Redistricting local governments in England: Rules, procedures, and electoral outcomes

The Commission-based process of local government electoral redistricting in England seeks to balance the tensions between both neutral and party political and mathematic and organic approaches to boundary drawing. We evaluate the success of this process by assessing the impact of redistricting on electoral equality and the strength of the political parties in each local authority. On one hand, the Commission appears to be effective in achieving vote equality by reducing the variability between electoral units in the ratio of electors to councillors. On the other hand, the way that submissions are made to the Commission, together with aspects of social and electoral geography over which it has no influence, can allow one party to receive more electoral benefit than another from redistricting.