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

Theyworkforyou.com is quite useful on this. You can type in your postcode and it gives you a graphic of the before and after boundaries and a list of who is in thr ballot paper.

It was publicised a while ago.

However, I am somewhat cynical about the changes in my area. New constituency has removed a town that was previously low Tory voting, so now the boundary only includes the upper middle class villages/small towns.

What you really mean @Tired756 is that your town has been split and part is in one constituency, and part is in another. This is not unusual. You are still represented.

Mine changed. There was huge consultation period and we had more than one opportunity to comment on it. We first heard about it a year or two ago. People need to keep up with local issues more.

The few miles around me are essentially in a island constituency wise, that's why it is such a stark difference. The part of the town that has been changed is surrounded by different constituencies to the one that we are now part of, there are several other constituencies between me and this other town 30 miles away

Yes we have been lumped in with Tavistock, and all candidates bar the current Tory MP are from miles away. Doesn't fill me with much hope 😐
Edited to add just looked at theyworkforyou.com and actually my constituency has shrunk, but been renamed. Just praying the Tory git doesn't get back in!

I wrote to object, didn't work, my town (now on the outskirts of a massive geographical constituency) might now have a conservative MP, which would have been absolutely unthinkable previously.
It's not in keeping with my area's traditional roots, people or history at all. Bizarre.

I've been aware that the boundaries were changing for at least two years (though not the details of the changes until recently).

My constituency boundaries are changing. The new ones don't make much sense to me as an individual, but that hardly matters. They are part of a big picture that has to fit together. In particular it is important to try and even out the sizes of the constituencies which are currently very unbalanced.

There are some very small constituencies in Scotland and Wales but even in England the smallest constituency had 55,000 on the electoral roll in 2019 compared with 97,000 for the biggest.

I see that one of the big differences will be that in the new parliament there will be 10 more MPs representing English constituencies than there are now (Wales loses 8 and Scotland loses 2).

You're on a constituential (constituencial? there must be an adjective for this!) peninsula

i was aware of constituency changes at the time and googled to find out the impact on my constituency - it's not hard, and I'd probably not noticed leaflets through the door.

There was discussion on the news of boundary changes as soon as it was obvious there would be an election in 2024.

I think what most people on this thread have meant — or certainly what I meant — when they said they didn't know, is that they found out about the boundary changes when it became clear there would be an election and they started to do research into who they might vote for.

I don't expect to be spoonfed, but I was surprised that I'd somehow managed to miss this change, as I have plenty of time at my disposal and spend a fair chunk of it of it following the news (though admittedly more national and international than local or regional). Sometimes things just creep up on you and you somehow manage by chance to either miss all mentions of something important, or things drop out of your mind instead of getting properly logged and noted.

If a lot of people have managed to somehow miss something, including people who are generally interested in and follow the news, it might mean that coverage was limited in outlets or time period, or that somehow the coverage wasn't written in a way that made it memorable or salient-seeming.

I only found out as I got an email from my MP asking for permission to share my data with the new MP.

I don't really follow news. Obviously now all the campaign leaflets are coming through its on all of those too.

I don't mind as I am now in a marginal constituency so I feel my vote counts! It's also been a dead cert before.

Ours changed, I knew about it as was on local FB page, several times.

Not sure it will make much difference, can't see our MP losing as this is a true blue area and has been for years. South coast. 🙄

Probably gerrymandering

We really need electoral reform

Constituency borders are always changing, and some are very large.

I've lived in my current place nearly 13 years. It used to be "Name of County West", now it's "Name of County South." I'm moving in a few months time, and I'll be in "Name of County North"! It's not that big of a deal. How often are you having dealings with your MP anyway?

The opposite has happened here. The constituency used to be lots of villages, an affluent Tory-voting "chocolate-box" town (historic architecture and tourists) and one town with a pro-Labour area. But the pro-Tory town has been moved to another constituency by the boundary changes partly because the population of the Labour-voting part has grown so rapidly. We might see the first non-Tory elected in this area for over 100 years.

@hellsbells99 you must be very local to me! The incumbent MP is based closer to Chester than Runcorn as is most of his old constituency that he’s still covering. I’m a the Chester end of his old constituency and agree Chester based issues are what matters where I am and have always found him very helpful with those issues, despite the fact he was also covering Runcorn/Northwich

I live in a "new" constituency. I was well aware of the boundary changes and sent some comments to the consultation. There were adverts on social media, local press and village noticeboards.

@PeopleAreToads nice to see someone local to me on here! The new boundaries do seem bizarre. I could have understand it more if we have been put under Ellesmere Port, although staying within Chester would have made more sense. I have just walked to a relatives for a coffee and he has leaflets for Samantha Dixon on his table (who was my MP until now).

Considering the number of of “new” constituencies, does anyone know if this affects the accuracy of predictions on tactical voting sites ? I don’t want to waste my vote.

This has been in the news for about 4 years.

That sounds very unlikely. Impossible, in fact.

Draw us a map.

I don't live in the UK and I knew there had been changes.