Post by Robert Waller on Nov 19, 2023 23:45:34 GMT
This is based on an original profile by londonseal80, updated and expanded by myself, and including a section on boundary changes by Pete Whitehead
Sutton and Cheam is overall an affluent slice of outer South West London, covering the neighbourhoods of Sutton, Cheam and Worcester Park. Created in 1945, this is a constituency that has swung between the Conservative and the Liberals/Liberal Democrats. Initially a very safe Conservative seat with majorities consistently over 30%, this trajectory was broken in the 1972 by-election when the local MP Richard Sharples left to become the governor of Bermuda, and the Liberals pulled off a big shock here, with Graham Tope winning in one of Greater London’s safest Conservative seats through a focus on very local issues. After this amazing result they gained the 1973 GLC seat, which then in turn was followed by representation on the council a year later in the Con/Lab marginal wards around Sutton Town.
Since then Labour have had a consistently dreadful record in this seat with no councillors elected here in over 44 years, it is the longest continual absence of elected representation of Labour councillors in any seat in Greater London. The Tories regained the seat in the Feb 1974 election and in the Thatcher years it returned to having Tory majorities of over 30%, however within this time (May 1986) the Conservatives surprisingly lost control of the council (which in the Thames Television News 1982 Election Special four years earlier described both Sutton and Redbridge as the bluest of blue Tory boroughs, how times change) due to the rising Liberal/SDP alliance making substantial gains putting the council into no overall control for the first time. The Alliance (later Liberal Democrats) gained overall control six months later at a by-election in Clockhouse ward in the neighbouring Carshalton and Wallington seat and remained in control of the council ever since.
In 1997 this was one of five constituencies in the south west London yellow triangle that the Tories lost to the Liberal Democrats. The MP who won this seat was Paul Burstow who, along with his wife Mary Burstow, were at the time of the election councillors for the Rosehill ward. He was the MP here for 18 years until the current Conservative MP Paul Scully gained the seat from him, despite Burstow being a popular constituency MP. The following two elections Paul Burstow did not stand and the seat temporarily returned to seeming safe Conservative, with a Conservative majority of 8,352 in December 2019 even after a modest swing of 3.9% to the Liberal Democrats.
Sutton Town and Belmont
We now start with the actual Sutton Town currently divided into 4 wards Central, North, South, and West (Sutton West and East Cheam in 2022, finally recognising the name of the neighboured inhabited by Tony Hancock’ character in the 1950s and 1960s). Sutton Central covers the large shopping centre, two smallish council estates (Benhill and Chaucer), the Victorian terraces of working class housing around Sutton Bus Garage and then some residential areas in the south between Benhill Avenue, Carshalton Road and Ringstead Road which contain large expensive Georgian houses. It is the only ward in the seat where Labour have been remotely competitive and even that has been recent. Part of this ward has had Liberal councillors every election since 1974 and Central has returned full slates of Lib Dems since 1986. In 2022 Labour finished a decent second.
Sutton West was originally carved from the old Sutton Central and Sutton South (which is very different to the current one, covering the southern more upscale part of Sutton Town centre and some affluent roads around Cheam Road and Grove Road). It is also been consistently Liberal/Lib Dem since the 1980's, but in 2018 elected two Conservatives, the previous Tory here was elected in 1982. Sutton United’s football ground (Gander Green Lane) is within this ward and they currently play in Football League 2; the club rose to fame in 1989 after defeating Coventry City 2-1 in the FA Cup Third Round. They had another good FA Cup too in which beat Leeds United in a giant killing fourth round tie in 2007. They were promoted from the National League in 2021 but risk returning there if relegated in the 2023-24 season. In the renamed Sutton West & East Cheam ward in May 2022 the Liberal Democrats won all three seats, which probably involved notional gains from the Conservatives, as the local boundary changes though not massive did lose some strongly LD areas to Sutton Central ward.
Sutton North is another consistently yellow ward (since 1986 as Rosehill) with the exception of 2006 where a Conservative was elected, the ward covers the Sutton Garden Suburb conservation area which was built by Thomas Wall (founder of Walls Ice Cream and sausages), this a generally affluent ward overall and it is very highly owner occupied.
