Memorandum by the Association for Geographic
Information (AGI) (WB 11)
SUMMARY
The AGI very much welcomes this enquiry from
the OPDM: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions
Committee into ward boundaries and looks forward to the outcome.
The AGI would be willing to assist further if this was seen as
helpful. We would like to make the following recommendations for
ward boundary changes:
1. More emphasis should be placed on community
identity when delineating boundaries, and ward boundaries should
follow major permanent topographical features, consider street
connectivity, and not divide buildings, properties or estates.
2. Ward Boundaries should follow (census)
output area boundaries wherever possible to provide more stable
units. All wards should be defined as notional single member sized
units and combined for electoral purposes as required.
3. Ward boundaries should be coterminous
with other administrative boundaries, and ward boundaries should
be reviewed when district or county boundaries are reviewed.
4. The frequency of ward boundary change
should be reduced. Ideally, there should be only one date in the
year when ward boundary changes take effect, the rules requiring
wards to be re-drawn should be relaxed to reduce the volume of
change and major changes should normally take place only on a
five or 10 year cycle.
5. Ward boundary map data should be captured
using technologies including GIS (Geographical Information Systems)
and digitised at the largest available scale, standardised and
submitted electronically using an e-GIF (e-Government Interoperability
Framework) approved GIS format.
6. Names of wards should be unique within
the UK with rules established, and followed, to ensure that they
are created on a consistent basis. A single naming authority should
be made responsible for this process.
7. Ward boundary maps and other material
required for the consultation on ward reviews should be freely
available for that purpose.
8. Ownership, currency and accuracy of electronic
ward boundary map data should be defined more precisely and that
data should be made available free of charge.
1. THE ASSOCIATION
FOR GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION
The Association for Geographic Information (AGI)
is the umbrella organisation for those with an interest in geographic
information. Membership comprises individuals and organisations,
which include government departments and agencies, local authorities,
other national organisations, educational institutions, commercial
companies and data suppliers. The mission of the AGI is to maximise
the use of GI for the benefit of the citizen, good governance
and commerce. Because of its wide and diverse membership, the
views expressed by the AGI may not reflect the views of all its
individual members.
2. WARDS
Wards are population balanced divisions of local
authorities defined for the purpose of electing members of the
authority. The aim of any boundary review is to define wards of
equal representation as set out in the guidance and procedural
advice on periodic electoral review (Boundary Commission for England,
2002). The criteria for boundary change need:
to reflect the identities and interests
of local communities; and
to secure effective and convenient local
government;
to secure equality of representation.
Since the AGI's interest is in geographic information,
this response will focus on issues of boundary delineation rather
than structural or electoral changes and will take account of
the above criteria.
3. WARD BOUNDARIES
DELINEATE COMMUNITIES
Boundaries should reflect the identities and
interests of local communities. However, equality of representation
is often given a much higher priority than community identity
and that the latter is often ignored. Wards should be aligned
to deliver close and direct relationship between the Councillor
and the ward community.
Boundaries should follow permanent dividing
topographical features such as rivers, main railway lines and
trunk roads. Boundaries should generally not follow the centrelines
of minor streets, but should be placed behind the properties.
Since communities are built around connecting networks of streets
and footpaths, ward boundaries should consider street connectivity.
Wherever possible all the properties along a single side of a
street, between intersections should fall in the same ward. Estates
and industrial estates form distinctive communities and should
not be divided by a ward boundary, even if there are not residential
properties, as estates form distinctive communities. Wards should
not cross authority or parish boundaries. Ward boundaries should
never divide individual buildings or building complexes. A pair
of semi-detached houses, a terrace, a block of flats or a building
complex such as the Barbican in London should normally fall within
a single ward.
The AGI recommends that more emphasis is placed
on community identity when delineating ward boundaries, and boundaries
should follow major permanent topographical features, consider
street connectivity, and not divide buildings, properties or estates.
