Revised proposals for parliamentary boundary changes will ‘still fracture the community of Onchan’, according to chairman of the village’s commissioners who is urging Tynwald members to vote against the plan.
Tynwald will be asked this week to approve historical changes to the island’s political map.
Under Boundary Review Committee proposals, the current hotpotch of three, two and one-seat constituencies will be replaced with 12 constituencies each with two MHKs and a population of about 7,000.
But the proposals for the North and Onchan came in for much criticism. A geographically large new North constituency would have brought together Michael and Ayre with Maughold, currently in Garff while the Birch Hill estate in Onchan would have been split between two constituencies.
Following lobbying by Tynwald members and commissioners, however, the boundary committee revised its plans with Maughold now moving from the proposed North constituency to the East and the whole of Birch Hill retained in the Onchan Urban constituency. Instead, Howstrake including Lakeside Gardens will be moved from Onchan Urban into the East constituency.
Now Onchan District Commissioners chairman Rob Callister has written to all Tynwald members seek their support to respect ‘community above convenience by dismissing the proposals to split the community of Onchan’.
He said: ‘The revised report of the Boundary Commission still fractures the community of Onchan to support a purely number-crunching exercise. The proposals create a series of areas which will not all be representative of the communities they serve.’
Onchan MHK David Quirk said he would be voting against. He said: ‘No time was given to voters of Howstrake to make comment in a full and proper manner. No time was given for the local authority, never mind the politicians, to organise meetings so voters could express their views.’
Boundary Committee chairman Sally Bolton said the original proposal for Birch Hill had come in for ‘quite strong opposition’ from local MHKs but also residents. ‘Onchan is a bit of an anomaly,’ she said, adding that Tynwald members at a presentation last week were broadly supportive. ‘A bigger issue was what the new constituencies should be called,’ she said.
Committee member Bob Riding said: ‘Tynwald can’t afford to vote against this.’ Fellow member Terry Groves agreed: ‘It’s constitutional evolution.’
