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Post by yellowperil on May 10, 2020 14:11:01 GMT
Having done one half of Worthing I might as well do the other half!
The difference though I guess is that while West Worthing is three quarters Worthing and then a bit added on from Arun, East Worthing and Shoreham is more like a quarter Worthing and the greater part Adur district- in fact it's the whole of Adur. However, it perhaps should be pointed out that although technically Adur remains a district in its own right, it now shares a management structure (and chief executive) with Worthing, so we stop just short of having a single Worthing district incorporating Adur into it. Shoreham is of course the principal town of Adur district, and a small port (actually the only proper port in West Sussex),with Lancing and Sompting among the other fairly well known places, mainly for their architectural distinction -Lancing perhaps best known for its public school with the famous Gothic revival chapel (the largest school chapel in the world, it is claimed!) and Sompting for its Saxon church. with the famous so-called Rhenish Helm. Shoreham apart from the port is most well known for its small airfield, and sadly now notorious for its airshow disaster, an event which I probably missed being directly involved in by a last minute decision on the day to take an alternative route to my usual one, which would have had me on that bit of the A27 at just the wrong moment.
Profile will follow, in stages and in due course!
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Post by yellowperil on May 10, 2020 16:18:33 GMT
East Worthing and Shoreham has existed as a constituency since 1997. before which Shoreham had been a constituency on its own including all of Adur district. It then had added to it the four most easterly wards of Worthing district i.e. Broadwater,Gaisford, Offington and Selden,and instead lost parts of Arun to Arundel, because Worthing was somewhat over sized. As the two districts of Worthing and Adur now work together very closely with a common management and chief executive, this hardly creates much of a problem, although the two districts have still not managed to bring their local electoral procedures quite into sync- Adur's last elections were in May 2018, but Worthing went to the polls in May 2019.
Adur is of course the district which covers the coastal strip between Worthing to the west and Hove to the east, and Hove is "actually" part of that eponymous city together with Brighton, which now is strongly either Labour (Hove and Kemptown)or Green (Pavilion), the interesting question is how far the Tories will be in retreat here, having become so much reduced within that neighbouring south coast city. There may be some signs of a change at local level, but scarcely yet at Westminster, given Tim Loughton's seemingly comfortable majority of 7,474 in 2019. Even so, it might be noted this is a smallish lead compared with the Tory majorities in 2010 and 2015, so it is already going rather against the national and regional trend.
It might be worth noting that back in the late years of the last century this seat, or maybe rather more its earlier manifestation, was seen as a genuine Lib Dem prospect, at a time when Adur was one of the strongest Alliance/Lib Dem controlled authorities in the country, something of a precursor to places like Eastleigh in that regard. That control lasted from1986 to 1999, and as late as 1996 the Lib Dems held 28 seats out of 39 on Adur council, the opposition then consisting of 3 Conservatives, 2 Residents and 6 Independents!The collapse from that point was almost total, so that by 2003 there were no Lib Dem councillors left at all, as is again the case today. The highest spot since 2003 was in 2010 when they got back to 2 councillors, before subsiding completely once again.Nor is this local fragility confined to the Lib Dems - Conservative representation on this council has varied from a high of 27 to a low of 3, and Labour from 15 to 0. A warning perhaps not to place too much reliance on local election results in establishing a view of local political strength, as so much depends on purely local issues, local personalities, and party machines geared to low turnout elections.
Since the creation of this constituency in 1997, the MP has been Tim Loughton, and he won it with a majority of 5,098 over the Lib Dems. It is just about true to say that he has never been closer to losing since then -his majority over Labour in 2017 was 5,106! However, before that it had mushroomed to 14,949 in 2015, and since then the Labour advance in this constituency has been significant at all levels, if not particularly in the 2019 general election. It is probably fair to say that he has been generally been regarded as something of a maverick and a controversial Tory MP and only briefly held ministerial office as children's minister under Cameron before being dismissed in 2012. He did though briefly chair the important Home Affairs select committee ( for a few weeks in 2016, after the resignation of Keith Vaz, another somewhat controversial character).
