County division boundary review
The Local Government Boundary Commission (LGBC) have been reviewing the county council division boundaries in Essex during 2023 and 2024.
The review is designed to make sure councillors represent roughly the same number of people eligible to vote in each division.
Currently Essex County Council (ECC) has 75 councillors, 75 divisions and 65 single-member and 5 two-member divisions. The review recommends that ECC have 78 councillors, 78 divisions and 1 councillor per division. The boundaries of most of the existing divisions will change.
This means Harlow will change from having 4 councillors across 3 divisions to 5 councillors across 5 divisions. These 5 divisions will be called:
- Harlow Common and Church Langley
- Harlow Netteswell
- Harlow Parndon and Toddbrook
- Harlow South West
- Old Harlow
You can view a map of these new division boundaries.
The final recommendations of the review have now been published. Once approved by parliament, the changes will come into force at the next county council elections in May 2025.
You can read more about the review on the LGBC website.
Parliamentary boundary review
The Boundary Commission for England (BC) reviewed the parliamentary constituency boundaries in England in 2023.
The review was designed to make sure MPs represent roughly the same number of people in each constituency. They aim to make sure that all MP constituencies have between 69,724 and 77,062 people eligible to vote in a general election and they drew up new constituency boundaries to distribute MPs across the country evenly.
As a result of the review, the number of constituencies in the Eastern region will increase from 58 to 61.
The Harlow constituency will increase to 73,479 electors by taking in the wards of Hatfield Heath and Broad Oak & the Hallingburys, which were previously part of the Saffron Walden constituency.
The changes came into force at the July 2024 general election.
You can read the final report on the review on the Boundary Commission website.
Local ward boundary review
The Local Government Boundary Commission (LGBC) reviewed the local council ward boundaries in Harlow during 2022 and 2023.
The review was designed to make sure councillors represent roughly the same number of people eligible to vote in each ward.
They recommended that Harlow should continue to have 33 councillors, but drew up new ward boundaries to distribute these 33 councillors across the town evenly.
All the existing electoral wards were replaced with 11 new ones, some of which have new names:
- Bush Fair
- Church Langley North and Newhall
- Church Langley South and Potter Street
- Great Parndon
- Latton Bush and Stewards
- Little Parndon and Town Centre
- Mark Hall
- Netteswell
- Old Harlow
- Passmores
- Sumners and Kingsmoor
You can view a map of these new ward boundaries (pdf)
Parliament approved the recommendations. As a result of the changes, all 33 seats were up for election in the 2 May 2024 local council elections.
You can read more about the review on the LGBC website.
As a result of these changes, we also reviewed the polling station locations in these new wards.