4. USE OF
WARDS BOUNDARIES
FOR MONITORING
AND FORECASTING
To represent the interests of residents on the
council, councillors require statistics to formulate and monitor
the local authority's polices and priorities and estimate demographic
forecasts to comply with equality of representation. However,
statistics provided by the Office for National Statistics are
based on Output Areas established for the 2001 census. The ONS
aims to keep these units stable to enable comparisons over time,
which is important for planning of services. A problem with using
wards is that they change comparatively frequently, and on an
irregular basis, so that such comparisons are difficult if not
impossible. To base the ward boundaries on census output areas
or lower super output areas would allow statistical comparison
and secure effective and convenient local government as statistics
could be more efficiently compiled.
Multi-member wards cause particular difficulties
because they have a proportionately larger population than single-member
wards. For statistical purposes, wards should have approximately
equal populations. In addition, the statistics cover a larger
area, so representatives of multi-member wards have less detailed
information about their community. In order to overcome this all
multi-member wards should be defined as sets of notional single
member wards which are then grouped into multi-member ward groups.
The AGI recommends that ward boundaries should
reflect census Output Areas wherever possible to provide more
stable units. All wards should be defined as notional single member
sized units and combined for electoral purposes as required.
5. COTERMINOUS
BOUNDARIES
Ward boundaries are often used to delineate
other administrative boundaries. Police authorities often align
their beats to wards, local authorities align community warden
areas to wards. Wards comply with parish boundaries, district
boundaries comply with county boundaries. Hence, frequent ward
boundary changes would mean that boundaries would cease to be
coterminous. To avoid this, the review of ward boundaries for
districts and counties should be carried out at the same time.
The AGI recommends that ward boundaries should
be coterminous with other administrative boundaries and that ward
boundaries should be reviewed when district or county boundaries
are reviewed.
6. THE TIMING
OF WARD
CHANGE
One of the most frequent criticisms of the procedures
for defining ward boundaries in England and Wales is the frequency
of change. This has a particularly severe impact on the use of
wards for statistical purposes, but also causes great difficulty
to other government departments and agencies which comply with
the Modernising Government (1999) white paper which calls for
the rationalisation of boundaries of public bodies. This appears
to be partially due to a process that depends on a permanent commission
tasked with regular change. Inevitably such a body will have a
rolling programme of change which leads to continuous flux reflecting
changes in population or electoral arrangements.
In other countries such as France or the United
States, local boundaries are almost never moved. This leads to
very non-standard units but makes local identity and comparison
over time very much easier. For other purposes, such as the definition
of congressional districts in the US, all boundaries are reviewed
once every 10 years following the census.
It may be much better if in England and Wales
there was a single date in each year when minor ward changes (reflecting
new build or demolition only) may come into effect. It would be
better if general reviews were carried out to come into effect
once every five years, and major reviews were carried out during
the 12 months following the publication of the census with a fixed
date every decade for implementation.
Moving from a system of continuous tinkering
to one where stability is valued over change and changes can occur
only at well-defined dates would reflect the fact that ward boundaries
are important throughout government for many purposes other than
just the administration of local elections.
The AGI recommends that the frequency of ward
boundary change should be reduced, that ideally, there should
be only one date in the year when ward boundary changes take effect;
that the rules requiring wards to be re-drawn be relaxed to reduce
the volume of change and that major changes should take place
only on a five or 10 year cycle.
7. CREATION OF
WARD BOUNDARIES
In the past, ward boundaries have often been
defined by drawing what appear to be felt pen lines on small-scale
Ordnance Survey maps which have caused confusion about the exact
location of a boundary. In order to ensure that the boundary lines
are unambiguous and that properties are clearly in one ward, they
have tended to follow clear areas on the map, such as streets
and open spaces. However, this restriction means that the boundaries
do not always produce ideal groupings. Geographical information
systems (GIS) technologies can be used to capture the information.
It is essential that the boundaries are produced using the most
up-to-date version of the largest scale of Ordnance Survey digital
map available (1:1,250 scale in urban areas and 1:2,500 in rural
areas), and also aerial photographs where appropriate.
Standards should be issued about the format,
structure and scale for submitting ward boundary map data as electronic
spatial databases in e-GIF (e-Government Interoperability Framework)
approved format. Any ward boundary delivered in electronic form
should allow every entry in a geo-coded address base to be automatically,
accurately and unambiguously allocated to a ward. In addition,
consultations could be conducted over the internet.
The AGI recommends that ward boundary information
is captured using technology such as GIS (Geographical Information
Systems) and digitised to the largest available scale, standardised
and submitted electronically using an e-GIF approved format.
