Talk:Parliamentary constituencies in Humberside

Untitled

No such thing as 'Humberside'. Title needs changing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MG291 (talk • contribs) 15:07, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

'Humberside' doesn't exist

No such thing as 'Humberside'. Title needs changing.

MG291 (talk) 15:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of Parliamentary constituencies in Lincolnshire which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:37, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 13 March 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. No consensus for move after almost 2 months of discussion. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 00:26, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

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Parliamentary constituencies in Humberside → Parliamentary constituencies in the East Riding of Yorkshire – Humberside existed for 22 years from 1974 to 1996; this article covers the entire period from 1885 to the present day and already only covers the East Riding of Yorkshire pre-1983. Additionally, the Parliamentary constituencies in Lincolnshire article currently covers the entire ceremonial county of Lincolnshire until 1983, but only covers the soon-to-be-abolished non-metropolitan county of Lincolnshire after that point, meaning that information on e.g. Grimsby is split between the articles. It would make a lot more sense, and be more accurate, to just have this article be restricted to the East Riding, and move all the Lincolnshire content to the Lincolnshire article. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:19, 13 March 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 10:15, 20 March 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. Valorrr ^{(lets chat)} 02:48, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Offa29: as the main person who worked on the maps, for thoughts Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:20, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. This sort of move cannot be done in isolation; it could only be done as part of a complete re-shuffle of all our "Parliamentary constituencies in (county)" pages. At present, all our pages are based on the 1974 county boundaries, which were used as the subdivisions by the Boundary Commission for England from 1983 to 2024; see Parliamentary constituencies in Avon, Parliamentary constituencies in Cleveland, Parliamentary constituencies in Herefordshire and Worcestershire and and Parliamentary constituencies in Leicestershire and Rutland. A change to this would need to be discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies rather than on the Talk page of one of the individual articles.

I would oppose such a change in any case as it would throw up numerous problems, like the fact that constituencies from 1983 to 2024, which as I said were drawn on the basis of the 1974 counties and continued to be so after some further changes to the ceremonial counties were made in the 1990s, would sometimes straddle the boundary between present-day ceremonial counties, and we should aim to avoid having constituencies that straddle multiple articles as much as possible. For example, Brigg and Goole straddled the boundary between North Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, so that would become a problem if we made this proposed change.

Admittedly, post-2024 we have now that problem as constituencies are now drawn with the Regions of England as the sub-divisions, so we now have many examples of constituencies spanning ceremonial county boundaries, but this proposed change would not solve this. For example, we now have the constituency of Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme which straddles South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. With this in mind, it makes more sense to keep North and North East Lincolnshire with East Yorkshire than join them with Lincolnshire, since they are at least part of the same region (Yorkshire and the Humber) so could theoretically be combined with them again, which they can't be with Lincolnshire as they're in a different region.

I will admit that our current way of doing things is unsatisfactory following the 2024 changes to how boundaries are drawn, and it may be time for a full-scale rethink on how we do the "Parliamentary constituencies in (county)" articles, but this would have to be done at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies considering the impact on all counties, and this proposed change would not solve those problems. Offa29 (talk) 11:57, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

There's a reason I only considered this article specifically- the other examples you mention of 1974 counties differing from current ceremonial counties are all ones where the 1974 boundaries still exist in some manner so it makes some sense as a method of division (Avon not by that name but there is the West of England combined authority, whilst Cleveland is now the Tees Valley combined authority). The post-1974 boundaries of North Yorkshire and Somerset still exist as unitary authorities, whereas Lincolnshire as a non-metropolitan county on the 1974 borders is in the process of being abolished. For that reason, whilst there are certainly arguments for reorganizing the other articles, I'd say it's a less pressing issue.

With Lincolnshire- northern Lincolnshire is under the Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire now, and is in the process of further local government integration (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmjxpygkxjo). It is likely that the current border between North/Northeast Lincolnshire and the rest of Lincolnshire will soon no longer exist under any local government level, making the current article division increasingly much more confusing. Also, the Parliamentary constituencies in Cleveland and Parliamentary constituencies in Avon articles only cover the post-1983 period in which those terms were used; this article covers the period from 1885 onwards in which the term "Humberside" did not exist for the vast majority of the time and in fact the article only covers constituencies in the East Riding of Yorkshire for the 1885 to 1983 period, which makes the current title much more anachronistic and incorrect.

