WESTMINSTER DIARY by Dame Caroline Spelman in this week’s Solihull Observer
This week we have received the reviewed proposals by the Boundary Commission on the configuration of parliamentary constituencies in the West Midlands.
Originally, the Commission had proposed to break up the Meriden constituency and add a few wards into Coventry and Birmingham retrospectively.
This was an attempt to solve the problem that each city does not have enough electors to justify the number of MPs but it would have resulted in spreading the Meriden constituency across four different local authorities.
Happily, the Boundary Commission listened to local views and its revised proposals now respect the integrity of the local authority boundary of Metropolitan Borough of Solihull. Both the parliamentary constituencies of Meriden and Solihull will fall neatly within them.
In order to meet the requirement of achieving roughly equal numbers of electors there is a swap of wards so Blythe ward will now fall into Solihull parliamentary constituency and Elmdon will return to Meriden. It must be noted that historically Damson Parkway was in Meriden anyway.
I am enormously grateful to everyone who wrote to the Boundary Commission to impress upon them the need to respect local government boundaries and natural connections between communities like Knowle and Dorridge.
I would urge those who wrote to the Boundary Commission to write and thank them for listening to us by the deadline of December the 11th
2017. The Boundary Commission can be contacted at:
[email protected] or by writing to:
The Secretary to the Commission
Boundary Commission for England
35 Great Smith Street
London
SW1P 3BQ
