Ne'er the twain shall meet

My train buddy from across the rails was bemoaning the fact that her neighbourhood watch meeting was discussing the prospect that her little corner of Worcester Park Old Malden was going to be adopted into the London Borough of Sutton at some point in the future.

"I don't want to live in SUTTON" she fumed.
"It's not even a ROYAL borough" she raged in a slightly suppressed commuter-ish way.

She did admit that the Council Tax was likely to be less but her opinion was that if you move into a borough on purpose then it's a bit underhand for some distant committee to take that away from you if it affects things such as services and perhaps the choice of schools, a big issue for secondary schools in Worcester Park.

Some Googling led me back to a Sutton Guardian article from 2012 which said that:

"The commission has also proposed changes to the Sutton and Cheam constituency which would include St James and Old Malden wards.Local MP, Paul Burstow, said: "The new proposals add Old Malden and St James from the Kingston and Surbiton Constituency of Lib Dem MP Ed Davey.
"In practice these proposals are not going ahead but if they did they are unlikely to dramatically change the political balance in the seat."

Looking at the Boundary Commission website suggests that in 2013 the review was put back until 2018

"A new law in 2011 set the timing of reviews of all constituencies to take place at fixed five year intervals, whilst also removing the ability of the Commission to undertake interim reviews. Although the first review under these new arrangements began in early 2011, Parliament postponed that review in 2013 for five years.

So it looks like my friend may have some time to wait before anything happens but it left me wondering whether Sutton is really so bad and whether being in a Royal borough is as good as it's made out to be.

Any opinions gratefully accepted, even if they're indignant and outraged ones.


P.S. Blogger is telling me this is my 500th post! Yay! Go me! There may, or may not, be cake, dancing girls and Justin Bieber...