Talk:List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies

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Contents

[edit] Corrections to made

Smallest consituency isnt Orkney and Shetland its the Western Isles one (called something in Gaelic) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.246.3 (talk) 19:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean up tasks

  1. The wikification of this list is incomplete. Every entry from Fareham onwards needs to be modified to point to a (constituency) article and those before that need checking. --Theo (Talk) 11:11, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Every entry? I think not! Laurel Bush 17:25, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC).

We have to ensure that these articles dab constituencies from other entities that share their name. How do we differentiate the historic constituency of Southampton, say, from the city of the same name? --Theo (Talk) 19:38, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Call the constituency Southampton constituency (or, perhaps, Southampton (constituency)), make its historic status clear in the first paragraph of article's text and categorise article as about an historic constituency. There is a view that all constituency articles should include "(constituency)" in their titles. "(constituency)" is appropriate for disambiguation purposes, but if "constituency" is to be in every title then "(" and ")" are redundant. Laurel Bush 11:59, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC).

#The alphabetic table of contents should run horizontally, not vertically. --Theo (Talk) 11:11, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC) Done by Warofdreams; Good job! --Theo (Talk) 19:37, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  1. Each constituency should have the dates of its existence parenthetically after its name. --Theo (Talk) 11:11, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  2. Missing historical constituencies should be added. --Theo (Talk) 11:11, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Theo : why dont you try doing some real work for a change? Laurel Bush 17:12, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC).

[edit] Divisions

Where do the new divisions originate? While some of the areas are counties, others such as "Peak District" are ambiguous areas, the purpose of which I'm unsure. If there's no reason for this system, a division by county would be much simpler. Warofdreams 15:33, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Some of the counties are very small and using a wider area gives the Boundary Commission more flexibility. I presume that there is a formally defined Peak District, no doubt comprised of units of local government. Timrollpickering 16:52, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
The idea that Leicester is in the Peak District is utterly ridiculous and one that I have never heard of. Where did these come from?
  • I am beginning to doubt that the regional groupings are 100% accurate. Rochdale was recently moved from Northumbria to Manchester, I suspect there may be a few others. The list originated over on Wikinews I think. 80N 11:00, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm suspicious of Colne Valley, being in Yorkshire - I suspect it should be Lancashire, although the BBC groups it into Yorkshire and Humberside (but then Humberside officially ceased to exist about 10 years ago). The list also stretches the definition of Wessex to include Milton Keynes which is improbable (but then Wessex ceased to exist officially about 1,000 years ago)! 80N 11:27, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
yeah, this list is nonsense. we should re-org this to be a straight division by the regions of England, with special sections for the metropolitan areas (ie Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, West Yorks, South Yorks, Merseyside, Greater Manchester. Possibly the existing London split could stay. 80.229.39.194 15:49, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I've reorganised most of the list by region and (pre-1995) county, as they existing structure was just a fugment of someone's imagination (I meant to type figment here, but I like the sound of "fugment" so I'm leaving it in). Not sure how best to break down Scotland/Wales/London though. sjorford →•← 15:54, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I think London is broken down by bunching boroughs together, but am not entirely sure. Certainly in the east the Thames is a fixed boundary and I believe most seats can be broken down into clumps of two or three councils. Not sure about the rest. Timrollpickering 22:53, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, that is how the Boundary Commission do it, but that might be a bit too much detail for this page. I've cleaned up the existing "four quarters" structure slightly, which I now think looks fine. sjorford →•← 09:30, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I've had a stab at reorganising Scotland into better groupings - feel free to edit it further. sjorford #£@%&$?! 11:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] FLC

This looks like a decent candidate for WP:FLC to me. Is needs some references, and an image would be good (e.g. the UK split into its constituencies). -- ALoan (Talk) 29 June 2005 19:25 (UTC)

At present many of the names are wrong: AFAIK county constituencies should be in the form "<compass point/area> <county>", rather than "<county> <compass point/area>" (unlike borough constituencies). Additionally, I bet there are many redirects, and I bet there will be many more as people slowly work through removing excess disambiguation (this is where a feature "list all links on page that are redirects" and "automatically update to bypass all redirects" would be handy). The redirects don't really bother me, but the county constituency names do. Joe D (t) 29 June 2005 20:09 (UTC)
All the compass points should be in the right place now. sjorford (?!) 07:47, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Are the two Milton Keynes seats formally named Milton Keynes South West and North East Milton Keynes? I though they were an exception so that both have the same format despite one being a borough and the other a county. Timrollpickering 11:22, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Apparently not [1], although the latest Boundary Commission review [2] has replaced them with Milton Keynes North and Milton Keynes South, despite North still being a CC and South a BCsjorford #£@%&$?! 11:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article title

Should it be List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies, because there are now two sets of parliamentary constituencies in the UK, one UK Parliament, the other Scottish Parliament?