This is of course a seaside constituency, but perhaps not quite a typical south coast resort constituency- it doesn't quite have a resort function at the heart of the place. It does contain a significant boat harbour, and the nearest thing to a proper port between Portsmouth to the west and Newhaven to the east, and some parts have quite an industrial feel. Away from those areas it has a lot of typical south coast dormitory- retirement type developments. Broadly speaking the eastern part -Shoreham itself and Southwick -contain those more industrialised patches while the areas west of the Adur river are smarter and more residential, particularly Lancing and Sompting. At the northern edge , beyond the A27 and heading up towards the South Downs national park, are those two iconic buildings, the great Gothic Revival chapel of Lancing college and the famous Saxon parish church at Sompting. Separating the west of Adur distict ,from the east, apart from the river Adur itself, is the open space of Shoreham airfield , or as it rather grandly now calls itself, Brighton City Airport. As you go westwards from this Lancing and Sompting into East Worthing, in places like Broadwater it becomes a bit more mixed in character again.
As we have seen , the local political character of the areas been subject to a lot of sharp changes of direction, but very broadly there is a political correspondence to those general areas. The more easterly wards of Adur like Eastbrook, and the eastern end of Shoreham town, St Marys ward and Southlands , are the most inclined to be Labour territory. The safer areas for the Tories are the western part of the coastal strip, Widewater and Churchill wards, and the the Sompting wards, Peverel and Cokeham, together with all the more northerly wards stretching up towards the Downs: Manor, Buckingham and Hillside wards. Again very broadly, some of those now very safe Tory wards were once Lib Dem strongholds. The most volatile wards are those right in the centre like Mash Barn and St Nicholas. The one near certainty is that Marine Ward is occupied by the local Residents Association who are almost completely immovable through all the other wild fluctuations. And then there are times when anything can happen- in the 2000 local elections, a very good Conservative year, the Labour party won only one seat -in Cokeham of all places. Looking at the four East Worthing wards, in May 2019, three of them (Broadwater,Gaisford and Seldon ) were comfortable Labour gains from Conservative, and only Offington remained safely Tory. So putting together the combined constituency results of 2018/19 for the two authorities, the Tories won 10 wards(Offington, Peverel, Cokeham, Manor, Buckingham.Hillside, Churchill, Widewater, St Nicholas and Southwick Green), Labour won 7 (Broadwater, Gaisford, Selden,Mash Barn, St Marys, Southlands and Eastbrook). And of course the Residents won Marine.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 10, 2020 19:57:08 GMT
East Worthing and Shoreham has existed as a constituency since 1997. before which Shoreham had been a constituency on its own since 1974, and coinciding with Adur district, but as it was a little undersized it then had added to it the four most easterly wards of Worthing district i.e. Broadwater,Gaisford, Offington and Selden. As the two districts now work together very closely with a common management and chief executive, this hardly creates much of a problem, although the two districts have still not managed to bring their local electoral procedures quite into sync- Adur's last elections were in May 2018, but Worthing went to the polls in May 2019. tbc This is misleading as (while I'm sure you didn't mean it this way) it seems to imply that the pre-97 SHoreham constituency comprised only the Adur district when as you know it included parts of Arun district and surrounded Worthing on all sides (except, obviously, to the South). As such it was not an undersized seat - it was pretty much spot on, but Worthing was somewhat oversized which was what led to a reconfiguration of the two seats. Most of the Arun section of the Shoreham seat was moved to Worthing West (Angmering and Findon were put in the new Arundel & South Downs seat) and the East Worthing wards were added in compensation. At the time the combination of the rather stronger Lib Dem wards of Worthing with the then very strong Lib Dem Adur district seemed to create a very good prospect for that party, such that the one-term Tory MP Michael Stephen went and did a Sheila Faith |
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Post by yellowperil on May 10, 2020 20:40:47 GMT
