Post by YL on Apr 2, 2020 18:01:05 GMT
This constituency, as might be expected, contains Sheffield's city centre, and areas on the edge of the city centre such as the trendy Kelham Island area, a formerly industrial area featuring an industrial museum, popular pubs and an associated brewery, and upmarket new housing developments. As well as that, it includes a substantial area of the inner west of the city including Nether Edge, Sharrow, Broomhill and Walkley, and also extends south-east to include the Manor estate and the areas between it and the city centre, including one of its most famous buildings, the huge Park Hill flats complex.
Housing styles in the constituency include attractive leafy streets with substantial stone-built Victorian villas, smaller Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing, sprawling inter-war estates, post-war estates built in slum clearance areas, and most recently 21st century apartments and purpose-built student housing. As this might suggest this is a socially diverse constituency, with some areas whose educated middle class demographics would not be out of place in Sheffield Hallam combined with some of the most deprived parts of the city. The most striking feature of its demographics is the high student population, the highest of any constituency in the country according to the 2011 census. Apart from that it shows a pattern found in some other urban constituencies where deprivation is a bit higher than average, but there are also above average proportions of graduates and those in professional occupations.
There was a Sheffield Central constituency from 1885 to 1950, but that was tightly drawn around the city centre, and the current incarnation dates from the renaming of the Sheffield Park constituency in 1983, after the then Park ward was transferred to Heeley. Further boundary changes in 1997 and 2010 have moved the centre of gravity of the constituency west, removing Burngreave and some smaller areas in the east and replacing them with Nether Edge, Broomhill and Walkley.
In the 1980s Sheffield Central was a safe Labour seat, held from 1983 to 2010 by Richard Caborn, but the westward shift made it look less so, and Caborn's successor Paul Blomfield held off the Lib Dems by only 165 votes in 2010. The shift in student voting habits since then has contributed to it becoming an apparently safe Labour seat again, with Blomfield winning two thirds of the vote even in 2019. At local level the Green Party has become a major player, and their 15% and second place in the 2015 General Election was one of their best results; so far, however, this has not turned into a real chance to win.
The most working class area is in the Manor Castle ward in the east of the constituency, where we find the sprawling inter-war cottage estates of the Manor (named after what's left of Sheffield Manor, once involuntary home to Mary, Queen of Scots) and Wybourn. This area has very high deprivation, and very low proportions of those in middle class occupations and of graduates (as low as 7.1% in one census area). Between this area and the city centre is the aforementioned Park Hill, currently in the middle of a drawn out refurbishment, and associated post-war developments in an area which had previously contained some of Sheffield's worst slums. Just to the south of Park Hill is a small area of Victorian villas around Norfolk Road; this area is rather less deprived and much better educated than the rest of the ward.
The city centre itself, like many city centres, contains a number of modern apartment developments, which have a fairly well educated but fairly transient younger population, with a high proportion of students. Immediately surrounding the city centre to the west are a number of inner city areas, from Highfield in the south through Sharrow, Broomhall, Netherthorpe and Upperthorpe. These also have a high student population, but also have a more permanent population which is largely working class and ethnically diverse; this area is fairly deprived but seems to be getting less so, comparing the 2015 and 2019 figures. To the north-west is Walkley, which is largely an area of Victorian terraced housing running up and down the steep hills, but contains some pockets of more spacious housing developed by Victorian Land Societies, and at the bottom of the hill large areas of postwar council housing. Walkley has undergone a fair amount of gentrification, and the census areas away from the council estates show fairly high proportions of graduates and professionals.
Finally, in the west of the constituency are Broomhill and Nether Edge. These are both mostly Victorian middle class suburbs, and there is still a substantial middle class population in these areas as well as, particularly in Broomhill, large numbers of students. The area between Broomhill and Nether Edge, in Sharrow Vale and along Ecclesall Road, is also very much a student area. Most of those who are not students were in the past, with one census area in Nether Edge having 65% of its adult population having degree level qualifications. Nether Edge has a considerable Asian population, particularly in the east close to Abbeydale Road. Deprivation here is mostly low, becoming a bit higher where the area borders on the inner city areas and in the Abbeydale Road area.
Until the 1980s the west of the area, covered by the then Broomhill and Nether Edge wards, reliably elected Conservative councillors, while the rest of the area usually elected Labour councillors, with the Manor area having voted Labour in every council election going back to the 1920s when the estates were built. From the mid 1980s the area's council representation was overwhelmingly Labour, but in the 1990s and 2000s the Liberal Democrats became the main opposition to Labour in Sheffield, and they became the dominant party in Broomhill and Nether Edge, and also won Walkley more often than not. The Coalition years brought trouble for the Lib Dems, and in this area they now seem to have been supplanted by the Greens, who were helped to some extent by controversial felling of street trees as part of a road maintenance project, and perhaps more by an over-aggressive attitude to protesters against the plans. The Greens have all three councillors in City ward, and two out of three in each of Broomhill & Sharrow Vale and Nether Edge & Sharrow; in 2019 they also came close in Walkley. Manor Castle, though, remains secure for Labour.
