Faversham & Mid Kent

[yellowperil]

Having completed the first stage, at least, of the six constituencies  I volunteered to do, I have decided unless anybody objects to carry on laying the foundations of some more Kent constituencies, starting with F&MK, which is another seat neighbouring my own and where I have in the (now fairly distant) past  done quite a bit of campaigning work, largely in the Maidstone end of this constituency.  After all this is only the 24th South East constituency  to get an entry and there are 60 more to go! I hesitated with this one originally as I thought the Swale contingent on here might like to pick it up but maybe Pimpernal  et al are too busy running their own council to stoop to this  stuff

[yellowperil]

Faversham and Mid Kent constituency was created in 1997 when the former Faversham constitueny was abolished, and it comprises the eastern (Faversham) end of Swale borough and the eastern end of Maidstone borough. It is an overwhelmingly rural constituency with no large urban centre- Faversham is the largest town with a population under 20,000, but F&MK does include a sizeable part of Maidstone town and suburbs even though the centre of the county town is in the next constituency, Maidstone and the Weald. It does have a bit of a feel of a "bits and pieces" constituency with very little to give it much cohesion.

It is also very strongly Conservative. Given that the Maidstone end of the constituency is roughly double the size of the Faversham end (12 Maidstone wards to 6 Swale ones), and given Lib Dem overall strength in Maidstone, you might expect a stronger Lib Dem showing here than is actually the case. However if you look at local election results you will discover that these twelve Maidstone wards in F& MK have not returned a single Lib Dem in the last decade-Lib Dem strength in Maidstone borough is entirely in the other constituency. Labour is not much better- only the Maidstone ward of Shepway South occasionally returns a Labour councillor. Otherwise the only limits on Conservative hegemony will be a few villages returning Indies, and a flurry of short-lived Kippers elected around their peak at 2014-15. Generally, one might expect a similar Conservative dominance in the Faversham area, except for the Priory ward which has often voted Lib Dem, but in May 2019 there was something of a local revolution on Swale BC and as a result those 6 Faversham wards produced 5 Lib Dems,2 Greens,2 Labour and a solitary Tory. It made relatively little difference to the general election result  those few months later.

The town of Faversham is  more important  commercially and industrially than its relatively small size might suggest. It  has a history going back to pre-Roman times, and was quite an important port until the creek silted up. Faversham was a major ecclesiastical centre in medieval times, as perhaps suggested by the fact that two of the four wards making up Faversham town are called Abbey and Priory ( Davington Priory is better known in some circles these days as the home of Bob Geldof). It was particularly known for two significant industrial activities, brewing and the exposives industry, both of which really got going on some scale in the seventeenth century. Some of the breweries have come and gone, but Shepherd Neame, founded in 1698, remains a major employer. The explosives industry survived until well into the twentieth century, but never really recovered from the major accident of 1916, all 3 gunpowder works finally closing in 1934. In some ways the town has a rather different vibe to much of Kent, with its close links to London by road , rail and especially river. In some ways it feels more like a Midlands town. Against that, its surrounding countryside is classical Kent with a great dominance of orchards and market gardening.

That last aspect is one of the few common threads between the Swale part of the constituency and the Maidstone part. There are two great fruit farming areas, the one along rthe Swale around Faversham and the second in the low Weald south and east of Maidstone. They are separated by the high chalk ridge of the North Downs with its maze of tiny lanes linking and minute villages,, another separate world, but one with few people. Once down on Low Weald there are big bustling centres of a specifically Kentish sort of agriculture, which maybe makes for some similarities between, say,  Ospringe near Faversham and somewhere like Headcorn, which otherwise seem worlds away. 

The other world included in this rather oddly put together constituency is suburban Maidstone. At least three of the Maidstone wards here are definitely part of Maidstone town, south and east of the town centre. They are the two Shepway wards, North and South,and Park Wood. To the east of those lie three more wards which were once a group of separate villages now suburbanised to a greater or lesser extent: Downswood & Otham, Bearsted maybe , and even more arguably Leeds. Between them, these six wards form the third and roughly equal component of the constituency, to match the rural Weald area and the Faversham area. If places like Bearsted and Leeds are being pulled into the Maistone urban zone, there will be increasing pressure on some villages a little further out, particularly Harrietsham and Lenham, and this is where the greatest development pressure is now being found.

