Boundary review set to ‘split up’ North Yorkshire communities, with changes planned in Harrogate, Ripon and Malton

North Yorkshire Council is recommending that just four of the 90 current divisions be left alone when the Boundary Commission makes its final ruling on the proposed changes.

The authority’s suggestion of reducing the total by one councillor to leave 89 single-member divisions from the May 2027 elections has already been approved.

This led to a cross-party working group being formed at the council to look at the boundaries of the divisions.

A report on the group’s findings was presented to the council’s executive committee this week.

Councillor John Weighell, chair of the group, said it had been a “huge exercise” to draw up the new divisions.

He told the meeting: “I’ve done it three times before but it’s been nothing like this – it has just been massive.

“When you think in terms of a population of 517,344 to be putting into 89 fairly equal divisions, you realise what a task it has been.

“It is right that we look at communities and I’m very worried that we split up far too many communities, but we have rules to abide by.

“Those rules from the Boundary Commission are very strict and are absolute red lines in very many ways.”

The average size of a division with 89 in total was 5,819 people, the meeting was told.

Coun Weighell said: “The maximum is ten per cent plus from that figure, so 6,401.

“The minimum is ten per cent minus from that figure, so 5,237, and these are the red lines that we have absolutely got to abide by.”

In the Richmond constituency area, it was decided that the town of Richmond was too large, with those in more rural areas being too small.

The council has therefore proposed to move some of the polling districts on the edge of the town into the surrounding divisions, meaning there would be a Richmond and Gilling West division and a Richmond East and Scotch Corner division, and to rebalance the divisions within Northallerton.

Bedale and Aiskew divisions have been brought together, under the proposal.

Elsewhere, it was decided the city of Ripon had some divisions which were too large, and it was decided to align some polling districts with surrounding areas.

An imbalance between the populations of the Norton and Malton divisions has been addressed by splitting the area north to south, with two divisions covering both towns equally.

Councillors found that the divisions in Harrogate town were also generally too large.

Moving some polling districts into surrounding areas was found to be necessary.

Boroughbridge was also moved to a new division.

Coun Weighell admitted that the process of drawing up new boundaries was “disruptive”.

He added: “I’d hoped we might have got away with maybe 30 divisions remaining untouched.

“What we’ve actually done is to get four divisions that are actually untouched and so the people will be very pleased from Northstead, Osgoldcross, Spofforth and Thirsk.

“They are the only divisions untouched.”

The boundaries are being assessed to address wide variations in the number of electors in each division when the boundaries were set up using district wards in 2021, with the aim of balancing electoral equality while also recognising the identity of the communities represented by each division.

The executive agreed the working group’s recommendations should be passed to the Boundary Commission which will hold a further consultation next year before the changes are ratified by Parliament ahead of the 2027 elections.