Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Significant Changes Proposed for Harringay in Local Boundaries Review - HAVE YOUR SAY
The Local Government Boundaries Commission (LGBC) has proposed significant changes to the ward boundaries for Harringay.
Currently parts of Harringay are contained within three wards, Harringay, St Ann's and Seven Sisters.
The polling districts map included in Haringey's submission. Harringay Ward is comprised of the 4 'HA' dsitricts, St Anns, of the 4 'ST' ones and Seven Sisters of the 'SS' ones. The full map is online here.
The recently tabled proposals would see the number of Harringay wards reduced by one. Two completely new wards would be created, dividing Harringay into North and south with some non-Harringay adjuncts on the eastern borders. The precise location of the north south divide is unclear at the moment. According to the map in the report (attached below), it would be along the garden fence line between Allison and Hewitt. According to the online map, it would be between Seymour and Warham Roads. (I'll drop a note to the responsible office and check which is correct).
The proposals also see the namer Harringay wiped from the local government map for the first time in 130 years. The northern ward would be Ducketts and the southern one Manor House.
The LGBC gives the following explanation for the mounting of the review:
An electoral review examines and proposes new electoral arrangements for a local authority. A local authority’s electoral arrangements decide:
- How many councillors are needed.
- How many wards or electoral divisions there should be, where their boundaries are and what they should be called.
- How many councillors should represent each ward or division.
When carrying out an electoral review the Commission has three main considerations:
Improving electoral equality by equalising the number of electors that each councillor represents.
- Ensuring that the recommendations reflect community identity.
- Providing arrangements that support effective and convenient local government.
Our task is to strike the best balance between these three considerations when making our recommendations.
The review process started last year. A consultation which ran from the end of November to the start of February invited views on the future. Only 11 submissions were received (including one from yours truly):
- Haringey Council
- Haringey Council Political Groups
- Haringey Labour Party
- Haringey Liberal Democrats
- Local Organisations
- Crouch End Neighbourhood ForumLocal Residents
- Six local residents
- Anonymous
- One submission
This was a predictably very low submission rate. This gives the Council's view undue weight. And, according to the Commission's report it sounds like this is just what happened they've been heavily influenced by the Council's submission, including the removal of the Harringay name from the local electoral map. In the west the Crouch End Forum submission provided an influential counter-weight to the Council. Sadly no organisation made a submission from Harringay.
My view on the proposals is that they do have some merit. The previous set-up used Green Lanes as the dividing line and included parts of areas to the east of Harringay that have little identity or practical unity with our area. My own submission focussed on this aspect.
It is positive that Harringay is now only divided into two wards. The boundaries aren't perfect, but they aren't wholly wrong either. However, I'm unsure about the wisdom of dividing the Ladder in two.
There is now a further consultation period where you can have your say on the proposals. If you do intend to comment (and improve on the 0.003% resident response rate last time), I think it might be helpful if comments relate back to the LGBC's intended objectives, as stated above:
- Ensuring that the recommendations reflect community identity.
- Providing arrangements that support effective and convenient local government.
The full and summary reports are attached below. The consultation runs until 5th August. You can add your comments here.
I'll certainly be objecting to the name for the southern part. It seems daft to use a name for an area that's in Hackney! I can't think why the Council are STILL trying to shed the Harringay name. I'm not sure yet whether I'll comment again on the boundaries themselves: the problem here is that any suggestions made to any one boundary will need to be compensated for somewhere else. So it becomes very tricky.
I would urge you to have a say.
Tags for Forum Posts: boundary review, harringay name, local government boundary review
- Attachments:
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Web_Haringey_Draft_Report_0.pdf, 3.9 MB -
Haringey Summary sm.pdf, 285 KB
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by tigha on
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So now I live in Manor House which is Hackney. Doh what a load of rubbish
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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In terms of electoral equality, the current Harringay ward is actually an undersized ward - it has 8854 electors so our 3 councillors each represent 2951 electors which is about 5% less than the borough average of 3109 (and 10% less than the forecast borough average for 2024 of 3293, although I expect that gap will close somewhat once the Hampden Road development is occupied).
