Post by Robert Waller on Oct 31, 2023 14:25:37 GMT
This is also an updated yellowperil profile, with invaluable contributions on boundary changes from Pete Whitehead, plus some additions by myself.
Faversham and Mid Kent constituency was created in 1997 when the former Faversham constituency 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 of just 21,000 in the 2021 Census, 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 (Maidstone & Malling after the boundary changes). Faversham and Mid Kent 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 has been - up to and including 2019 - 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 wards of Park Wood (2022), and Shepway North (2023) and South (2022), occasionally return 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. In 2023 the Liberal Democrats held Abbey, Priory and Watling (making up three quarters of Faversham town between them), the Greens again won Boughton & Courtenay and gained East Downs, and Labour held St Ann’s, the remaining (central) Faversham ward.
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 explosives 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 the 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 Maidstone 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.
This seat becomes a little more 'Faversham' and a little less 'Mid Kent' in the boundary changes. It loses around 10,000 voters in the rural Maidstone wards (Headcorn, Sutton Valence etc) to the new Weald of Kent seat and gains Teynham & Lynsted (4,800 electors) and West Downs (2,200) 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 and final proposals. In May 2023 the Tories held Teynham & Lynsted, which was rare in their worst results in Swale borough since 1999, while the Independents retained the smaller West Downs, as they have done for the last twenty years. The demographics became very slightly more downmarket, slipping 19 places down the rankings for professional and managerial workers, 17 down for educated to degree level, and 26 down for owner occupied housing.
Overall the notional majority may drop by about 1,500 but it would still need a swing of over 20% to Labour for Faversham & Mid Kent actually to be lost by the Conservatives. This seat may feel – and be – far from posh, and in another part of the country its characteristics might tend to vulnerability. Yet despite the fact that Labour did actually hold the constituency called Faversham continuously from 1945 to 1970 (admittedly covering much of the terrain of the present Sittingbourne & Sheppey) it is, like that seat, an example of a powerful secular trend away from Labour in this sub-region of Kent - perhaps mirroring the movement in the other direction of, say, Merseyside.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 20.7% 220/575
Owner occupied 71.5% 140/575
Private rented 12.8% 539/575
Social rented 15.7% 261/575
White 93.7% 223/575
Black 1.5% 270/575
Asian 2.2% 371/575
Managerial & professional 34.9% 226/575
Routine & Semi-routine 22.6% 317/575
Degree level 29.1% 371/575
No qualifications 18.7% 236/575
Students 4.7% 446/575
General Election 2019: Faversham and Mid Kent
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Helen Whately 31,864 63.2 +2.1
Labour Jenny Reeves 9,888 19.6 -6.5
Liberal Democrats Hannah Perkin 6,170 12.2 +5.7
Green Hannah Temple 2,103 4.2 +1.3
Independent Gary Butler 369 0.7 New
C Majority 21,976 43.6 +8.6
Turnout 50,394 68.7 -0.2
Conservative hold
Swing 4.3 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Faversham and Mid Kent consists of
88.2% of Faversham and Mid Kent
8.4% of Sittingbourne & Sheppey
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_319_Faversham%20and%20Mid%20Kent_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Result (Rallings & Thrasher)
Faversham and Mid Kent constituency was created in 1997 when the former Faversham constituency 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 of just 21,000 in the 2021 Census, 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 (Maidstone & Malling after the boundary changes). Faversham and Mid Kent 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 has been - up to and including 2019 - 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 wards of Park Wood (2022), and Shepway North (2023) and South (2022), occasionally return 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. In 2023 the Liberal Democrats held Abbey, Priory and Watling (making up three quarters of Faversham town between them), the Greens again won Boughton & Courtenay and gained East Downs, and Labour held St Ann’s, the remaining (central) Faversham ward.
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 explosives 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 the 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 Maidstone 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.
This seat becomes a little more 'Faversham' and a little less 'Mid Kent' in the boundary changes. It loses around 10,000 voters in the rural Maidstone wards (Headcorn, Sutton Valence etc) to the new Weald of Kent seat and gains Teynham & Lynsted (4,800 electors) and West Downs (2,200) 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 and final proposals. In May 2023 the Tories held Teynham & Lynsted, which was rare in their worst results in Swale borough since 1999, while the Independents retained the smaller West Downs, as they have done for the last twenty years. The demographics became very slightly more downmarket, slipping 19 places down the rankings for professional and managerial workers, 17 down for educated to degree level, and 26 down for owner occupied housing.
Overall the notional majority may drop by about 1,500 but it would still need a swing of over 20% to Labour for Faversham & Mid Kent actually to be lost by the Conservatives. This seat may feel – and be – far from posh, and in another part of the country its characteristics might tend to vulnerability. Yet despite the fact that Labour did actually hold the constituency called Faversham continuously from 1945 to 1970 (admittedly covering much of the terrain of the present Sittingbourne & Sheppey) it is, like that seat, an example of a powerful secular trend away from Labour in this sub-region of Kent - perhaps mirroring the movement in the other direction of, say, Merseyside.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 20.7% 220/575
Owner occupied 71.5% 140/575
Private rented 12.8% 539/575
Social rented 15.7% 261/575
White 93.7% 223/575
Black 1.5% 270/575
Asian 2.2% 371/575
Managerial & professional 34.9% 226/575
Routine & Semi-routine 22.6% 317/575
Degree level 29.1% 371/575
No qualifications 18.7% 236/575
Students 4.7% 446/575
General Election 2019: Faversham and Mid Kent
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Helen Whately 31,864 63.2 +2.1
Labour Jenny Reeves 9,888 19.6 -6.5
Liberal Democrats Hannah Perkin 6,170 12.2 +5.7
Green Hannah Temple 2,103 4.2 +1.3
Independent Gary Butler 369 0.7 New
C Majority 21,976 43.6 +8.6
Turnout 50,394 68.7 -0.2
Conservative hold
Swing 4.3 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Faversham and Mid Kent consists of
88.2% of Faversham and Mid Kent
8.4% of Sittingbourne & Sheppey
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_319_Faversham%20and%20Mid%20Kent_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Result (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 30187 | 62.6% |
| Lab | 9569 | 19.9% |
| LD | 6011 | 12.5% |
| Grn | 1974 | 4.1% |
| Oths | 474 | 1.0% |
| Majority | 20618 | 42.8% |