Governance and performance
The Boundary Commission for England is a statutory body, established to provide independent recommendations to the UK Government on the boundaries of UK Parliament constituencies in England. It conducts its work independently of the Government, but as an advisory non-departmental public body (NDPB), its budget, staff and all administrative support services (e.g. Finance, Procurement, IT, HR, office facilities) are provided by a specific sponsoring government department, currently the Cabinet Office.
Accordingly, formal accountability to Parliament for the Commission is two pronged: the Commission is directly responsible for the substantive content of its constituency recommendations, but accountability for proper and efficient use of public money lies through the Principal Accounting Officer of the sponsor department.
Further details of the governance arrangements are set out in the Commission’s Governance Framework.
Strategic Objectives
The strategic objectives of the Commission are set out in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 (as amended). Specifically, our over-riding objective is to conduct a formal review of all Parliamentary constituencies in England at a specified frequency (every eight years, as from 2020), and deliver a final report and recommendations, all within a time and process framework established by the Act. Although the current legislation no longer empowers us to conduct interim reviews of specific areas in England, in between general reviews we deliver the statutory requirement to “keep under review” the constituencies in England, by monitoring how the Parliamentary electorate changes in England on an annual basis, following the statutory publication of the electoral register by the Electoral Registration Officers in each local authority.
Financial Information
The annual budget and expenditure figures for the Commission in recent years can be found in our annual reports below (please contact us to request a copy of any earlier annual report):
Items of significant spend by the Commission are included in the transparency data published by our sponsor department, Cabinet Office.
Progress report on the 2023 Boundary Review
BCE January 2023 speaker annual update
BCE January 2022 speaker annual update
This report, as required by section 3(2B) of the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 (as amended by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020), sets out the progress the Boundary Commission for England (“the Commission”) has made in respect of the preparation of the boundary review that is to be submitted before 1 July 2023.
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