Post by Robert Waller on Nov 13, 2023 22:52:15 GMT
This profile is based on one originally written by yellowperil for the pre-boundary change board, and he is the 'first person' in the text below, but I have to admit that I (Robert Waller) have taken the decision not to include, and re-write, more sections than in other constituencies he started; but this is itself informative as it was solely because the political preferences of the Worthing wards have changed so much since Yellow Peril wrote in May 2020. As that implies, the political scene here is one of the most rapidly changing anywhere in the United Kingdom.
Worthing West is a constituency formed in 1997 and comprising about the western and central parts the fairly compact seaside resort of Worthing, about two thirds of the whole town and making up 9 Worthing wards, plus wards of the neighbouring district of Arun, which form the largely built up coastal strip between Worthing and the next significant resort to the west, Littlehampton. Those four Arun wards up to 2019 were the two in Rustington, plus Ferring and East Preston. The four easternmost wards of Worthing borough are in East Worthing and Shoreham constituency. The irony is that Worthing borough on its own would be just about the right size for a parliamentary constituency.
Worthing is quite a sizeable seaside resort - of the Sussex resorts only the city of Brighton & Hove is significantly larger, while Eastbourne and Hastings/St Leonards are comparable, and Bognor Regis, Littlehampton and Bexhill are all smaller. It always seems to me though that Worthing is the Sussex resort of all of those least able to show a distinctive character of its own and to have more a sort of generic south coast resort character, with a little bit of all the others. Maybe that is why it’s very ordinariness is why it was picked by Oscar Wilde for its particular mention in the Importance of Being Earnest. This is not to say Worthing is not a nice place- it is a very pleasant and agreeable seaside resort with much going for it, but it does feel like a bit of an amalgam of everywhere else. (I put these comments in to see if others feel the same- they could well come out in any final version!)
One aspect of this of some interest on here is the thought that Worthing is best placed to be "the next Brighton and Hove", not least politically, and that it well head leftwards towards Labour and/or the Greens.
One local issue will certainly relate to roads, particularly the problem of the A27. Further east this main east-west artery has been dualled and that means it runs over some of the South Downs though part of that has been tunnelled. Within Worthing borough the road is largely unimproved, including one section where it also doubles up as the main A24 road from London. There is very little room for road improvements between the built up area of Worthing and the South Downs national park immediately to the north. I frequently drive the A27 (I confess) and have been assailed for years by signs yelling ByPass Now at me. There are complex social, political and environmental issues to be resolved here.
In terms of the European question, by and large the constituency more resembles the other smaller Sussex coastal areas in being in the leave camp, and in contrast to Brighton and Hove, though not as much as other parts – and its character and hence view may have changed since 2016. Worthing borough voted 53% leave compared with Hastings 55%, or Eastbourne 57%, or Arun 62.5%, but still in sharp contrast to Brighton & Hove 's 31.4%.
Pete Whitehead writes: The initial boundary review proposals in the Worthing area gave some hope to Labour supporters as most of the town was reunited in a single seat. Crucially a couple of wards in the more Conservative inland area of the town was excluded and the more marginal Sompting area added from Adur. The remainder of Shoreham would annexe a large rural area to the North, rendering that seat safe but this Worthing would have been marginal. The revised proposals reverse all this as Worthing East & Shoreham is retained unchanged and Worthing West incurs only minor changes. 11,000 voters in Rustington are removed and 8,000 in Angmering & Findon are added. Both areas are strongly Conservative but Angmering provides a smaller counterbalance to the growing Labour support in Worthing itself. Perhaps Labour should be content with this arrangement as they can plausibly win two seats in the Worthing area, their support no longer so limited that it needs concentrating in a single seat.
Boundary changes are not the main reason why in the ten years between the 2011 and 2021 censuses the seat named Worthing West moved somewhat in directions which may help Labour. For a start it slipped down the list of seats with the most residents aged over 65, from a position in the top ten at no.8, down to 44th. The percentage did not actually drop; but it did stay static and so did not keep up at all with the general ageing process of the electorate observed round the nation as a whole. This is because there was a significant influx of younger residents, perhaps seeking more affordable properties (to rent as well as to buy) than, say, along the coast to the east in Brighton and Hove. Worthing West is also unusual in that its professional and managerial percentage didn’t rise much between 2011 and 2021, although its proportion holding educational degrees did, which is partly a function of the age profile not changing much.
