Post by YL on Jul 7, 2023 16:17:52 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. A constituency with this name might be expected to be a safe Labour seat, and in the 2024 election this was essentially the case, but on these boundaries it would have been competitive in the fairly recent past and may be again in the future.
Housing styles in the constituency include attractive leafy streets with substantial stone-built Victorian villas, smaller Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing, 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 features of its demographics are the high student population and, largely related to that, the proportion of the population with Chinese ethnicity, which is the highest of any constituency in England and Wales in the 2021 census. It also shows a pattern found in some other urban constituencies where there is some deprivation, but the proportions of graduates and those in professional occupations are also well above average.
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. However, the 1983 version extended more to the east of the city centre, and successive boundary changes in 1997, 2010 and 2024 have moved the centre of gravity of the constituency west, removing Burngreave, the Manor and Wybourn and replacing them with Nether Edge, Broomhill and Walkley; this has made the constituency considerably more middle class than it once was.
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. On the new boundaries the Lib Dems would surely have won the seat then, but 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 the removal of the Labour banker of Manor Castle ward in the latest boundary changes adds to the feeling that the constituency may be vulnerable, most likely to them, if Labour's recent strength among students and urban professionals fades under a Labour government. In 2024 the Greens had some candidate difficulties, with their originally selected candidate Alison Teal being deselected after expressing some "gender critical" views and standing as an Independent, but the replacement candidate got over a quarter of the vote, the seventh highest Green share at the election, confirming them as the party in the strongest position to challenge Labour. However Labour's new candidate Abtisam Mohamed got over half the vote and won reasonably comfortably.
The city centre itself, like many city centres, contains a number of modern apartment developments, which have a 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 have 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 76% 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 Walkley and the wards covering the city centre were usually, though not always, Labour. 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 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 now have 7 out of the 12 councillors in the constituency, including all of those in City and Broomhill & Sharrow Vale wards.
2019 notional result (Rallings & Thrasher):
Lab 25495 (67.0%)
Con 4722 (12.4%)
Green 4136 (10.9%)
Lib Dem 2070 (5.4%)
Brexit Party 1170 (3.1%)
Other 474 (1.2%)
Lab majority 20773 (54.6%)
2024 result:
Abtisam Mohamed (Lab) 16569 (52.1%)
Angela Argenzio (Green) 8283 (26.0%)
Lucy Stephenson (Con) 2339 (7.4%)
Sam Christmas (Lib Dem) 2174 (6.8%)
Alison Teal (Independent) 1039 (3.3%)
Caitlin Hardy (Workers Party) 656 (2.1%)
Isabelle France (TUSC) 409 (1.3%)
Annie Stoker (SDP) 334 (1.1%)
Housing styles in the constituency include attractive leafy streets with substantial stone-built Victorian villas, smaller Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing, 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 features of its demographics are the high student population and, largely related to that, the proportion of the population with Chinese ethnicity, which is the highest of any constituency in England and Wales in the 2021 census. It also shows a pattern found in some other urban constituencies where there is some deprivation, but the proportions of graduates and those in professional occupations are also well above average.
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. However, the 1983 version extended more to the east of the city centre, and successive boundary changes in 1997, 2010 and 2024 have moved the centre of gravity of the constituency west, removing Burngreave, the Manor and Wybourn and replacing them with Nether Edge, Broomhill and Walkley; this has made the constituency considerably more middle class than it once was.
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. On the new boundaries the Lib Dems would surely have won the seat then, but 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 the removal of the Labour banker of Manor Castle ward in the latest boundary changes adds to the feeling that the constituency may be vulnerable, most likely to them, if Labour's recent strength among students and urban professionals fades under a Labour government. In 2024 the Greens had some candidate difficulties, with their originally selected candidate Alison Teal being deselected after expressing some "gender critical" views and standing as an Independent, but the replacement candidate got over a quarter of the vote, the seventh highest Green share at the election, confirming them as the party in the strongest position to challenge Labour. However Labour's new candidate Abtisam Mohamed got over half the vote and won reasonably comfortably.
The city centre itself, like many city centres, contains a number of modern apartment developments, which have a 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 have 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 76% 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 Walkley and the wards covering the city centre were usually, though not always, Labour. 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 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 now have 7 out of the 12 councillors in the constituency, including all of those in City and Broomhill & Sharrow Vale wards.
2019 notional result (Rallings & Thrasher):
Lab 25495 (67.0%)
Con 4722 (12.4%)
Green 4136 (10.9%)
Lib Dem 2070 (5.4%)
Brexit Party 1170 (3.1%)
Other 474 (1.2%)
Lab majority 20773 (54.6%)
2024 result:
Abtisam Mohamed (Lab) 16569 (52.1%)
Angela Argenzio (Green) 8283 (26.0%)
Lucy Stephenson (Con) 2339 (7.4%)
Sam Christmas (Lib Dem) 2174 (6.8%)
Alison Teal (Independent) 1039 (3.3%)
Caitlin Hardy (Workers Party) 656 (2.1%)
Isabelle France (TUSC) 409 (1.3%)
Annie Stoker (SDP) 334 (1.1%)
