Three to two; who goes and who stays?

The last blog post mentioned the proposal to reduce the number of Highland Council Planning Application Committees from 3 to 2. Well, what does this mean in practice?

According to the Highland Council web site:

Your Councillors are elected to make decisions affecting the whole Highland area. There are 80 in total, serving on 14 four-member wards and 8 three-member wards. The next election is in May 2012.

Details of elected Councillors are available here together withCommittee Office Bearers and Memberships.

The political representation of the Council is: Independent Group (25), Liberal Democrats (20), SNP (17), Labour (6), Independent Members' Group (6) Independent Alliance Group (4), Non-aligned (1).

There are currently 3 Planning Application Committees – CSER, RSL and INBS with, if you go through the list of 80 councillors, 40 of them serving on the aforementioned 3 planning committees, as, CSER, 14 members; RSL, 11 Members; INBS, 15 members = total of 40

Tomorrow the Highland Council will be asked to consider and agree the recommendation (main business in Agenda item 2):

...that, with effect from January 2012, the current 3 Planning Application Committees should be reduced to 2 Committees to align with the two new management areas for the Planning Service on the basis that they would comprise of a ‘North Planning Application Committee’ and a ‘South Planning Application Committee’ as detailed in Paragraph 2.1 of this report;

'2.1' being found in committee report here and noting that, "...each Committee should comprise of 11 Members (one Member from each Ward);" - the Governance Committee had suggested one committee for North Wards 1-11 and the second for South Wards 12-22.

So that would seem to be the current number of 40 councillors reduced to 22. But who would go and who would stay? There doesn't seem to be anything in the committee report further explaining the practical details in this regard (?)

The committee report does include agenda item 3's recommendation to merge three existing working groups into a 'Rural Affairs and Climate Change Strategy Group' which could deal with the work of these three groups in future. The committee report notes that:

In this regard, it was envisaged that this new Strategy Group should comprise of 11 Members to reflect the political balance of the Council (3/3/2/1/1/1), the Chair should be appointed by Council and the Group will operate on the basis of meetings being held out with the Council Chamber where possible in order to allow informal and detailed discussion on a range of issues.

So what would happen if we list the 40 existing P A committee councillors, their wards and political affiliations and then try to apportion using North 11 members/ South 11 members one member per ward and 3/3/2/1/1/1?

I am about to try and see if it works out..