Constituency has changed without knowing

[Tired756]

I opened up my postal vote yesterday to find that I'm now voting for an MP in a town 30 miles away, with several towns in between and absolutely nothing to do with my town. Having googled the boundaries were reviewed and changed last year to balance out the numbers, there's a lot of new build estates here and presumably has tipped the number of constituents over the limit and now the surrounding villages, as well as basically the top few miles of the actual town havd been redistributed. I can't really understand how I'm now voting for an MP so far away rather then the next constituency over, or how they are going to represent a small area of a different town, the fact that these redistributed areas are essentially just going to be lost, but hey ho that's a different debate and I'm far from an expert.
My issue is that no one seemed to know about it until getting their postal cards. Now I've googled I've found a couple of articles about it from a month ago, but none of my neighbours were aware, and from posts I've seen on Facebook groups most people were surprised.

AIBU to expect a leaflet through the door explaining the change before a national election? Like others I've been keeping an eye on the candidates and now it isn't actually who I'm voting for. Oddly we haven't even recieved a single election related leaflet whereas we usually get bombarded with them so I think we've already been forgotten by the potential MPS anyway

constituency boundaries changed in Nov, and were published widely at the time. You are voting for an MP for where you live.

Boundary changes have been on the news recently but ours hasn’t changed so I’ve not looked that closely.

A lot of constituencies are big and cover a wide area. Where my parents live the constituency is half the county.

This has happened in our area as well. We only found out when DM who lives in a different constituency said she’d been move to a town miles away. Checked ours and so had we. Now we are lumped into a town which has difficulties shall we say…so all the focus will be there.

We haven’t had any information telling us about the change.

I have also been affected by the boundary charges but knew of the changes which were reported at the time. We didn't receive any postal information but everything was available online

There was a huge consultation last year, I went on the website and looked at the changes that were proposed. If I heard about it must have been well published as I don't actively watch or listen to the news.

It was publicized but not very well in my opinion.

It takes nearly an hour now to go from one side of my new rural constituency to the other. And I can't help feeling that it was done to make it a safer Tory seat.

This happened last year, it was widely publicised at the time, although I can't recall whether there was anything through doors.

voting for an MP so far away rather then the next constituency over, or how they are going to represent a small area of a different town

You aren't voting for an MP in the next constituency over. The edge of the constituency has moved. It is now the constituency where you live. Unless you are trying to claim that there's a little enclave of your town which is fully surrounded by another constituency, but I don't think there are actually any examples of that happening.

Your MP will have to represent the whole constituency. There's lots of MPs with large areas to cover, or constituencies where one area is quite different to another. They seem to manage.

The Tories had no input AFAIK. I'm pretty sure it's all on the Boundary Commission.

Link is playing up: https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/about-us/

The boundaries in my constituency have changed and my Tory MP is predicted to lose after 20 years and a 3k majority so that ruse didn't work for him!

I'm surprised that you didn't know and neither did any of your friends. It's happened all over the country.

There will always be some who live on the edge of a constituency. It just happens to be you, now that the boundary has been redrawn.

I didn't know until the election was called and I started looking online for relevant info, either. It may well have been published at the time but it didn't cross my radar, even though I like to keep up with the news. I'd have had to go looking for something I didn't know I needed to look for, IYSWIM. However I'm currently reasonably pleased with how they've been drawn round here, because it's put me in a new seat that has a passing whisper of a chance of not being automatically won by a massive margin by a party I'd never vote for (my old seat was extremely safe, and had the same MP for what feels like decades).

It can be a bit rubbish can't it. We are rural, our local town (3 miles away) has been lumped into the next constituency. The candidates running in that area seems really engaged, switched on and live locally. We are now lumbered with two large towns either end with all us villages plonked in the middle. The candidates running that are trying to throw the conservative candidate off all live out of area. I despair really.

Same for ours. It has changed and the Tories are predicted to lose the seat after 30 years, so if it was a ruse to keep their seat then it has spectacularly failed!

I'm with you OP I am no longer where I thought I was out of our city out of my council. I thought when the first leaflet came through they had got mixed up. I find it really annoying.

We had a boundary change and it was reported, although afterwards a lot of people said they didn't know.

I think part of the issue is people get their news from many different sources now and a lot of local newspapers that would have reported stuff like this have closed as people go on-line or rely on second-hand reporting via Facebook, Nextdoor etc. rather than pay for a physical paper.

So where do organisations report stuff like this now? From my personal experience in my local area, it's a leaflet through the letterbox to tick the box to say they did notify evety household, and then on the organisations website.

So if you miss the leaflet and don't make a point of regularly checking a local council website, then lots of stuff happens without there being much local awareness.

I sometimes think, in a roundabout way, that although (or because?) we have much more access to news than previous generations, a lot of it washes over us and we take less notice. We are generally busier than previous generations, and sitting down with a cup of tea to regularly read a newspaper, especially a decent local one, isn't common any more.

Boundaries are reviewed every 10 years. It's important that they remain roughly the same size especially when there has been lots of new construction. I'm not sure what the point would be of a mass mail out of "You are now in South X". Would cost loads and most people don't actually care.

Whenever boundaries change, inevitably people who were in one constituency will find themselves on the edges of another. After all, there will always be someone living at the edge of any area. It's just that, up until now, that wasn't you.

All of the major parties have difficulty finding people to deliver leaflets. Many rely on the one free Royal Mail delivery which every candidate gets. If you're not getting any deliveries, it's not that the party or candidate doesn't care about you; it's that noone in your local area is available/CBA. Most local parties don't have a huge election machine behind them. It's usually a couple of dozen volunteers with cars full of leaflets that they're trying to get out in gaps between work and picking their kids up from Brownies. I live in what looks to be a key seat this time around and we haven't exactly been inundated with bits of paper either. They cost money which local parties don't have lots of.

If you don't know who to vote for, the local candidates will each have one leaflet delivered free before polling day. Many will also have websites. It's fairly clear who the next 2 candidates for Prime Minister are.

i was talking to my friend the other day about 'our' local options and she said, no it's not her it's blah blah blah & I said no it's xyz... it took a couple of minutes to realise she was now in a different constituency. She's now living in her parents house (since they died) and it's her childhood home. 60 years then a change of constituency without any kind of official notification. I don't think it's good enough. She's now lumped in with with an area that's 'struggling' and her area will just be forgotten about. Mind you, given our crap MP who will get in again, I don't suppose she can be much worse off.

i think the fact that changes were being made nationwide was fairly well publicised, but the changes were not explained to those affected!

It was certainly widely publicised in my area, but I am in a marginal seat and it will definitely make a difference to who wins on 4th July. Our ward was set to move to a less desirable constituency, shall we say. Affects the house prices n all. There was huge local objection and the decision was overturned. But I guess if you're in a less vocal part of the country it might have passed you by.

It's cute you think this.

Of course the government had lots of input.

I'm in what was North East Somerset (Jacob Rees Mogg constituency) which took in parts of Frome and a couple of the wards on the edge of Bath. They have now been dropped and our constituency is now Hanham and North East Somerset. Hanham is a suburb of Bristol and has a very different feel to it.

Ours has changed as well, and we’re now lumped in with an outer London borough which has very different issues to the bit I live in. We’re also in a weird spur which means that I don’t actually use any services or the local my actual constituency but use the neighbouring one as it is closer and easier to walk to. So there will be no point in contacting my MP about anything.

Affects house prices???

Don't be ridiculous

Nicely patronising.