However the most striking development has been the advance of the Labour party in local elections. In May 2023, of the nine Worthing borough council wards included within the West constituency, the Tories won just one of them, the inland Salvington in the north west of the town and there the Labour share increased by 21.4% from 2019-23, rising from under 14% to over 35%. Of the others, Labour won five – Central, Marine and Heene on the coast, and Tarring and Castle just behind the seafront. All of these except Heene and Central were gains in 2023, though it was not a one-off advance – they had won all of them in May 2022 as well. One ward, Goring on the coast at the west end of the borough, gave the Green party a foothold on the council in a gain from the Conservatives. Finally, two of the wards had no elections in 2023. One had been held by the Tories in 2022 (Durrington) but the other Northbrook) had been a first ever gain for Labour. From no representation on the council at all from 1976 through 2016 (they won one in 1973, in Broadwater now in the East constituency) Labour rise to 5 in 2018, 10 in 2019, 15 after the covid hiatus in 2021, 19 and control in 2022 and 24 out of a total of 39 in May 2023.
This must suggest the potential for parliamentary gains too, for the very first time in this part of the world. It is true that of the three Arun wards now to be included in Worthing West in time for the next general election, the Conservatives did top the poll in all three (East Preston, Ferring and Angmering & Findon, returning seven of the eight councillors, missing only the third place in the last named, which fell to the Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless, in Adam Gray’s addition of the May 2023 votes within Worthing West, Labour was still in the lead, with 35% to 33% for the Conservatives.
Looking at the details of the 2021 census, the first thing to note is that the older age profiles are not to be found in the Worthing town coastline, but rather inland at High Salvington & Findon Valley (a valley in the South Downs) at 36.5% over 65 years, and to the west in Goring-by-Sea (35%) and most of all in the Arun sections of Ferring & Kingston Gorse (46%) and most of all East Preston & Rustington East (53%) only part of which is in this seat now. Heene and West Worthing area around the constituency average of 27%, while inland in Northbrook it plummets to scarcely over 12%. Therefore in general Labour have been winning the younger and average age neighbourhoods in local elections in recent years.
There are few occupational class extremes in the Worthing West constituency, only partly because of the number of retirees; the professional and managerial figure reaches 40% in Salvington and Findon well inland, and Goring in the coast; the routine and semi routine percentage gets as high the high 20s% in Durrington and Northbrook. There is very little social housing in Worthing – only 10% overall and with concentrations only in Northbrook (24%) and Durrington North (19%) MSOAs. However there is a substantial and growing, private rented sector, particularly in parts of central Worthing such as Heene within this seat (now 39%) and Worthing Central itself (48%). This factor probably is one of those helping Labour, though it also depresses turnout, not least because of the high residential turnover making the electoral register outdated.
Labour are excited about their prospects in the greater Worthing area – it is one of the sub-regions that has been swinging most strongly to them in local elections in the early 2020s. The MP for this constituency since its creation has been Sir Peter Bottomley. As he has now been an MP continuously since first elected in 1975, he has now taken up the prestigious and venerable role as Father of the House, and can now think at long last he is past the time when his main claim to fame was as Virginia's husband. If Labour should manage the swing if approximately 14% needed to gain Worthing West on its new lines in 2024 (or technically possibly even 2025), it would end a career of very nearly 50 years in the Commons, and would be a highly unusual type of ‘Portillo moment’.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 26.6% 44/575
Owner occupied 69.9% 178/575
Private rented 20.0% 202/575
Social rented 10.0% 517/575
White 92.6% 249/575
Black 1.0% 321/575
Asian 3.1% 331/575
Managerial & professional 36.1% 195/575
Routine & Semi-routine 21.5% 364/575
Degree level 30.8% 319/575
No qualifications 17.0% 334/575
Students 4.5% 509/575
General Election 2019: Worthing West
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Peter Bottomley 30,475 55.8 +0.4
Labour Rebecca Cooper 15,652 28.6 -4.6
Liberal Democrats Jamie Bennett 6,024 11.0 +5.5
Green Joanne Paul 2,008 3.7 +0.7
Independent David Aherne 489 0.9 New
C Majority 14,823 27.2 +5.0
2019 electorate 78,587
Turnout 54,648 69.5 -0.7
Conservative hold
Swing 2.5 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Worthing West consists of
85.7% of Worthing West
10.8% of East Worthing and Shoreham
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_373_Worthing%20West_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Result (Rallings & Thrasher)
Worthing West is a constituency formed in 1997 and comprising about the western and central parts the fairly compact seaside resort of Worthing, about two thirds of the whole town and making up 9 Worthing wards, plus wards of the neighbouring district of Arun, which form the largely built up coastal strip between Worthing and the next significant resort to the west, Littlehampton. Those four Arun wards up to 2019 were the two in Rustington, plus Ferring and East Preston. The four easternmost wards of Worthing borough are in East Worthing and Shoreham constituency. The irony is that Worthing borough on its own would be just about the right size for a parliamentary constituency.