Sutton South is one of the most affluent wards which a high Remain vote, originally a very safe Conservative ward (successor to the pre-1978 Sutton South East ward) until 1994 where two Lib Dems were elected, and has remained a Con/LD marginal ever since though the latter had never won it outright until they did so in May 2022. Sutton North and South may now be trending in opposite directions, as in North there was a swing to the Tories in 2022 and they gained one council seat, their first representation there since 2006.
To the south west is Belmont ward which is even more affluent than Sutton South. It does have one pocket of deprivation: a large part of the Shanklin Estate, the most deprived area of this otherwise very low deprivation seat. Belmont ward also includes ‘Belmont village’ around Station Road, and the Sutton branch of the Royal Marsden cancer hospital. It approaches Banstead Downs and Oaks Park, and extends as far east as to encompass parts of Carshalton Beeches. The Conservatives have won Belmont ever since 2002, and held it by just over 300 votes in May 2022.
Cheam and Stonecot Hill
Cheam is covered by three wards, North Cheam the more of a middle of the road suburban area is covered by North Cheam (formerly part of Nonsuch) and Stonecot wards. These had Liberal Democrats for a long time but elected Conservatives in 2018. In May 2022 the Lib Dems regained Stonecot after a single term, but the Tories won the renamed North Cheam.
The posher Cheam Village is in the Cheam ward, which as the old Cheam South before the Liberal invasion of Sutton was among the safest of safe Conservative wards. Even in 1990s and 2000s the Cheam ward was pretty safe until 2010 perhaps through personal vote Mary Burstow topped the poll, not once but for two successive elections. The other two seats were Conservative, the unelected Conservative had the most votes of an unelected councillor whilst the other two Lib Dem councillors were miles behind. In 2018 it reverted back to three Conservatives being elected, Mary Burstow was a little way behind this time with the other two Lib Dem candidates well off the radar. The Cheam ward contains South Cheam which is Sutton borough's wealthiest area and includes the super wealthy roads of Golfside and Higher Drive, both next to Cuddington golf course. Not surprisingly Cheam proved to be the strongest Tory ward in May 2022, though in a borough and constituency with many marginal wards, even in Cheam they did not reach a 50% share of votes cast.
Worcester Park
Since 2022 the two wards in this community within Sutton borough (part is in Epsom & Ewell) have again been named Worcester Park North and South wards, the latter largely having replaced the former Nonsuch ward. Like most of Sutton this was originally very safe Conservative territory, it first elected Liberal councillors in 1986 and since then has been a Con/LD marginal, the Tories managed to gain all three councillors in 2006, and then in 2010 and 2014 representation was been split between Lib Dems and Conservative. In 2014 the Tories returned all six councillors within the two wards. The Lib Dem resilience in 2018, when they gained two in Worcester Park (North) could be put down to the ward being more a strong Remain area like Kingston upon Thames. But in May 2022 the Conservatives regained complete predominance in both North and South.
Alone of the London boroughs, Sutton is subject to no meaningful boundary changes, both seats surviving intact and with only a realignment with new ward boundaries which transfers about 200 voters net from Sutton & Cheam to Carshalton & Wallington.
A handful of voters move in the opposite direction and overall the effect will be to increase the Conservative majority in Carshalton & Wallington by a minuscule amount. Notional results for these seats would not be meaningful or worthwhile.
This area used to have quite a lot of residents who insisted it was in Surrey rather than Greater London, but it has many characteristics of being part of the capital. For example in the 2022 census figures the almost unaltered constituency had only 68% white residents. The highest concentration of Asians is 26% in Belmont & South Cheam MSOA (probably the wealthiest part of the borough as a whole), but it hovers around 20% in most sectors of this seat, including 21% in the less affluent Sutton North. The Black population is more focused, with 8.6% in Sutton Central being clearly the highest. Social rented housing is mainly in inner Sutton, with 21.7% in Sutton Central MSOA and 20% in Sutton South & Shanklin, with the Shanklin estate, which includes high and medium rise blocks, shared between South and Belmont wards. Private renting is highest also in these two areas but most of all in Sutton South West MSOA, around Mulgrave and Overton Roads chiefly in South ward. There is a high proportion of professional and managerial workers in all parts of the Sutton & Cheam seat. It is at its lowest in Stonecote MSOA, but it is still as high as 32% there. The same is true of educational qualifications, with the low end of the range being around 33% with degrees in both Stonecote and North Cheam East MSOAs, and the high being 52% in Belmont & South Cheam.