8. NAMING OF
WARDS
A single authority should be legally mandated
to maintain the definitive set of ward names and codes. This table
of current and historic ward names and codes should be publicly
available on the internet. Currently there are substantial variations
in the spelling, spacing, naming and presentation of ward names
and a variety of incompatible coding schemes are used in different
parts of government. The Office for National Statistics maintains
a names and codes service to keep track of this usage, but has
no mandate to enforce a definitive set of names and codes.
Naming should follow a set of rules including:
The name shall be unique across the UK (and
not just within England or Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland).
Only normal alphabetic characters should
be used, except for apostrophes (eg St Mary's). Other characters
such as punctuation, "&" and "/" should
not be used.
Abbreviations should not be used except
for `St' for `Saint'.
The AGI recommends that names of wards should
be unique within the UK, and rules established and followed to
ensure that they are created on a consistent basis. A single naming
authority should be made responsible for this process.
9. ACCESS TO
WARD BOUNDARY
MAPS
The guidance and procedural advice on periodic
electoral review (Boundary Commission for England, 2002) specifies
the material to be used for defining ward boundaries. However,
there are issues of accessibility of map data one of which was
raised in questions 38 and 61 of the evidence from Electoral Commission
and the Boundary Committee for England taken in Session 2002-03.
To reflect the identities and interests of local
communities, local community groups should be consulted in the
review process. However, these groups do not have access to detailed
Ordnance Survey (OS) map data as specified in section 7.9 of the
guidance and procedural notes and would therefore be disadvantaged
in making submissions. Furthermore, the future availability of
the OS map data to Local Government as specified in section 7.9
is uncertain at the moment as a Mapping Service Agreement has
not been signed for 2005-06 between the Local Government Information
House (LGIH), the OS and individual local authorities.
The AGI recommends that ward boundary maps and
other material required for the consultation on ward review should
be freely available for that purpose.
10. OWNERSHIP,
CURRENCY AND
ACCURACY OF
ELECTRONIC WARD
BOUNDARY MAP
DATA
The intellectual property rights of electronic
ward boundary information need to be more clearly defined by the
Electoral Commission. Ward boundary map data should be made electronically
available in an e-GIF compliant GIS format as soon as the boundaries
have been approved. The current PDF maps provided are insufficiently
detailed or flexible. Ordnance Survey releases boundary data bi-annually
which causes difficulties for local authorities as they often
have to issue ward maps as soon as the boundaries have been approved.
Inconsistencies have also been found between the maps issued by
the Electoral Commission and the published OS boundary data. Hence,
ownership and quality assurance should lie with the Electoral
Commission. To facilitate electoral representation, ward boundary
data in a form that allows boundaries to be superimposed on any
geographically referenced map or aerial photograph should be made
available free of charge, downloadable from the internet and treated
in the same way as other items of public sector information covered
by click-use licenses.
The AGI recommends that ownership, currency
and accuracy of electronic ward boundary map data is more precisely
defined and that that data is made available free of charge.
11. CONCLUSIONS
The ward is an important unit in British national
life which is used for a very wide range of purposes beyond the
direct election of local councillors. The AGI believes that current
regulations largely ignore the non-electoral consequences of ward
boundary change. Not least of these is the use of the ward as
a statistical unit so that elected representatives can be adequately
informed about the changing conditions of their constituents.
Wards are not currently defined in a way that
makes the information easily used for other e-government functions.
A radical overhaul is required to ensure that ward definitions
can be easily used throughout government and communicated to the
public in forms that make them easily usable.
The AGI believes that all aspects of a ward's
definition and its boundaries should be treated as public sector
information which is in the public domain and usable without charge.
The set of rules and recommendations that determines
the management of ward change is inadequately defined. When wards
are defined any intentional breach of the rules should be explicitly
justified. Systems for defining wards should make unintentional
breaches difficult by informing the operator that a proposed change
would not comply.
REFERENCES:
1. Boundary Commission for England, 2002: Periodic
electoral reviews. Guidance and procedural advice.
2. Minutes of evidence from the Electoral Commission
and the Boundary Committee for England in the Session 2002-03.
3. Modernising Government Cm 4310 March 1999.
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