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

The issue here is that people expect to passively be told everything. Yes, a leaflet or a news article about this stuff would be helpful and is how things should be done, but it’s actually our own responsibility to find this information out.

We all have mobile phones, we all have access to information. When the election was called, we were all capable of looking up local candidates. ‘They didn’t tell me’ shouldn’t be the answer.

No it isn't.

The boundary has been moved. You are obviously near the rest of the constituency. Constituencies aren't "this town and that town". There is a ring around a parcel of land and the boundary is adjusted to include a broadly similar number of people. You might be next to acres of farmland or broad swathes of heathland or at the bottom of a long range of mountains but all of that land is part of the constituency.

As PPs have said, some constituencies are a small part of a densely populated city and some cover miles and miles of Scottish mountains. But all land in the UK is part of a constituency. The boundaries fit tightly together like a jigsaw.

It may well have been one of the objections.

It very definitely was not one that was taken into account by the Boundaries Commission

I am in a similar situation where I was under Chester City (approx 2 miles away) and now am in a new constituency where the main town is Runcorn which is approx 16 miles away. Whoever the MP for Runcorn is after the election will have enough local issues there to deal with and I assume my village will not get a look in. Things that are important to me on a local level are things like buses into Chester and local services. I have never even been into Runcorn - driven by it on my way to the airport etc but it is not somewhere that is on my radar as it is not local to me.

My issue is that no one seemed to know about it

I am also in a constituency where the boundaries have changed, and I knew about it. There was discussion on the news of boundary changes as soon as it was obvious there would be an election in 2024. It is YOUR job to keep informed and not expect to be spoon fed everything. You are still voting for a MP to represent you.

I didn't know the boundary had changed where I live until I looked up who the candidates were for the area and saw a linked article.
It doesn't affect me, worst luck as my choice of candidates is abominable.

The review is done by an independent body, by civil servants. All Parties will lose out in some areas, and gain in another. Not everything is a conspiracy - there were boundary changes during Labour administrations too.

I didn't realise the boundaries had actually changed, however mine has expanded rather than me moving to another.

Geographically my current one is fairly small as it is densely populated, my previous house 3 miles away is 20+ miles from one end to the other covering a range of suburbs, towns, villages and rural populations. I had a worse time there with the local councillor than the MP (in terms of representation) I lived in what was affectionately known as the forgotten lands. (My local councillors now are just rubbish)

Fool - Boris Johnson isn't even an MP now.

I found the same when I got my postal vote. My fault as all this was announced in December and I hadn't realised the ramifications.

Doesn't make much of a difference really as the options are the same.

These things are easy to find out about if you are an inquiring citizen.

This. We don’t need everything spoon fed to us.

Hopefully a more anti Rees-Mogg feel. It would be one of the more gleeful moments of election night if he lost his seat.

Ours has changed and the local Tory is wetting herself as her majority seems to have moved with it.

I knew nothing about this. I do now.

I also have a problem re the local candidate is good, but I don't want to vote for his party, because I don't want his party in government.

It has been all over the news for several years.

I agree.

We've been moved from an uber safe Tory seat into what was a safe Labour seat. The change affects something like 17,000 people so pretty significant.

Ours (in Wales) has changed. I only know because a canvasser told me. None of the people I spoke to knew.

I knew about the changes and we had a number of flyers from the Lib Dem candidate in the redefined constituency at the beginning of the year. Since the election was announced, there has been nothing, from anyone. The redefined constituency will be even more Tory than the previous one, which means there isn’t a hope of overturning it, but I shall still vote and it won’t be Tory.

Sorry I'm terrible at this! What I'm trying to explain is that we haven't been absorbed into the area next to us, but a completely different town 30 miles away.
Terrible drawing shows roughly how it looks on a map, I live in town Y, but a chunk of my town is now voting for an MP based in Town X.
The fact that is such a difference is why I was surprised there was no direct communication. It seems more confusing as we had a by election for our MP only a few months ago in which I was still voting for the town I live in. I followed the local news surrounding that election and it wasn't mentioned it was the last before boundaries changed, we were really bombarded with social media posts, leaflets and a lot of local news coverage and a lot of people seem to have been taken by surprise with the change.

Maybe so, I don't really know what constitutes a "valid objection" as such. I didn't actually realise people could object, but apparently they can and that can influence the decision. As I say, local objection overturned the proposal for our ward to move, and they moved a different one instead.

You are still not making sense OP. Your town has been moved into a different constituency. You are now, for example, on the edge of a constituency and the nearest largest place is in a different constituency. But that does NOT MEAN that your town/village is a wee island completely surrounded by a different constituency. The border has changed.

It will have been a long drawn out process

There was lots of scrutiny of the boundaries at our local council meetings and they agreed and minuted lots of feedback sent to the boundary commission