East Worthing and Shoreham has existed as a constituency since 1997. before which Shoreham had been a constituency on its own since 1974, and coinciding with Adur district, but as it was a little undersized it then had added to it the four most easterly wards of Worthing district i.e. Broadwater,Gaisford, Offington and Selden. As the two districts now work together very closely with a common management and chief executive, this hardly creates much of a problem, although the two districts have still not managed to bring their local electoral procedures quite into sync- Adur's last elections were in May 2018, but Worthing went to the polls in May 2019. tbc This is misleading as (while I'm sure you didn't mean it this way) it seems to imply that the pre-97 SHoreham constituency comprised only the Adur district when as you know it included parts of Arun district and surrounded Worthing on all sides (except, obviously, to the South). As such it was not an undersized seat - it was pretty much spot on, but Worthing was somewhat oversized which was what led to a reconfiguration of the two seats. Most of the Adur section of the Shoreham seat was moved to Worthing West (Angmering and Findon were put in the new Arundel & South Downs seat) and the East Worthing wards were added in compensation. At the time the combination of the rather stronger Lib Dem wards of Worthing with the then very strong Lib Dem Adur district seemed to create a very good prospect for that party, such that the one-term Tory MP Michael Stephen went and did a Sheila Faith Yes I can see I wasn't careful enough with my language there- I think I was getting very tired for reasons unconnected with this and not thinking straight ( given our domestic situation , we -our whole village I think- are now 4 days without any significant domestic water supply- so getting a bit frayed round the edges). Thank you for correcting me- I'll rework that whole section. I was thinking I could just carry on but it was obviously leaving me writing nonsense. I had been wondering whether I should go back to the days when Adur district was not just quite strong for the Libs but virtually a one party state- a bit like Eastleigh more recently! |
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Post by greenhert on May 11, 2020 15:04:36 GMT
East Worthing and Shoreham has existed as a constituency since 1997. before which Shoreham had been a constituency on its own since 1974, and coinciding with Adur district, but as it was a little undersized it then had added to it the four most easterly wards of Worthing district i.e. Broadwater,Gaisford, Offington and Selden. As the two districts now work together very closely with a common management and chief executive, this hardly creates much of a problem, although the two districts have still not managed to bring their local electoral procedures quite into sync- Adur's last elections were in May 2018, but Worthing went to the polls in May 2019. Adur is of course the district which covers the coastal strip between Worthing to the west and Hove to the east, and Hove is "actually" part of that eponymous city together with Brighton, which now is strongly either Labour or Green, the interesting question is how far the Tories are in retreat here, having become so much reduced within the neighbouring south coast city. There may be some signs of a change at local level, but scarcely yet at Westminster, given Tim Loughton's reasonably comfortable majority of 7,474. Even so, it might be noted this is a smallish lead compared with the tory majorities in 2010 and 2015, which is rather against the national and regional trend. tbc 7,474 might sound like a reasonably comfortable Conservative majority but in reality it will not be too long (the next election if Sir Keir Starmer becomes on course to be the next Prime Minister) before Labour wins this seat. There was only a 2.2% swing against Labour in 2019 when they achieved a 10.2% swing against the Conservatives in 2017, in a seat where neither it nor its predecessors have ever had a Labour MP. Furthermore Tim Loughton's vote share dropped by 0.5% in 2017 even though UKIP's vote share dropped by 13.8% which should have benefitted him to a significant extent. |
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Post by matureleft on May 11, 2020 15:21:18 GMT
This is the constituency which has a resident. on the A27 around Sompting, who displays (still) what must be an at least 8'x6' fixed board on the front of his house discouraging canvassers from parties that don't support, if necessary, a no deal Brexit.
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Post by yellowperil on May 11, 2020 16:03:38 GMT
That must be, as you might say ,Sompting to behold. So I wonder why all the times I've driven along that road, I've never seen it. Not seeing what I didn't want to see, I guess. I haven't come back to this thread yet for various reasons but perhaps primarily I decided I needed to do a lot more research before committing myself further, which I have been doing. When I am ready I will probably start from the beginning all over again.
