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

I don't know how to explain this more clearly, @Tired756 . There is no such thing as a constituency that has a separate 'island' dropped into another constituency. Each constituency is its own single jigsaw piece which slots in to the boundaries of its neighbours.

There are a large number of constituency maps if you Google, and any one of them will show you that. There are interactive maps too that you can search to find yours and how it fits in. But no, your diagram of towns is meaningless because that's just not how your constituency works.

It sounds very similar to what happened to me at the last boundary change. From living a 20 minute walk from the MP's constituency office, the BC put us in a constituency where I would have had to walk past the constituency office, then a further 5 mins, to get to the railway station in order to go 10 stops (and 1 change) on the train and a 5 minute walk to get to the new constituency office.

We never saw or heard from the MP of the constituency we'd been moved to.

On the other hand, where I've since moved to has been shuffled to an adjoining constituency. The new MP (a sitting labour MP), as soon as the changes were confirmed, leafleted all the houses new to her constituency to tell them and held 2 coffee mornings per ward for anyone to attend.

We now have a council housing estate split between two constituencies

I’s slightly sad that I used to be in a classic Lab/Con swing seat so I always felt my vote mattered, but I’m now in what is likely to be safe Labour forever. The two seats to either side will be fascinating though as both could now be three way fights. Likely Labour this time, but future elections will be really interesting there.

I got my postal vote and the only one who actually lives in my constituency is a Tory. Workers party, Greens, Liberal Dem, Reform, Labour etc all live outside of it, it makes it hard to vote for someone, when they don't live in the area.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/question-answer-general-election-boundary-changes-uk/

This is a page where you can put a postcode in and see the map of how it's changed. May need subscription but they've just offered me 3 free months to enjoy their election coverage.

Put in a Failsworth postcode (eg: M35 0AF) and you'll see how their constituency has changed.

If you Google (other search engines are available) then you'll see articles from 2022 about the deadline approaching for commenting on the changes.
https://www.theoldhamtimes.co.uk/news/23128785.boundary-commission-deadline-comment-failsworth-changes/

If you never read local newspapers, online or otherwise and don't involve yourself in any local facebook groups then it might have been possible that you didn't see anything about it.

Last time I was a GE polling clerk there were a number of people who were baffled that they couldn't vote for Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn themselves or just Conservative or Labour. They really didn't understand the concept of local candidates. And some of them came into the centre looking well presented and generally with-it. So obviously working in good jobs.

It sort of makes sense @SwimmingSnake ... M35 is a Manchester postcode but it's part of Oldham so not having an Ashton MP makes a bit more sense.

Going off the point a bit but I have noticed this time around that in some areas there are distinctly fewer billboards outside people's houses than in the past. I have been travelling around England meeting some parliamentary candidates and in some historically very outwardly Tory supporting areas there were hardly any signs but in newly vulnerable seats - quite a few. My home safe seat is very low on them.

I guess a lot of the campaign is being eked out on social media as well as the mainstream media.

I've had begging emails from labour every day. They went to a fiver and then a quid..I have one from Imelda Staunton to open next..

I got the Imelda one too!

There has been a years long exercise on the boundary review, a consultation on the areas that the public could respond to, it hasn’t been done overnight…!

It has been widely publicised since the 2023 review, but if you’re in England then I can understand it passing you by more than if you lived in Scotland or Wales where we are losing our overall number of MPs.

It's an email so it comes at you through the air. Wild.

No need to take me to school, I know all about the consultation. Maybe I’m just a bit kinder than you and was trying to give the OP a bit of the benefit of the doubt? One of the reasons that turnout at elections is so low is because of this prevailing sense of people sneering about other people’s lack of political nous.

I only know about our boundary change thanks to our local Facebook page and it being on the news when our long-time MP resigned a few months ago.

Even once I knew about it, it was incredibly difficult finding out any actual information about the new boundaries and our newly created constituency.