The People's Republic of South Devon

The Boundary Commission's proposals for the Plymouth Moor View constituency would see it represented by the Okehampton MP

This weekend marks the start of a month-long campaign to keep Moor View ward in Plymouth. Under the current boundary proposals by the Tory-led Government Plymouth’s Moor View ward will be moved from being represented by a Plymouth MP to being represented by the MP for Okehampton.

This means the ward containing Plymouth’s airport, Plymouth’s hospital, Marjons, the Plymouth Evening Herald’s offices as well as 10,000 people who consider themselves to be part of Plymouth and not part of Okehampton will be taken from our city and given to a rural MP.

The chopping of Moor View from Plymouth was decided by the London-based Boundary Commission on orders from the Coalition to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600. The decree was that all constituencies must have 5% above or below 75,000 people. To do this the Boundary Commission has ripped up traditional notions of community and historic boundaries and have presented an unsatisfactory set of proposals that are now out for public consultation.

The Boundary Commission is currently embarking on a series of regional meetings to gauge the views of local people to their proposals. There is one such meeting in Exeter later this month (a city largely unaffected by boundary changes) and one in Truro (where the Boundary Commission propose the controversial Devonwall seat encompassing both Devon and Cornwall wards). Despite proposing to rip Moor View ward from Plymouth the Boundary Commission are not holding any meetings in Plymouth.

The only chance local people have to have their say on the proposals comes in responding to the public consultation that closes in just 30 days. You can write, email or submit views online here.

There is no way that the people of Moor View have more in common with Okehampton than the rest of Plymouth. There are no direct links between Moor View ward and Okehampton by rail or road. No buses and a taxi would cost a fortune. The current MP for Okehampton has an Exeter phone number and so if someone in Moor View needed to see their MP urgently it is one hell of a round trip to get to their surgery if it is being held on the other side of Dartmoor.

Constituency boundaries are designed to give the people of an area the chance to have their area represented by an MP. That’s why, by and large, we have boundaries that recognize rural areas are different to urban areas and that identity matters. History, community boundaries and identity have been ignored by the current boundary proposals and for that reason alone the proposed constituencies are out of touch with the feelings and communities that they carve up to hit an arbitrary mathematical formula.

Moor View is urban and industralised; The other 600 square miles of constituency is rural and contains much of Dartmoor National Park. It is hard to imagine the needs of Derriford Hospital, Plymouth City Airport and Marjons coinciding with the concerns of rural communities, especially when history, infrastructure and identities are so very, very different.

And from campaigning in Moor View ward voters agree that the Boundary Commission proposals stink too. Labour, Tory and even people who have never voted before signed up to fight the Boundary Commission’s proposals. You can see the proposed constituency for yourself here (pdf).

In only 30 days the public consultation on the new boundaries will change and if enough people don’t write and lodge their objections Moor View ward, our airport, our hospital, our local newspaper and 10,000 people who think of themselves as part of Plymouth will no longer be so.

It takes only a few moments to write a letter of objection. You can do so online through this link here. Keep Moor View in Plymouth – tell the Boundary Commission that being represented by a Plymouth MP when you’re part of Plymouth matters. And please do so before it is too late.

Related posts:

1. Under 30 days left to keep Moor View in Plymouth as Boundary Changes deadline looms

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