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Post by yellowperil on May 11, 2020 16:18:38 GMT
East Worthing and Shoreham has existed as a constituency since 1997. before which Shoreham had been a constituency on its own since 1974, and coinciding with Adur district, but as it was a little undersized it then had added to it the four most easterly wards of Worthing district i.e. Broadwater,Gaisford, Offington and Selden. As the two districts now work together very closely with a common management and chief executive, this hardly creates much of a problem, although the two districts have still not managed to bring their local electoral procedures quite into sync- Adur's last elections were in May 2018, but Worthing went to the polls in May 2019. Adur is of course the district which covers the coastal strip between Worthing to the west and Hove to the east, and Hove is "actually" part of that eponymous city together with Brighton, which now is strongly either Labour or Green, the interesting question is how far the Tories are in retreat here, having become so much reduced within the neighbouring south coast city. There may be some signs of a change at local level, but scarcely yet at Westminster, given Tim Loughton's reasonably comfortable majority of 7,474. Even so, it might be noted this is a smallish lead compared with the tory majorities in 2010 and 2015, which is rather against the national and regional trend. tbc 7,474 might sound like a reasonably comfortable Conservative majority but in reality it will not be too long (the next election if Sir Keir Starmer becomes on course to be the next Prime Minister) before Labour wins this seat. There was only a 2.2% swing against Labour in 2019 when they achieved a 10.2% swing against the Conservatives in 2017, in a seat where neither it nor its predecessors have ever had a Labour MP. Furthermore Tim Loughton's vote share dropped by 0.5% in 2017 even though UKIP's vote share dropped by 13.8% which should have benefitted him to a significant extent. As I say, I have decided virtually to start again on this one as I think I plunged in when I had a lot more research to do, and then wished I hadn't ,so I may well reword that anyway. On your specific point I don't think we are saying anything very different, actually- on the face of it a majority of 7474 ought to be "reasonably comfortable" if not safe, but I thought I was already implying some doubt in view of the direction of travel. Of course if your starting point is that Starmer will win the next general election, then indeed this might look eminently winnable for Labour and the next domino to fall after Hove, but those are shall we say by no means certain events! |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on May 11, 2020 16:22:51 GMT
Perhaps this thread will manage to get to two pages before it actually contains a meaningful profile of the constituency in question..
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on May 11, 2020 16:31:46 GMT
Is it really called East Worthing and Shoreham? Or to put it differently, is Worthing now considered a county like Swindon?
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Post by greenhert on May 11, 2020 16:50:22 GMT
Is it really called East Worthing and Shoreham? Or to put it differently, is Worthing now considered a county like Swindon? No, because Swindon is a unitary authority and Worthing is a borough. Also see Central Suffolk & North Ipswich (which ought to be Central Suffolk & Ipswich North or Suffolk Central & Ipswich North). |
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Post by yellowperil on May 11, 2020 17:05:06 GMT
Perhaps this thread will manage to get to two pages before it actually contains a meaningful profile of the constituency in question.. As long as we can avoid a Bridgend. |
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on May 11, 2020 18:12:34 GMT
It is East Worthing, because this is a county constituency and the compass point is supposed to be before the place, whether town or county, in a county constituency. It doesn't mean that Worthing is a county, but that the seat is regarded as having sufficient rural elements to be so defined. Worthing West on the other hand is a borough constituency and therefore the compass point comes afterwards, so it's Worthing West. It should be South Middlesbrough and East Cleveland but sometimes the Boundary Commission breaks its own rules. Some major city seats are rather puzzlingly defined as borough constituencies, for example Leeds NW and Ruislip, Northwood & Pinner both of which have significant rural elements. My understanding is as per greenhert's – take for instance Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire – that's DISTRICT West and South COUNTY. It doesn't matter if it's a county constituency overall. It's about whether the place named is a county or not. So this one should be Worthing East and Shoreham. Does anyone have the text of the last non-zombie review so we can see if they got it right? |
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Post by John Chanin on May 11, 2020 19:12:17 GMT
Fuck the Boundary Commission. For any reasonable person it is Worthing East & Shoreham, and whether it is a “county” or a “borough” constituency is for the birds.
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Post by lancastrian on May 11, 2020 19:12:49 GMT
It is East Worthing, because this is a county constituency and the compass point is supposed to be before the place, whether town or county, in a county constituency. It doesn't mean that Worthing is a county, but that the seat is regarded as having sufficient rural elements to be so defined. Worthing West on the other hand is a borough constituency and therefore the compass point comes afterwards, so it's Worthing West. It should be South Middlesbrough and East Cleveland but sometimes the Boundary Commission breaks its own rules. Some major city seats are rather puzzlingly defined as borough constituencies, for example Leeds NW and Ruislip, Northwood & Pinner both of which have significant rural elements. My understanding is as per greenhert 's – take for instance Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire – that's DISTRICT West and South COUNTY. It doesn't matter if it's a county constituency overall. It's about whether the place named is a county or not. So this one should be Worthing East and Shoreham. Does anyone have the text of the last non-zombie review so we can see if they got it right? The report on the 5th review for England includes the passage 'We adopt compass point names when there is not a more suitable option, and the compass point may form either a prefix or a suffix to the name, depending on which seems more appropriate or euphonious in the circumstances of the particular case.' So in other words, there were no rules; so we have Middlesbrough South, Oldham East, Carmarthen West etc, but also East Worthing, North Ipswich and North Swindon. |
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Post by yellowperil on May 12, 2020 9:46:38 GMT
I am just pointing out that I have started the rewrite of the profile for this constituency, which started so badly 3 days ago, and re-writing from the original place up thread. I have tried to accomodate the points made by Pete Whitehead and greenhert , but the views remain my own! I am still only 3 paras in, so yes it's still a work in progress but hope to continue soon and with luck will still finish before we reach p2. |
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Post by yellowperil on May 12, 2020 20:57:22 GMT
I now think I have finished the first draft ( or maybe its a second draft or whatever, but anyway long enough for now) though as is my wont I will add some more posts with the raw statistics, some of which might find their way into any later writeup. But please tell me (again) if you find any of this misleading, ill advised or just plain wrong.