Housing styles in the constituency include attractive leafy streets with substantial stone-built Victorian villas, smaller Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing, sprawling inter-war estates, post-war estates built in slum clearance areas, and most recently 21st century apartments and purpose-built student housing. As this might suggest this is a socially diverse constituency, with some areas whose educated middle class demographics would not be out of place in Sheffield Hallam combined with some of the most deprived parts of the city. The most striking feature of its demographics is the high student population, the highest of any constituency in the country according to the 2011 census. Apart from that it shows a pattern found in some other urban constituencies where deprivation is a bit higher than average, but there are also above average proportions of graduates and those in professional occupations.
There was a Sheffield Central constituency from 1885 to 1950, but that was tightly drawn around the city centre, and the current incarnation dates from the renaming of the Sheffield Park constituency in 1983, after the then Park ward was transferred to Heeley. Further boundary changes in 1997 and 2010 have moved the centre of gravity of the constituency west, removing Burngreave and some smaller areas in the east and replacing them with Nether Edge, Broomhill and Walkley.
In the 1980s Sheffield Central was a safe Labour seat, held from 1983 to 2010 by Richard Caborn, but the westward shift made it look less so, and Caborn's successor Paul Blomfield held off the Lib Dems by only 165 votes in 2010. The shift in student voting habits since then has contributed to it becoming an apparently safe Labour seat again, with Blomfield winning two thirds of the vote even in 2019. At local level the Green Party has become a major player, and their 15% and second place in the 2015 General Election was one of their best results; so far, however, this has not turned into a real chance to win.
The most working class area is in the Manor Castle ward in the east of the constituency, where we find the sprawling inter-war cottage estates of the Manor (named after what's left of Sheffield Manor, once involuntary home to Mary, Queen of Scots) and Wybourn. This area has very high deprivation, and very low proportions of those in middle class occupations and of graduates (as low as 7.1% in one census area). Between this area and the city centre is the aforementioned Park Hill, currently in the middle of a drawn out refurbishment, and associated post-war developments in an area which had previously contained some of Sheffield's worst slums. Just to the south of Park Hill is a small area of Victorian villas around Norfolk Road; this area is rather less deprived and much better educated than the rest of the ward.
The city centre itself, like many city centres, contains a number of modern apartment developments, which have a fairly well educated but fairly transient younger population, with a high proportion of students. Immediately surrounding the city centre to the west are a number of inner city areas, from Highfield in the south through Sharrow, Broomhall, Netherthorpe and Upperthorpe. These also have a high student population, but also have a more permanent population which is largely working class and ethnically diverse; this area is fairly deprived but seems to be getting less so, comparing the 2015 and 2019 figures. To the north-west is Walkley, which is largely an area of Victorian terraced housing running up and down the steep hills, but contains some pockets of more spacious housing developed by Victorian Land Societies, and at the bottom of the hill large areas of postwar council housing. Walkley has undergone a fair amount of gentrification, and the census areas away from the council estates show fairly high proportions of graduates and professionals.
Finally, in the west of the constituency are Broomhill and Nether Edge. These are both mostly Victorian middle class suburbs, and there is still a substantial middle class population in these areas as well as, particularly in Broomhill, large numbers of students. The area between Broomhill and Nether Edge, in Sharrow Vale and along Ecclesall Road, is also very much a student area. Most of those who are not students were in the past, with one census area in Nether Edge having 65% of its adult population having degree level qualifications. Nether Edge has a considerable Asian population, particularly in the east close to Abbeydale Road. Deprivation here is mostly low, becoming a bit higher where the area borders on the inner city areas and in the Abbeydale Road area.
Until the 1980s the west of the area, covered by the then Broomhill and Nether Edge wards, reliably elected Conservative councillors, while the rest of the area usually elected Labour councillors, with the Manor area having voted Labour in every council election going back to the 1920s when the estates were built. From the mid 1980s the area's council representation was overwhelmingly Labour, but in the 1990s and 2000s the Liberal Democrats became the main opposition to Labour in Sheffield, and they became the dominant party in Broomhill and Nether Edge, and also won Walkley more often than not. The Coalition years brought trouble for the Lib Dems, and in this area they now seem to have been supplanted by the Greens, who were helped to some extent by controversial felling of street trees as part of a road maintenance project, and perhaps more by an over-aggressive attitude to protesters against the plans. The Greens have all three councillors in City ward, and two out of three in each of Broomhill & Sharrow Vale and Nether Edge & Sharrow; in 2019 they also came close in Walkley. Manor Castle, though, remains secure for Labour.
