COUNCILLORS BY CONSTITUENCY

I would like to thank Pete Whitehead for letting me copy his work. I found it extremely interesting and informative. I will be setting up a tab up top so I can include sub headings for a break down of each region which Pete has done. Otherwise it would be one very long post.

For English authorities, the councillors are just those of the district council - not the county councils. Maybe there is a case for including the latter but there is a great propensity for county council divisions to cross constituency boundaries - a problem which does not arise with district wards, except for a relatively small number of cases where ward boundary changes have occurred since the last parliamentary boundary changes.
Where wards are divided between more than one constituency, I have assigned the ward to the constituency which takes the greatest part of the electorate. In Scotland and in Northen Ireland I have done the same with wards/EAs which in a few cases (notably Glasgow and Edinburgh) is a very blunt intsrument.

On the colouring of the map, the darker shade for each party indicates they have an overall majority of councillors within the constituency, the lighter shade indicates they have a plurality only (including exactly 50% of councillors). Constituencies coloured white indicate that no party has a plurality, in other words two or more parties are tied for the most number of councillors.
In Northern Ireland the shading is different. Because of the different types of Nationalist and (at least hypothetically) Unionist there would already be different shades of orange and Green so I have used dark Green for Sinn Fein, light Green for the SDLP, Dark Orange for the DUP etc. In practice all the seats in Northern Ireland are 'won' with a plurality rather than a majority with the single exception of Belfast West

March 31st 2013

 JUNE 7th 2013

I've now updated my spreadsheet to take account of the elections in May. Since my figures don't include county council seats there are only a small number of areas affected. However I have also attempted to keep track of all defections and by-election changes since I last updated (undoubtedly I will have missed some though)



Seats which have changed status due to normal local elections:

Isle of Wight moves from a Conservative majority to an Independent plurality
SW Wiltshire moves from a Conservative plurality to Conservative majority
Bristol East moves from a Labour plurality to a Labour majority
Bristol NW moves from a LD plurality to a Conservative plurality
Cornwall North moves from a LD plurality to a LD majority
Truro & Falmouth moves from an Independent plurality to no plurality (Conservative and Independents joint largest parties)
Camborne & Redruth moves from a Conservative plurality to no plurality (Conservative and Independents joint largest parties)
Bishop Auckland moves from a Labour plurality to a Labour majority
Durham city moves from a LD majority to a Labour majority
NW Durham moves from no plurality to a Labour majority
Blyth Valley moves from a LD plurality to a Labour majority
Wansbeck moves from a LD majority to a Labour majority
Yns Mon moves from an Independent majority to an Independent plurality

The status of two other seats have been changed as a result of recent defections

Harrow East as mentioned above now has a Conservative plurality (previously a Labour majority) following the shenanigans there and Northampton North does also following the defection of a Labour councillor there to the Conservatives (previously Conservatives and Labour were tied on seats)