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Post by Robert Waller on Jul 14, 2021 11:47:21 GMT
2011 Census
Age 65+ 20.3% 124/650
Owner-occupied 73.8% 95/650
Private rented 13.7% 352/650
Social rented 11.0% 541/650
White 95.0% 320/650
Black 0.6% 329/650
Asian 2.4% 341/650
Managerial & professional 32.1%
Routine & Semi-routine 24.3%
Degree level 23.7% 385/650
No qualifications 23.6% 303 /650
Students 6.0% 490/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 72.7% 99/573
Private rented 16.8% 354/573
Social rented 10.5% 501/573
White 92.6%
Black 0.9%
Asian 2.9%
Managerial & professional 34.3% 239/573
Routine & Semi-routine 22.3% 338/573
Degree level 29.8% 343/573
No qualifications 17.9% 279/573
General Election 2019: East Worthing and Shoreham
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Tim Loughton 27,107 51.0 +2.1
Labour Lavinia O'Connor 19,633 37.0 –2.3
Liberal Democrats Ashley Ridley 4,127 7.8 +3.0
Green Leslie Williams 2,006 3.8 +1.4
Independent Sophie Cook 255 0.5
C Majority 7,474 14.0 +4.4
Turnout 53,128 70.7 +0.4
Conservative hold
Swing +2.2 Lab to C
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Post by greenhert on Jul 15, 2021 14:59:37 GMT
2011 CensusAge 65+ 20.3% 124/650Owner-occupied 73.8% 95/650 Private rented 13.7% 352/650 Social rented 11.0% 541/650 White 95.0% 320/650 Black 0.6% 329/650 Asian 2.4% 341/650 Managerial & professional 32.1%Routine & Semi-routine 24.3% Degree level 23.7% 385/650No qualifications 23.6% 303 /650 Students 6.0% 490/650 General Election 2019: East Worthing and ShorehamParty Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Tim Loughton 27,107 51.0 +2.1Labour Lavinia O'Connor 19,633 37.0 –2.3 Liberal Democrats Ashley Ridley 4,127 7.8 +3.0 Green Leslie Williams 2,006 3.8 +1.4 Independent Sophie Cook 255 0.5
C Majority 7,474 14.0 +4.4Turnout 53,128 70.7 +0.4 Conservative hold Swing +2.2 Lab to C I wonder what those statistics will be for this seat on 2021 census figures. They are the key reasons why this seat is now a viable Labour target. |
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Post by elinorhelyn on Jul 15, 2021 15:35:53 GMT
2011 CensusAge 65+ 20.3% 124/650Owner-occupied 73.8% 95/650 Private rented 13.7% 352/650 Social rented 11.0% 541/650 White 95.0% 320/650 Black 0.6% 329/650 Asian 2.4% 341/650 Managerial & professional 32.1%Routine & Semi-routine 24.3% Degree level 23.7% 385/650No qualifications 23.6% 303 /650 Students 6.0% 490/650 General Election 2019: East Worthing and ShorehamParty Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Tim Loughton 27,107 51.0 +2.1Labour Lavinia O'Connor 19,633 37.0 –2.3 Liberal Democrats Ashley Ridley 4,127 7.8 +3.0 Green Leslie Williams 2,006 3.8 +1.4 Independent Sophie Cook 255 0.5
C Majority 7,474 14.0 +4.4Turnout 53,128 70.7 +0.4 Conservative hold Swing +2.2 Lab to C I wonder what those statistics will be for this seat on 2021 census figures. They are the key reasons why this seat is now a viable Labour target. This seat won't exist at the next election is any resemble firm. |
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