Changing the electoral map for Southwark - new proposals

The proposals for redrawn council seats for Southwark are out http://www.lgbce.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/27626/Southwark-summary-FINAL.pdf

They're planning changing the size of lots of the seats - so some only have two or one councillor. And lots of the boundaries are changing in SE1 - only Chaucer looks more or less the same.

Rather disappointingly, they've not sorted out a single seat for the centre of Elephant & Castle - they're now having 5 council seats to cover the area! So much for consistency and representation!

jpm wrote:

Rather disappointingly, they've not sorted out a single seat for the centre of Elephant & Castle - they're now having 5 council seats to cover the area! So much for consistency and representation!

Agreed. It makes even the simplest of things fraught with difficulty. The Elephant should have been a distinct ward/district within the redrawn boundaries.

I totally agree, these proposals are really quite poor. We should all give feedback.

Why is it that only Cathederals Ward has been totally changed and the Elephant and Castle ignored? Oh but then I think and ours is a strong Lib Dem area and the rest are Labour and suddenly it all makes sense to carefully adjust it. I have lived here for more than 20 years and given all the building works I can not believe that Bermondsey and Cathederals Ward are not 10% bigger in residential terms and again I feel this may be a trick of the hand in terms of people REGISTERED to pay Council tax.... or maybe a careful pick of dates as many properties may be 60% sold but not actually lived in yet. Put simply I do not believe this "review" at all.

I'm a bit mixed on it, I am glad we got extra councillors but I agree with Liz about E&C, it seems short sighted to not plan for the growth of population that will shortly happen, rather than base it on current population figures.

I am also sad not to be called Cathedrals, though Borough and Bankside isn't bad. I wonder if we will get our community council back now, given that we have even more councillors and Dulwich has quite a few less yet still manages to keep theirs.

And yes, I did give feedback, I am a nerd!

jpm wrote:

Rather disappointingly, they've not sorted out a single seat for the centre of Elephant & Castle - they're now having 5 council seats to cover the area! So much for consistency and representation!

ljustice0773 wrote:

Why is it that only Cathederals Ward has been totally changed and the Elephant and Castle ignored?

Zoe wrote:

I'm a bit mixed on it, I am glad we got extra councillors but I agree with Liz about E&C, it seems short sighted to not plan for the growth of population that will shortly happen, rather than base it on current population figures.

It makes no logical sense whatsoever that the Elephant & Castle's status as a distinct neighbourhood, with its own particular set of challenges, has been ignored and finds itself split up among different electoral boundaries.

ljustice0773 wrote:

And yes, I did give feedback, I am a nerd!

Yes: I too am a nerd who participated in the consultation, but I get a clear feeling that the planner's minds were already made up long before they asked our opinion...