The Boundary Commission for England has published its final recommendations for new constituency boundaries. This follows submission of its final recommendations report to the Speaker of the House of Commons on 27th June 2023.
The implications for the Crewe & Nantwich Constituency may be summarised as 1) the transfer of the Wybunbury Ward from Crewe & Nantwich to the new expanded Chester South and Eddisbury Constituency and 2) the transfer of parts of the Leighton Ward (formerly in Eddisbury Constituency) to Crewe & Nantwich.
The report reads as below:
“Our proposed Crewe and Nantwich constituency was also only changed by just one ward, except for realignment with local government ward changes: it no longer included the Wybunbury ward.”
“The existing Eddisbury constituency was significantly reconfigured under our proposals. The town of Winsford was mostly transferred to the Northwich constituency and the constituency no longer extended so far north towards the River Mersey, as that area was now within our proposed Runcorn and Helsby constituency. Conversely, it included the Wybunbury ward from Crewe and Nantwich as well as wards from the south of Chester. As the changes to the existing Eddisbury constituency had been significant, we named this constituency South Cheshire, which we considered to be more reflective of the nature and geographical extent of the constituency”.
“We received a significant number of representations stating that the Wybunbury ward should be included within the Crewe and Nantwich constituency, with the Leighton ward transferred to South Cheshire instead”.
“We considered the representations that suggested that the Leighton and Wybunbury wards should be exchanged between the South Cheshire, and Crewe and Nantwich constituencies. Our Assistant Commissioners visited the two wards; they observed that Leighton is clearly an extension of the urban area of Crewe and that Wybunbury is a large rural ward and, although they acknowledged the evidence that had been presented of the links of the Wybunbury ward with Crewe (not least in relation to the development of HS2), they were overall not persuaded that the counter proposal to exchange the wards would be a better alternative. Similarly, they considered that splitting either the Bunbury or Wrenbury wards to include all new elements of Nantwich within the constituency would not be sufficiently beneficial. We agreed and proposed no changes to the Crewe and Nantwich constituency as initially proposed.”
https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/2023-review/202…
These changes are intended to come into operation in time for the next General Election.