[edit] Constituency and county boundaries

This was recently removed from the article, on the grounds of lack of known examples:

Some constituencies may cross the border between administrative counties, usually in urban areas where each metropolitan or London borough is considered a separate county.

I am not aware of any current examples myself, but I believe it can happen, not least because any changes to constituency and county boundaries will tend to be out of phase with each other. The ideal may be that constituencies should represent counties, or sub-divisions of counties, but often, as reform follows reform, the reality is deviant from the ideal.

Laurel Bush 12:42, 10 December 2005 (UTC).

Constituencies are now unique divisions of administrative counties? Maybe in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are now no administrative counties in Scotland. Laurel Bush 17:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC).

Geographic counties are used in England for constituencies. For instance in Shropshire, The Wrekin constituency is partly in the unitary authority of Telford and Wrekin and partly in the administrative county of Shropshire. David 08:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I think I ought to clarify what the Boundary Commission means by administrative counties. For their purposes, all unitary authorities, metropolitan boroughs and London boroughs are considered separate administrative counties, and constituency boundaries are normally drawn up within these boundaries. But, the Boundary Commission is allowed to cross these boundaries if they would otherwise be left with very large or very small constituencies (typically where there are clusters of small UAs or LBs, or occasionally MBs). When they do cross boundaries, they tend to stay within the 1974 administrative counties, but as far as I can see, this is mostly for reasons of continuity, not because they have to use those boundaries rather than any others.

For example, Humberside existed as an administrative county during the previous two reviews. It was thus used as a single review area on those occasions, and the constituencies that came into being in 1983 and 1997 stay within Humberside, not crossing the Humberside/North Yorkshire or Humberside/Lincolnshire borders. For the current review, the Commission noted that it strictly ought to consider each of the four unitary authorities separately, but that to do so would create 11 slightly small constituencies, rather than the 10 proper-sized constituencies that the combined area would get if considered as a whole. They thus treated the combined area of the 4 UAs as a single review area, and allowed constituencies to cross UA boundaries (i.e. as they already were). They could have decided, if they had wanted, not to cross the East Riding/North Lincs boundary, and instead cross the East Riding/North Yorkshire and North Lincs/Lincs boundaries to get the balance they wanted. It's entirely up to them how they break the rules (note that breaking the rules is one of the rules). However, for the sake of continuity (another of the rules), they try to minimise changes, and not to cross any boundaries that have not been crossed before, unless it's necessary to avoid massive discrepancies. For the next review, I imagine they may continue to treat Humberside in this manner, but in the case of Avon, the four UAs have now been reviewed separately, so if it is felt in the next review that South Gloucestershire needs to be grouped with another area, it is indeed more likely to be grouped with the rest of Gloucestershire ceremonial county (i.e. the county council area). The boundaries between South Glos./Bristol and South Glos./BANES are no longer crossed, so there is no longer any continuity there.

The point is, the Commission has no explicit reason to respect ceremonial county boundaries, excepting that they may allow constituencies to continue to cross UA/MB/LB boundaries within a particular CC (or former CC like Humberside), for the sake of continuity. The term "geographic county" ought to be avoided completely, as it means different thing to different people, and in fact usually refers to the traditional or historic counties. (Anyway, surely all counties are "geographic"?)

I seem to have gone on a bit more than I was going to, but whatever. — sjorford (talk) 15:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

  The Privy Council has now approved the new boundaries and therefore the new constituency boundaries are in effect. This means that all UK constituency pages must be updated.

[edit] Constituencies in the next United Kingdom general election

The Constituencies in the next United Kingdom general election article is the "successor" to this one, although I note a ruddy lot of work will have to be done if the latter is to reflect the county-by-county system of the former.

But, it's there if anyone wants it... doktorb wordsdeeds 09:30, 29 June 2007 (UTC)