| Assessor | Statutorily appointed technical adviser to the BCE, being either the Registrar General for England and Wales or the Director General of Ordnance Survey. |
| Assistant Commissioner | Independent person appointed at the request of the BCE to assist it with the discharge of its functions. |
| Borough constituency (abbreviated to BC) | Parliamentary constituency containing a predominantly urban area. |
| County constituency (abbreviated to CC) | Parliamentary constituency containing more than a small rural element. |
| Designation | Classification as either a borough constituency or as a county constituency. |
| Electorate | The number of registered Parliamentary electors in a given area. |
| (Statutory/Permitted) Electorate range | The statutory rule that requires the electorate of every recommended constituency to be – for the 2023 Review – between 69,724 and 77,062. |
| Final recommendations | The recommendations submitted in a formal final report to Parliament at the end of a review. They may – or may not – have been revised since the initial proposals in any given area. |
| Initial proposals | First formal proposals published by the BCE during the review for public consultation. |
| Periodical report | Report to Parliament following a general review of Parliamentary constituencies. |
| Places of deposit | In each constituency the Commission will make available hard copies of its initial proposals (including report and maps). The places of deposit where the public may inspect the proposals are usually the offices of the relevant local authority, although other public places such as libraries may be used. The Commission will publish a full list of places of deposit on its website. |
| Public hearing | Formal opportunity in a given area for people to make oral representations, chaired by an Assistant Commissioner. In each region of England there may be no fewer than two and no more than five hearings, and each may last a maximum of two days. |
| Representations | The views provided by an individual, group or organisation to the BCE on its initial or revised proposals (or on the representations of others), either for or against, including counter-proposals and petitions. |
| Review date | The ‘effective date’ at which electorate and local government boundary data is fixed so that we can then work with it on a stable basis. Defined by the 2020 Act for the 2023 Review as 2 March 2020 for the electorate numbers, and 1 December 2020 for local government boundaries. |
| Revised proposals | The initial proposals as subsequently revised. |
| Rules | The statutory criteria for Parliamentary constituencies under Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 (as amended by Acts up to and including the 2020 Act). |
| UK electoral quota | The average number of electors in a constituency, found by dividing the total electorate of the UK (less that of the five specific ‘protected’ constituencies) by 645. |
| Unitary authority | An area where there is only one tier of local council (above any parish or town council). Contrasted with those ‘shire district’ areas that have two tiers (i.e. both a non-metropolitan county council and a district/borough/city council). |
