissions it has received, including in the public consultation but I am guessting the number of public submissions will be exceptionally low. As I said in my speech to Full Council, I do not think the review is easy to engage with and it is hard to see how members of the public could make useful contributions on the scant information provided on the consultation website. But the next consultation will be on the Commission’s draft recommendations, so that should at least give residents something to consider and comment upon. That consultation is scheduled to commence in October and will run through to December, with the Commission’s final recommendations due to be published in February 2023.