In order to resolve that electoral inequality, we can :
- either keep the Harringay Ladder in a single ward but annex more roads from the east side of Green Lanes. I don't have numbers but adding the Gardens roads (from Stanhope Gardens to Salisbury Road) might be too many - i.e. create an oversize ward - although perhaps not if some of the other roads from Alfoxton to Colina Road were taken out?
- or split the Ladder into a north and south ward, but each new ward would need to annex even more roads to the east of Green Lanes. This is what is proposed in the new Ducketts and Manor House wards, which apart from being weird names may be a less coherent collection of community identities.
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Permalink Reply by kas on
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"The review process started last year. A consultation which ran from the end of November to the start of February invited views on the future. Only 11 submissions were received (including one from yours truly)"
Thanks for posting this Hugh. It is the first I have heard of it. Where was this consultation notice posted? It is a sad reflection on the state of our democracy that we don't, as residents, even hear about attempts to change our community's name. Only 11 submissions were received yet already there are over 40 comments just on this thread. It's exasperating...
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Nick G-T added a post about it here, back in January.
That was the only way I got to hear about it. So thank you again, Nick.
It's not like we're hidden. You'd think someone in the Council or other political groups who made a submission would have thought to tip us the wink.
I wonder where Nick heard about it.
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Too true. It's a fundamental weakness in our democracy. There must be a thousand ways they can get to us but I feel they choose not to. We hear late in the day or not at all and the powers that be wonder why get angry, cynical, apathetic and soon.
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It's not too late to get heard though. Recently Stroud Green goth the original recommendation of the Boundary Commission overturned. But people have to voice up!
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Permalink Reply by Nick G-T on
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I read about it in a newspaper I think, then googled it and found the discussion on the Crouch End Forum - it really does feel like our area suffers despite having such a great community tool as Harringay Online is.
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I think perhaps what’s needed to really make a difference is a Harringay Neighbourhood forum. But it won’t happen unless someone picks up the baton and is willing to lead the charge (and, I hope,do better with their metaphors than I do!)
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
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Hornsey Historical Society has an interesting piece about the history of Harringay.
Among other things, it shows that in 1901 there were three Harringay wards – North and South Harringay in Hornsey and Harringay in Tottenham! Of course, this was before the urban districts of Hornsey, Tottenham and Wood Green were merged in 1963 to form the present borough of Haringey.
Whatever the ancient origins and spelling of the name of Harringay, it acquired its present popular association with our area soon after the previous park and farm land was built up in the last 20 years of the 19th century. By the 1920s, the name was so well accepted that when the famous dog track and arena were built, they took their name from Harringay even though there were both located over the border in Tottenham.
Whatever the previous and or present councils' motives might be, I would guess that nothing that they do is likely to change what the residents call this area - and one might well think that trying to change it is little more than vainglory. One might perceive a touch of bureaucratic angst in Haringey council wanting to play down its predecessor's identities (the names of Hornsey, Tottenham and Wood Green have been losing currency over the years) but, as Harringay never was the name of an urban district council, the motive must be other. Local government organisation seems to be a less permanent thing than the names of localities so it is quite as likely that Haringey Borough will disappear from the map as that Harringay itself will do so.
As for calling any part of the borough "Manor House", this is utterly ridiculous and will never be accepted by residents whether they responded to a consultation or not.
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Indeed, I mentioned the multiple Harringay wards back in 2011 when I came across some old reports from the Harringay Ratepayers Association.
I wrote the first, and still the most comprehensive, history of Harringay in several articles on Wikipedia back in 2007. But this little factlet didn't make the cut!
All the evidence (and there's heaps of it) suggests that it didn't take until the 1920s for the name to be accepted. The neighbourhood was built up as Harringay and by default was referred to by shopkeepers, by local newspapers and by local residents as Harringay from at least as early as the late nineteenth century.
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