Residents are urged to have their say on proposals to move two Mansfield wards into the Ashfield constituency for parliamentary elections.
The Boundary Commission for England has recently started a secondary consultation on Parliamentary Constituencies in England which ends on Monday 4 April 2022. Constituencies proposed by the review must have an electorate between 69,724 electors and 77,062 electors.
As the Mansfield constituency figure of 77,409 is higher than that, it needs to be reduced with some parts of Mansfield falling within a neighbouring parliamentary constituency. This only applies to the parliamentary boundary, it does not apply to the district boundary, which will remain the same. This means all council services will continue to be provided as they are now.
The Commission may take into account the following when proposing boundaries:
- special geographical considerations, in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency;
- local government boundaries which existed on 1 December 2020;
- boundaries of existing constituencies;
- any local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies; and
- the inconveniences caused by such changes.
The Commission is proposing that the Brick Kiln and Grange Farm wards that surround the A38 (Sutton Road) and the B6014 (Skegby Lane) would fall under Ashfield rather than Mansfield.
The Commission is aware that this proposal divides the Mansfield community and welcomes any representations and counter‑proposals that suggest alternative configurations to bring the size of the Mansfield electorate into the permitted range. The Mansfield constituency would otherwise remain unchanged apart from the transfer of these two wards.
The Executive Mayor Andy Abrahams and the council have advised the Commission that they do not support the proposal for the Grange Farm and Brick Kiln wards being moved into the Ashfield parliamentary constituency.
The council considers that the position of the A38 makes both the Brick Kiln and Grange Farm wards an integral part of Mansfield and provides a barrier between these wards and the rest of the Ashfield constituency. The council believes that if the wards were transferred it would leave them isolated.
The council has put forward alternative proposals to the Commission suggesting that part of Rainworth which is currently in the Mansfield constituency could be transferred to the Sherwood constituency, as it contains the rest of Rainworth and would therefore bring the village together.
The council has also suggested that Pleasley, which is currently split between constituencies, could be transferred so that all of the village is contained in one constituency. The impact of this proposal would mean that for parliamentary elections only (when voting for a new MP) those parts of Rainworth within the Mansfield district would vote for a candidate within the Sherwood constituency and for Pleasley in Bolsover. For all other district elections, they would vote within Mansfield as they do now.
The Elected Mayor gave the views of the council and these suggested alternatives when he gave evidence at a public hearing of the Commission earlier this month.