Under the rules used by the 2023 boundary review, it's not true that constituencies cannot cross regional borders- they can, it's just discouraged and so didn't happen. The only borders which are forbidden from being crossed are England-Wales and England-Scotland. The nature of any future review is obviously highly speculative and we cannot know, but one would presume that Brigg being combined with somewhere like Caistor (in the same combined authority and likely soon to be in the same unitary authority) is far more likely than it being paired with Goole again, which means I don't think we should leave a Humberside article in existence purely on speculation that North Lincolnshire-East Yorkshire constituency links might come back.Also pinging recent editors of this page to inform them of the RM @JSboundaryman: @Keith D: @HandsomeFella: @AJP: @MaxyPaxy2004: @Alextheconservative: Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 16:00, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

We need to be consistent in how we divide up England for these articles, it can't just be an ad-hoc thing. Cleveland and Avon may correspond to combined authorities, but many of the 1974 counties which we have "Parliamentary constituencies in ..." articles for do not, e.g. Berkshire, Cheshire, Cumbria, etc. And many regions of England are not covered by any combined authority, and not due to become so, so we can't use "combined authorities" as the basis for diving up England. It can't just be a case of finding any existing administrative unit of any status for each article to correspond to on an ad-hoc basis, we need to have a consistent criteria.

It seems to me that it is highly unlikely that the Boundary Commission would opt to cross a regional boundary in the foreseeable future, due to its method of operation, aportioning a quota of seats to each region before reivewing each region individually, e.g. [1]. So I cannot agree with your assessment of the relative likelihoods. Furthermore, given how the English regions are frequently used as subdivisions with which to categorise and analyse the results of elections, which Wikipedia itself does with articles like Parliamentary constituencies in the East Midlands, as do many, many sources, it seems l highly inadvisable to me to have an article which straddles two regions. Much better to keep each article solely within one region.

As I said, the current system of dividing up England for these articles is certainly not ideal, but if we want to change it we need to go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies and have a complete re-think from first principles to agree on a system of diving up England to use for all articles, rather than having ad-hoc discussions on individual articles. We would first need to agree what these "first principles" should be, of course. I think it is very important to avoid constituencies, both past and present, that span the area covered by multiple articles if at all possible, which Brigg and Goole would if we made this proposed change. Still oppose this move.

Maybe a possible solution would to be to divide the articles up by time periods, 1885-1983, 1983-2024, and 2024-present (1974 instead of 1983 for London and the counties that ceded territory to it in 1965), since that's when the subdivisions on which constituency boundaries were based changed. So the history of Grimsby would be covered in Parliamentary constituencies in Lincolnshire (1885-1983), Parliamentary constituencies in Humberside (1983-2024) and whatever we agreed was the best solution for 2024-present. That would solve problems in other areas, like "Lancashire" and other counties referring to wildly different areas pre- and post-1983 (or 1974 with London and surrounds), Warrington being covered in the Lancashire article pre-1983 and the Cheshire article post-1983, and Croydon being covered by the Surrey article pre-1974 and the Greater London article post-1974. That does have the drawback of not being able to find the full history on one page, but there are already many places where that's not possible, and I don't think there's any "good" solution with no drawbacks to this quandary. But this is obviously something that would need to be discussed in detail. Offa29 (talk) 22:55, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd be fine with a broader discussion of coming up with new criteria (albeit to reach a more informed conclusion I think it would make sense to wait until the ongoing local government reorganization has concluded before doing so)- but surely the problem still stands that even with the current standards being what they are, the format of this article is simply incorrect? If the "1974 counties" standard means that the remit of this article is including everywhere that was part of Humberside between 1974 and 1996, then why is it that the Great Grimsby constituency is mentioned in this article in the 2010 to present section of the article, but not in the 1950 to 1983 section of the article? Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 23:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

why is it that the Great Grimsby constituency is mentioned in this article in the 2010 to present section of the article, but not in the 1950 to 1983 section of the article?vAs I noted in my previous response, that is a problem on numerous articles, not just this one. To quote myself: Warrington being covered in the Lancashire article pre-1983 and the Cheshire article post-1983, and Croydon being covered by the Surrey article pre-1974 and the Greater London article post-1974. Obviously there are many, many more examples besides these two, in fact a majority of the articles are probably affected. Only a minority of counties remained unchanged after the immense upheaval of the 1974 local government reorganisation.