Worthing is quite a sizeable seaside resort - of the Sussex resorts only the city of Brighton & Hove is significantly larger, while Eastbourne and Hastings/St Leonards are comparable, and Bognor Regis, Littlehampton and Bexhill are all smaller. It always seems to me though that Worthing is the Sussex resort of all of those least able to show a distinctive character of its own and to have more a sort of generic south coast resort character, with a little bit of all the others. Maybe that is why it’s very ordinariness is why it was picked by Oscar Wilde for its particular mention in the Importance of Being Earnest. This is not to say Worthing is not a nice place- it is a very pleasant and agreeable seaside resort with much going for it, but it does feel like a bit of an amalgam of everywhere else. (I put these comments in to see if others feel the same- they could well come out in any final version!)
One aspect of this of some interest on here is the thought that Worthing is best placed to be "the next Brighton and Hove", not least politically, and that it well head leftwards towards Labour and/or the Greens.
One local issue will certainly relate to roads, particularly the problem of the A27. Further east this main east-west artery has been dualled and that means it runs over some of the South Downs though part of that has been tunnelled. Within Worthing borough the road is largely unimproved, including one section where it also doubles up as the main A24 road from London. There is very little room for road improvements between the built up area of Worthing and the South Downs national park immediately to the north. I frequently drive the A27 (I confess) and have been assailed for years by signs yelling ByPass Now at me. There are complex social, political and environmental issues to be resolved here.
In terms of the European question, by and large the constituency more resembles the other smaller Sussex coastal areas in being in the leave camp, and in contrast to Brighton and Hove, though not as much as other parts – and its character and hence view may have changed since 2016. Worthing borough voted 53% leave compared with Hastings 55%, or Eastbourne 57%, or Arun 62.5%, but still in sharp contrast to Brighton & Hove 's 31.4%.
Pete Whitehead writes: The initial boundary review proposals in the Worthing area gave some hope to Labour supporters as most of the town was reunited in a single seat. Crucially a couple of wards in the more Conservative inland area of the town was excluded and the more marginal Sompting area added from Adur. The remainder of Shoreham would annexe a large rural area to the North, rendering that seat safe but this Worthing would have been marginal. The revised proposals reverse all this as Worthing East & Shoreham is retained unchanged and Worthing West incurs only minor changes. 11,000 voters in Rustington are removed and 8,000 in Angmering & Findon are added. Both areas are strongly Conservative but Angmering provides a smaller counterbalance to the growing Labour support in Worthing itself. Perhaps Labour should be content with this arrangement as they can plausibly win two seats in the Worthing area, their support no longer so limited that it needs concentrating in a single seat.
Boundary changes are not the main reason why in the ten years between the 2011 and 2021 censuses the seat named Worthing West moved somewhat in directions which may help Labour. For a start it slipped down the list of seats with the most residents aged over 65, from a position in the top ten at no.8, down to 44th. The percentage did not actually drop; but it did stay static and so did not keep up at all with the general ageing process of the electorate observed round the nation as a whole. This is because there was a significant influx of younger residents, perhaps seeking more affordable properties (to rent as well as to buy) than, say, along the coast to the east in Brighton and Hove. Worthing West is also unusual in that its professional and managerial percentage didn’t rise much between 2011 and 2021, although its proportion holding educational degrees did, which is partly a function of the age profile not changing much.
However the most striking development has been the advance of the Labour party in local elections. In May 2023, of the nine Worthing borough council wards included within the West constituency, the Tories won just one of them, the inland Salvington in the north west of the town and there the Labour share increased by 21.4% from 2019-23, rising from under 14% to over 35%. Of the others, Labour won five – Central, Marine and Heene on the coast, and Tarring and Castle just behind the seafront. All of these except Heene and Central were gains in 2023, though it was not a one-off advance – they had won all of them in May 2022 as well. One ward, Goring on the coast at the west end of the borough, gave the Green party a foothold on the council in a gain from the Conservatives. Finally, two of the wards had no elections in 2023. One had been held by the Tories in 2022 (Durrington) but the other Northbrook) had been a first ever gain for Labour. From no representation on the council at all from 1976 through 2016 (they won one in 1973, in Broadwater now in the East constituency) Labour rise to 5 in 2018, 10 in 2019, 15 after the covid hiatus in 2021, 19 and control in 2022 and 24 out of a total of 39 in May 2023.
