Rutherglen South is one of the 20
electoral wards
The wards and electoral divisions in the United Kingdom are electoral districts at sub-national level, represented by one or more councillors. The ''ward (subnational entity), ward'' is the primary unit of English electoral geography for civil pa ...
of
South Lanarkshire Council
South Lanarkshire Council is the unitary authority serving the South Lanarkshire council area in Scotland. The council has its headquarters in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Hamilton, has 16,000 employees, and an annual budget of almost £1bn. Th ...
. Created in 2007, the ward elects three councillors using the
single transferable vote
The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vot ...
electoral system and covers an area with a population of 15,322 people.
The ward has politically been split between
Labour, the
Liberal Democrats and the
Scottish National Party
The Scottish National Party (SNP; ) is a Scottish nationalist and social democratic party. The party holds 61 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament, and holds 9 out of the 57 Scottish seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, ...
(SNP) with each party returning one councillor at each full election. Labour briefly held two of the three seats following a by-election in 2013.
Boundaries
The ward was created following the Fourth Statutory Reviews of Electoral Arrangements ahead of the
2007 Scottish local elections
The 2007 Scottish local elections were held on 3 May 2007, the same day as Scottish Parliament elections and local elections in parts of England. All 32 Scottish councils had all their seats up for election – all Scottish councils are unitar ...
. As a result of the
Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004
The Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 (asp 9) is an Act of the Scottish Parliament which provided, amongst other things, for the election of councillors to the local government in Scotland, local authorities in Scotland by the single transfera ...
, local elections in Scotland would use the
single transferable vote
The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vot ...
electoral system from 2007 onwards so Rutherglen South was formed from an amalgamation of several previous
first-past-the-post
First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or First-preference votes, first-preference, and the cand ...
wards. It contained the majority of the former
Stonelaw ward, roughly half of the former
Cathkin/Springhall ward and all of the former
Fernhill and
Spittal/Blairbeth wards as well as a small part of the former
Bankhead ward. Rutherglen South covers a suburban area in the south of
Rutherglen
Rutherglen (; , ) is a town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, immediately south-east of the city of Glasgow, from its centre and directly south of the River Clyde. Having previously existed as a separate Lanarkshire burgh, in 1975 Rutherglen lo ...
including the neighbourhoods of
Burnside, Blairbeth, Cathkin,
Fernhill, High Burnside, Springhall and Spittal. The ward's western boundary is the long-established division with
Glasgow City Council
Glasgow City Council (Scottish Gaelic: ''Comhairle Baile Ghlaschu'') is the Local government in Scotland, local government authority for Glasgow, Glasgow City council area, Scotland. In its modern form it was created in 1996. Glasgow was former ...
.
Prior to the
local government reforms in the 1990s, Rutherglen was within the
Glasgow District under
Strathclyde Regional Council
Strathclyde ( in Welsh; in Gaelic, meaning 'strath alleyof the River Clyde') was one of nine former local government regions of Scotland created in 1975 by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and abolished in 1996 by the Local Govern ...
. One of its single-member wards was
Fernhill, which included much of the same area as the current Rutherglen South, with the exception of the parts of Burnside north of the
Cathcart Circle Line
The Cathcart Circle Lines form a mostly suburban railway line, railway route linking Glasgow (Central) to Cathcart via a circular line, with branches to Newton (Lanark) railway station, Newton and Neilston railway station, Neilston, on the sout ...
railway tracks.
Following the Fifth Statutory Reviews of Electoral Arrangements ahead of the
2017 Scottish local elections
The 2017 Scottish local elections were held on Thursday 4 May, in all 32 local authorities. The SNP retained its position as the largest party in terms of votes and councillors, despite suffering minor losses. The Conservatives made gains and d ...
, streets around
Overtoun Park, Dryburgh Avenue and Limeside Avenue were transferred from the ward into
Rutherglen Central and North while streets to the east of the ward around East Kilbride Road, Brownside Road and Dukes Road were transferred into Rutherglen South from
Cambuslang West.
Councillors
Election Results
2022 election
2017 election
2013 by-election
2012 election
2007 election
Notes
References
{{Wards of South Lanarkshire
Wards of South Lanarkshire
Rutherglen