I would also note that this article is not the only example of an article named after a county that was created in 1974 extending back into history before the county was created; Cumbria was created in 1974 and first used as a sub-division for drawing constituencies in 1983, but Parliamentary constituencies in Cumbria covers the history of constituencies in the former counties of Cumberland and Westmorland as far back as 1885, but not that of Barrow-in-Furness, which was formerly in Lancashire but also became part of Cumbria upon its creation; similar to the Grimsby example you cite, Barrow-in-Furness is covered in the Lancashire article up to 1983 and the Cumbria article post-1983.

I think these articles are treating Humberside as the successor to the East Riding of Yorkshire because they cover a majority of the same area, and Cumbria as the successor to Cumberland and Westmorland, but in neither of these cases is the territory covered the same, so if the use of "Humberside" for this article is incorrect, so is "Cumbria".

I also proposed a solution to this in my previous comment, again to quote myself: Maybe a possible solution would to be to divide the articles up by time periods, 1885-1983, 1983-2024, and 2024-present (1974 instead of 1983 for London and the counties that ceded territory to it in 1965), since that's when the subdivisions on which constituency boundaries were based changed. So the history of Grimsby would be covered in Parliamentary constituencies in Lincolnshire (1885-1983), Parliamentary constituencies in Humberside (1983-2024) and whatever we agreed was the best solution for 2024-present. This would have its drawbacks, as I noted, but there is frankly no solution without drawbacks to the problem of dealing with the ever-changing boundaries of local government in England. Of course it would need to be discussed at a higher level, I concur with your suggestion that it would make sense to wait until the ongoing local government reorganization has concluded before doing so. Offa29 (talk) 12:25, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Looking into it some more, I'm just now realizing how much of a mess the current organization is. I think splitting the articles up by time period would be unnecessarily unwieldy for the reader and I'm not sure that we need to treat a county which only existed for 22 years separately given the timescales in question here. Hatnotes might be an answer in cases where constituencies are covered in different places at different times- e.g.

For constituencies in Furness prior to 1983, see Parliamentary constituencies in Lancashire.

One of the most egregiously wrong articles at the moment is Parliamentary constituencies in Gloucestershire, which covers Bristol constituencies for most of its history despite the fact that the part of Bristol south of the Avon has never been part of Gloucestershire and the rest of Bristol stopped being part of Gloucestershire seven hundred years ago. Meanwhile there was also a List of parliamentary constituencies in Bristol until recently when it was boldly redirected/merged into Politics of Bristol...

I think if any title is being used ahistorically (e.g. the Cumbria article pre-1974), the exact scope of the article needs to be explained in the lede (i.e. "this covers Cumberland and Westmorland prior to the creation of Cumbria"). I'd also suggest that any article organization be adequate for anyone wanting to completing the article further back in time (even as far as 1295).

I'll at least start a discussion on the project page soon but mention the caveat that many decisions may need to wait until we know what implication the local government reorganization will have- especially considering the possibility that the rearrangement of the boundaries of the English regions may well follow on from it. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:25, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting for more participations. Best, Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 10:15, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose in isolation per Offa29, as other articles also use the older counties, so best raised as part of a wider discussion especially if the old boundaries aren't as adhered too anymore and how far back should each one go. But support the general argument that these articles would be best suited aligned with the modern counties and can be better. has this RM stalled? DankJae 20:23, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Oppose The area was used as a review county by the Boundary Commission for decades, and it was a genuine county for years, so to mask that in an article change would be misleading. Humberside was a region/county and retains its purpose, particularly here. doktorb _words^deeds 20:26, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.