A SHAKE-UP of parliamentary boundaries has taken a new twist - with the Conservatives trying to add two parts of West Worcestershire to the Worcester seat.

The Conservatives are vying to get Kempsey and Ripple added to Worcester's constituency in a surprise counter-proposal which has been passed to decision makers.

But the move has sparked fresh controversy, with former city Labour MP Mike Foster calling it "barmy".

As this newspaper first reported in September, by 2020 Worcester could be extended in size to include Whittington, Norton and Drakes Broughton under Boundary Commission proposals.

But the Tories have used the consultation period which runs until Monday, December 5 to argue for an alternative vision for the city seat.

It wants to scrap the three new patches and instead add just Kempsey and Ripple under an effort to help keep the make-up of some other constituencies intact.

Mr Foster, who was Worcester's first and only ever Labour MP from 1997 to 2010, took part in a consultation event in Stafford this week to voice his concern.

The Labour Party have called the entire process "flawed".

Mr Foster said: "Does it make sense what they are trying to do, no, it's barmy - Ripple's closest market town is Tewkesbury.

"They want to put it into Worcester to try and make it 'safer' than it already is.

"There are 76,000 electors in Worcester now so there's no need to add any bits to it whatsoever if we go by the latest electoral roll, rather than the old one which is what they are doing."

Worcester News:

He told the Boundary Commission panel if they were prepared to reduce the impact on Worcester, then Drakes Broughton should be kept out the redrawn seat.

Current city MP Robin Walker says he is "pretty neutral" about it and will either send the commission a "very small response" or nothing.

"I'm not going to get fired up about it, to be honest I'd rather Worcester is kept as it is now but I accept there will be changes," he said.

"The right thing is to reduce the number of MPs so it's a question of what bits get added, rather than if.

"The Conservative counter-proposal is to 'move everything to the left' by one, so you still get the same population size but it keeps some other Warwickshire seats more intact."

The commission is independent of the Government and has been tasked with deleting 50 seats by the 2020 so the Commons is left with 600 MPs.

It is also being asked to equal out significant current size disparities so each constituency has as close to 75,000 voters as possible.

At the moment they run from 21,769 electors to 108,804.