Boundary Changes

 

Boundary Review *FINAL*

New boundaries approved by Parliament

Changes to parliamentary constituencies and borough ward boundaries have now been finalised

 

This is my first blog here on my new ‘blogspot’ since I retired my personal website earlier this year. I am just reporting back on an admittedly fairly niche subject about which I have blogged before – namely, the nerdy area of the recent boundary reviews.

Back in June, the Boundary Commission published its recommended changes to parliamentary constituencies. I was very loosely involved in the review, having represented Essex Area Conservatives at the hearings held by the Commission last year.

For us locally, there will be little discernible change. The current Basildon & Billericay Constituency remains the same, except that Vange is being transferred from the South Basildon & East Thurrock Constituency (SBET) into Basildon & Billericay.

In addition to Vange, SBET is also losing the North Benfleet polling district of Pitsea South-East Ward to the Castle Point Constituency (which will create the slightly odd situation that the ward will now straddle two parliamentary constituencies) and extending into Chadwell St. Mary (currently part of the Thurrock Constituency).

The footprint of the Rayleigh & Wickford Constituency will remain unchanged, so far as Basildon Borough is concerned, but will be extending into Rochford District, taking in Hawkwell, Hockley and Ashingdon. 

Please note that changes to the parliamentary boundaries have no bearing on local authority boundaries. So, just because North Benfleet, for example, is moving into the Castle Point Constituency does not mean that North Benfleet now comes under Castle Point Borough Council. North Benfleet remains part of the Bowers Gifford & North Benfleet Parish and that still comes under Basildon Borough in its entirety. It simply means, rather oddly, that local services will be delivered by Basildon Council and it will elect Basildon councillors but will be represented in Parliament, going forward, by the MP for Castle Point (slightly mad but there you go). 

The new parliamentary boundaries will take effect from the next General Election, which must be called prior to January 2025. Mr. John Baron, C.B.E., who has been the Member of Parliament for Basildon & Billericay since its creation in 2010, and previously represented the predecessor Billericay seat from 2001, has already been re-selected to fight the constituency for the Conservatives at the next election.

Meanwhile, the Basildon (Electoral Changes) Order 2023 was officially made on July 4^th, implementing the first update to Basildon Council’s ward boundaries in more than 20 years. Long-standing readers of my blog will recall I have written about this previously.

The new boundaries will now be fought at the ‘All In/All Out’ election scheduled to be held in May next year, in which all 42 seats across the 14 remaining electoral wards (down from 16) will be contested. 

Again, the changes here in Billericay are minimal. My own Billericay East Ward, along with Billericay West Ward, remain unchanged and will be fought along the same boundaries as now.

The only change to the Burstead Ward is that it will now include the Steepleview area, which currently falls under the Crouch Ward. The remainder of Crouch – namely the villages of Noak Bridge, Crays Hill and Ramsden Bellhouse – is to be combined with most of the current Wickford Castledon Ward to create a new three-member ward to be called ‘Castledon & Crouch’. Some of the current Castledon seat is also being transferred into the existing two-member Wickford Park Ward in order to make that a three-member ward. The boundaries of Wickford North Ward remain the same.

Moving south of the A127, Fryerns Ward, Laindon Park Ward, Lee Chapel North Ward and Pitsea North-West Ward all remain the same. The main big change is the abolition of the Vange Ward. This is a shame, as there has always been a ward named Vange, ever since the district was founded in 1974, but the ward has effectively now been divided, with the northern half being transferred into the existing two-member St. Martin’s Ward in order to make that a three-member ward, which will continue to be known as ‘St. Martin’s’ (despite some suggestions it be renamed ‘Barstable’), while the southern half is transferred into the current Nethermayne Ward to offset the loss of the Dry Street and Lee Chapel South polling districts, which are being transferred into the existing two-member Langdon Hills Ward, again in order to make that a three-member ward. The new enlarged wards will continue to use the names Langdon Hills and Nethermayne, so the Vange name will disappear.

The only other very minor change is a tiny sliver of Nethermayne being transferred into the existing Pitsea South-East Ward, which otherwise remains the same. 

New wards from 2024

 

Overall, this is a reasonably positive result. I had resisted efforts by the Labour Party to radically redraw the boundaries in Billericay, effectively replacing Billericay East and West with a Billericay ‘North’ and ‘South’, which would have made no sense. It would have meant the borough ward boundaries would no longer be coterminous with the East and West wards used by Billericay Town Council. Local government is quite confusing enough to local residents without having two local authorities representing the same area but using completely different boundaries!

Steepleview joining Burstead is sensible and proportionate (Labour had wanted to create a massive uber-ward, that would have stretched from the western boundary with Brentwood across the length of the borough into Wickford). Burstead will now consist of the Summerdale and Tye Common areas of south-west Billericay, along with the parishes of Great Burstead & South Green, Little Burstead and now the Steepleview area (so named for its view of the steeple of Great Burstead Church).

The new Castledon & Crouch Ward is going to be a very different kind of ward moving forward, as Crouch was a collection of semi-rural villages and plotlands. Castledon & Crouch will now contain a major urban centre in Wickford High Street. But this makes far more sense than Labour’s proposal, which would have seen Noak Bridge transferred into a new ‘Laindon North’, creating a ward that straddled the A127 – when the Arterial is a natural boundary.

The loss of Vange is a shame but I think we now have a pattern of wards across Basildon that make sense. All wards will be roughly the same size and will be represented by three councillors each. The old two-member wards have all been abolished, so no longer will some people find themselves with no elections taking place in their area even though other parts of the Borough are voting. We will all vote at the same time.

I am sorry that some of my naming proposals were not adopted. Only Castledon & Crouch was taken up. I had suggested that the new Langdon Hills Ward should be called ‘Langdon Hills & Lee Chapel South’. I also tried to retain the Vange name by renaming St. Martin’s as ‘Vange North & Barstable’ and getting rid of the oddity of having an entire ward named after a road by renaming Nethermayne as ‘Vange South & Kingswood’. But ho-hum.

All eyes will now be on the Local Elections in May 2024, when Basildon Council will effectively be entirely reconstituted. This will, as ever, all be covered in my annual ‘Runners & Riders’ blog in due course. Exciting times!