[yellowperil]

I will start adding the constituency statistics here, beginning withthe general election results over the last decade:

General Election 2019

31,864 63.2%  Con (H.Whately)
  9,888 19.6%   Lab  (J. Reeves)
  6,170  12.2%  LD   (M.Perkin)
   2, 103   4.2% GP   (H.Temple)
       369   0.7% Ind ( G . Butler)

General Election  2017

30,390  61.6%  Con (H.Whately)
12,977   20.1% Lab  (M. Desmond)
   3,249   6.5%  LD  (D.Naghi)
  1,702    3.4%  UKIP  (M.Griffin)
  1,403     2.9%  GP (A.Gould)

General Election 2015

24, 895   54.4%  Con (H.Whately)
   8,243     18.0% UKIP (P.Edwards-Daem)
   7.748      16.6% Lab (M.Desmond)
   3,039         6.6% LD (D.Naghi)
    1,768        3.9% GP (T.Valentine)
        297       0.6% MRL (H.Davidson)
         158       0. 3 ED  (G.Butler)


General Election 2010

26,250  56.2%   Con (H.Robertson)
   9,162  19.6%  LD   (D.Naghi)
    7,487  16.6%  Lab (A Rehal)
     1,722   3.7%  UKIP (S.Larkins)
       890     1.9%  GP  (T.Valentine)
       542      1.2% NF  (G.Kemp)
       398      0.9% MRL (H.Davidson)

European Referendum 2016
Leave 58.7% Remain 41.3%

[John Chanin]

Shepway has a lot of council estates, and would have been solidly Labour in earlier times.

[carlton43]

Apr 16, 2020 13:36:12 GMT John Chanin said:

Shepway has a lot of council estates, and would have been solidly Labour in earlier times.

It certainly was when I canvassed it in the 60s and when we converted one Labour councillor to defect to us.  His daughter sold records in Week Street music shop and we briefly went out together. It was a big estate and had confusing circular roads with awkward numbering systems which we only fully cracked by us with the aid of a postman member.

[yellowperil]

Apr 16, 2020 13:36:12 GMT John Chanin said:

Shepway has a lot of council estates, and would have been solidly Labour in earlier times.

In earlier times, sure, but these days its more realistic to say "had" a lot of council estates!  Shepway  South "should" still be classic Labour territory though.

[yellowperil]

Some more selected statistics..

2011 Census
Ethnicity

White 96.0% (SE 90.7,  UK 87.2)
Asian   1.4 % ( SE 5.2, UK 6.9)
Mixed   1.2% (SE 1.9, UK 2.0)
Black     0.5% ( SE 1.6, UK 3.0)
Other    0.3% (SE 0.6,UK 0.9)

tbc

[Robert Waller]

2011 Census

Age 65+ 17.9% 238/650
Owner-occupied 71.3% 178/650
Private rented 10.4% 558/650
Social rented 16.0% 323/650
White 96.6% 266/650
Black 0.5% 354/650
Asian 1.4% 418/650
Managerial & professional 33.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 24.6%
Degree level 25.3% 331/650
No qualifications 22.9% 328/650
Students 5.8% 518/650


2021 Census

Owner occupied 72.1% 114/573
Private rented 12.6% 539/573
Social rented 15.3% 282/573
White 93.8%
Black 1.4%
Asian 2.2%
Managerial & professional 35.6% 207/573
Routine & Semi-routine 21.9% 357/573
Degree level 29.6% 354/573
No qualifications 18.4% 254/573

[Pete Whitehead]

This seat becomes a little more 'Faversham' and a little less 'Mid Kent' in the proposed boundary changes. It loses around 10,000 voters in the rural Maidstone wards (Headcord, Leeds etc) to the new Weald of Kent seat and gains Teynham & Lynsted and West Downs wards of Swale from Sittingbourne & Sheppey. In the initial plans it would also have gained a few rural wards from Ashford but that was reversed in the revised proposals.

2019 Notional Result

Con	30224	63.5%
Lab	9722	20.4%
LD	5247	11.0%
Grn	1918	4.0%
Oth	471	1.0%
Majority	20502	43.1%