Boundary Commission for England launches ‘2023 Review’ of constituencies

The independent Boundary Commission for England (BCE) has today begun a new review of all parliamentary constituencies in England.

The move follows a decision by Parliament to retain the number of constituencies in the UK at 650, and to ensure that there are roughly the same number of electors in each constituency. The BCE is tasked with making independent recommendations about where the boundaries of English constituencies should be.

The total UK electorate has been announced by the Office for National Statistics as 47,558,398, which means the number of electors in each recommended mainland English constituency must be no less than 69,724 and no more than 77,062. England will have 543 constituencies, ten more than there are currently. The Commission has also decided how those constituencies will be distributed among the English regions.

The BCE now begins work on its initial proposals for new boundaries, which are expected to be published in early summer 2021. The publication of those proposals will begin an eight week consultation period, during which the BCE will invite comments on the proposals to capture the views and knowledge of local residents particularly. In early 2022, the BCE will also be travelling across England to hear from people in person. All comments will help the Commission further refine the boundary proposals before views are sought on any revisions later in 2022. The Commission must submit its final report and recommendations to the Speaker of the House of Commons by July 2023.

Tim Bowden, Secretary to the Boundary Commission for England said:

“Today marks the start of our work to review the constituency boundaries in England. Parliament has set strict rules on greater equality of electorate size between the new constituencies - these rules and the increase in total number of constituencies in England mean that there is likely to be a large degree of change across the country.“

Once we publish our initial proposals in the summer, we will need the help of residents in all regions to ensure that our proposals take account of local ties and best reflect the geography on the ground. Everyone’s views will help us recommend a well considered and practical set of new constituency boundaries in England.”

More information will be published through the review period via the BCE’s website and Twitter feed @BCEReviews.

Notes to editors

1. The Boundary Commission for England is an independent and impartial advisory body, constituted under the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, as amended (the Act). It is responsible for conducting reviews of English parliamentary constituencies and making formal recommendations for change. The reviews for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are the responsibility of separate Commissions in those parts of the United Kingdom.

2. The statutory framework for how a review of constituencies must be conducted was significantly altered by Part 2 of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, and more recently the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020. The 2011 Act dictates the method for allocating constituencies to each part of the UK once the UK electorate is known.

3. The Act requires the electorate figures used for the 2023 Review to be those as at 2 March 2020. The ONS has confirmed England’s total Parliamentary electorate as at that date is 39,860,421. The 2011 Act specifically provides for two ‘protected’ constituencies to be allocated to the Isle of Wight, and its electorate of 111,716 (plus that of three other ‘protected’ island constituencies in Scotland and Wales) is therefore not included in the calculations for allocating constituencies to each part of the UK. England’s electorate less the Isle of Wight is therefore 39,748,705 ,which means it will have 541 mainland constituencies for this review, plus the two covering the Isle of Wight. The new total of 543 constituencies is ten more than it currently has.

4. The rules in the 2011 Act also state that every constituency must be within 5% of the ‘electoral quota’ (the mean average number of electors per non-‘protected’ constituency), which, for this review, is 73,393. Non-’protected’ constituencies must therefore have no fewer than 69,724 and no more than 77,062 electors. Of the 533 existing constituencies in England, 209 are within 5% of the electoral quota.

5. The Commission has decided to use the same method of allocating constituencies among the regions in England as is used in the Act to allocate constituencies to each part of the UK. The number allocated to each region is therefore as follows:

* figures exclude one current Isle of Wight constituency and its electorate, and two proposed Isle of Wight constituencies, for the reason outlined above.

6. All current constituencies in England were implemented at the 2010 general election, in almost all cases following the recommendations of the BCE’s Fifth General Review, which was based on electorate data as at 2000. The BCE began a review under the new legislation in 2011, but Parliament postponed this review in 2013. BCE completed the subsequent review in 2018, but as this was required to be based on the UK having 600 constituencies,that review is also now void, due to the 2020 Act reverting to a 650 constituency total. The proposals from either review have no status for the current review and the BCE will not be taking any account of them.