This must suggest the potential for parliamentary gains too, for the very first time in this part of the world. It is true that of the three Arun wards now to be included in Worthing West in time for the next general election, the Conservatives did top the poll in all three (East Preston, Ferring and Angmering & Findon, returning seven of the eight councillors, missing only the third place in the last named, which fell to the Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless, in Adam Gray’s addition of the May 2023 votes within Worthing West, Labour was still in the lead, with 35% to 33% for the Conservatives.
Looking at the details of the 2021 census, the first thing to note is that the older age profiles are not to be found in the Worthing town coastline, but rather inland at High Salvington & Findon Valley (a valley in the South Downs) at 36.5% over 65 years, and to the west in Goring-by-Sea (35%) and most of all in the Arun sections of Ferring & Kingston Gorse (46%) and most of all East Preston & Rustington East (53%) only part of which is in this seat now. Heene and West Worthing area around the constituency average of 27%, while inland in Northbrook it plummets to scarcely over 12%. Therefore in general Labour have been winning the younger and average age neighbourhoods in local elections in recent years.
There are few occupational class extremes in the Worthing West constituency, only partly because of the number of retirees; the professional and managerial figure reaches 40% in Salvington and Findon well inland, and Goring in the coast; the routine and semi routine percentage gets as high the high 20s% in Durrington and Northbrook. There is very little social housing in Worthing – only 10% overall and with concentrations only in Northbrook (24%) and Durrington North (19%) MSOAs. However there is a substantial and growing, private rented sector, particularly in parts of central Worthing such as Heene within this seat (now 39%) and Worthing Central itself (48%). This factor probably is one of those helping Labour, though it also depresses turnout, not least because of the high residential turnover making the electoral register outdated.
Labour are excited about their prospects in the greater Worthing area – it is one of the sub-regions that has been swinging most strongly to them in local elections in the early 2020s. The MP for this constituency since its creation has been Sir Peter Bottomley. As he has now been an MP continuously since first elected in 1975, he has now taken up the prestigious and venerable role as Father of the House, and can now think at long last he is past the time when his main claim to fame was as Virginia's husband. If Labour should manage the swing if approximately 14% needed to gain Worthing West on its new lines in 2024 (or technically possibly even 2025), it would end a career of very nearly 50 years in the Commons, and would be a highly unusual type of ‘Portillo moment’.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 26.6% 44/575
Owner occupied 69.9% 178/575
Private rented 20.0% 202/575
Social rented 10.0% 517/575
White 92.6% 249/575
Black 1.0% 321/575
Asian 3.1% 331/575
Managerial & professional 36.1% 195/575
Routine & Semi-routine 21.5% 364/575
Degree level 30.8% 319/575
No qualifications 17.0% 334/575
Students 4.5% 509/575
General Election 2019: Worthing West
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Peter Bottomley 30,475 55.8 +0.4
Labour Rebecca Cooper 15,652 28.6 -4.6
Liberal Democrats Jamie Bennett 6,024 11.0 +5.5
Green Joanne Paul 2,008 3.7 +0.7
Independent David Aherne 489 0.9 New
C Majority 14,823 27.2 +5.0
2019 electorate 78,587
Turnout 54,648 69.5 -0.7
Conservative hold
Swing 2.5 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Worthing West consists of
85.7% of Worthing West
10.8% of East Worthing and Shoreham
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_373_Worthing%20West_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Result (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 29443 | 56.0% |
| Lab | 15521 | 29.5% |
| LD | 5213 | 9.9% |
| Grn | 1904 | 3.6% |
| Oth | 489 | 0.9% |
| Majority | 13912 | 26.5% |
I actually canvassed in High Salvington this year with my pal Sue. It is indeed elderly & very prosperous with large detached houses. I found it hard to believe that Labour was in the running in that ward (though the lower parts of Salvington at the bottom of the hill would account for more of the Labour vote). We didn't quite pull it off but it's no longer a no-go ward for Labour. Labour are indeed fairly relaxed at the revised boundary changes, believing that East Worthing & Shoreham is a probable Labour win now and that Worthing West is feasible, although obviously not easy.