The Parliamentary Boundary Commission for Scotland impresses…

… with its rather nifty interactive online tool for examining the details of its draft proposals and commenting on them: https://consultation.scottishboundaries.gov.uk/.

The Scottish Boundary Commission has an advantage over the one for England in having a much better IT (GIS) system, courtesy of proper geo-coding of the electoral register to deal with previous reviews at other levels of election and the more unified handling of the electoral register across Scotland compared to England. That is why they are able to provide tools like this and also why the Commission has the level of accurate data which means they can split wards and even polling districts in their proposals in a way that the Boundary Commission for England is avoiding as it is unable to do so accurately.

The Boundary Commission for England considered upgrading its own geographical information systems ahead of the current review, but concluded that it would be better to run the first review held under a new system using its existing IT systems and only upgrade for future reviews.

(The situation for the Boundary Commission for Wales is more like that in England than Scotland.)