Wednesday 14 March 2012

Keeping Northumberland Whole! Boundary Change Update

The Allen Valley - part of the countryside the Boundary Commission tried to take from the Northumberland seat...
Thank you so much to the people of Northumberland.
The Boundary Change Committee have published the full list of responses to the Consultation on Hexhams Boundaries, and the rest of the North East.
You can try and go to the website but it is tough reading so here are the stats for you:
For the entire North East [29 seats] there were 1950 representations.
Of those 950 [ie 50%] related to the Hexham our constituency
... this is a staggering figure:
This means half of all the responses for the North East in its entirety concern Hexham. The other 50% related to the other 28 constituencies in the North East put together! So I think we can be pretty satisfied our campaign worked. Of the responses, about 550 were made up of our leaflet [which we hand delivered across the region] and 450 individual letters which is great going.

There was also a strong representations from Rothbury. Almost every one of the representations objected to the commissions proposals. The majority that did object supported our counter proposal. There was no significant dissent from our Counter proposal.
Of the parish councils who wrote in 21 out of 22 supported our desire to keep Northumberland whole. It remains a mystery to me why Prudhoe town council wanted to break up Northumberland.
Many thanks to all the Councillors, members of the public and other individuals who wrote in.
I should add that all three political parties supported our Counter proposal in their official submission.