Overall Sutton & Cheam is ranked around 100th place out of the 575 in England and Wales for both professional and managerial workers and university education, high nationally but not particularly for Greater London. It may have been affected in the long term by the boost given to the Liberals by the 1972 byelection, but this has been sustained by the subsequent long term local government success, though the fact that Sutton was one of the five London Boroughs (all on the edge of the capital) to prefer Leave to remain in 2016 would have been a countervailing blow in favour of the Conservatives. In that sense the two Sutton seats are not similar to those in Richmond-upon-Thames and Kingston that are in the Liberal Democrats column now. But as the European issue faded somewhat, and the national Conservative government appeared so lastingly unpopular, another chapter in the parliamentary history of Sutton and Cheam started with the re-gain in July 2024 - though by the smallest margin of any in the renewed and slightly expanded (by Wimbledon) south west London triangle.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 16.0% 410/575
Owner occupied 66.2% 285/575
Private rented 24.7% 116/575
Social rented 9.2% 541/575
White 67.9% 477/575
Black 4.5% 145/575
Asian 19.2% 64/575
Managerial & professional 40.4% 103/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.5% 495/575
Degree level 42.1% 90/575
No qualifications 14.2% 456/575
Students 6.1% 233/575
General Election 2024: Sutton and Cheam
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Liberal Democrats Luke Taylor 17,576 36.9 +3.5
Conservative Tom Drummond 13,775 28.9 −21.1
Labour Chrishni Reshekaron 8,430 17.7 +3.4
Reform UK Ryan Powell 5,787 12.2 N/A
Green Aasha Anam 1,721 3.6 +1.3
Independent Hamilton Action-Man Kingsley 317 0.7 N/A
LD Majority 3,801 8.0 N/A
Turnout 47,606 66.0 −4.4
Registered electors 72,303
Liberal Democrats gain from Conservative
Swing 12.3 C to LD
General Election 2019: Sutton and Cheam
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Paul Scully 25,235 50.0 -1.1
Liberal Democrats Hina Bokhari 16,884 33.4 +6.7
Labour Bonnie Craven 7,200 14.3 -6.2
Green Claire Jackson-Prior 1,168 2.3 +0.6
C Majority 8,351 16.5 -7.8
Turnout 50,487 70.4 -3.4
Registered electors 71,760
Conservative hold
Swing 3.9 C to LD
Boundary Changes
Sutton and Cheam comprises
99.6% of Sutton and Cheam
0.2% of Carshalton & Wallington
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/london/London_175_Sutton%20and%20Cheam_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
As suggested by Pete Whitehead in the quote embedded in the profile above, Rallings & Thrasher have reproduced the 2019 general election results as their notional figures (as they have for Carshalton & Wallington)
Sutton and Cheam is overall an affluent slice of outer South West London, covering the neighbourhoods of Sutton, Cheam and Worcester Park. Created in 1945, this is a constituency that has swung between the Conservative and the Liberals/Liberal Democrats. Initially a very safe Conservative seat with majorities consistently over 30%, this trajectory was broken in the 1972 by-election when the local MP Richard Sharples left to become the governor of Bermuda, and the Liberals pulled off a big shock here, with Graham Tope winning in one of Greater London’s safest Conservative seats through a focus on very local issues. After this amazing result they gained the 1973 GLC seat, which then in turn was followed by representation on the council a year later in the Con/Lab marginal wards around Sutton Town.
Since then Labour have had a consistently dreadful record in this seat with no councillors elected here in over 44 years, it is the longest continual absence of elected representation of Labour councillors in any seat in Greater London. The Tories regained the seat in the Feb 1974 election and in the Thatcher years it returned to having Tory majorities of over 30%, however within this time (May 1986) the Conservatives surprisingly lost control of the council (which in the Thames Television News 1982 Election Special four years earlier described both Sutton and Redbridge as the bluest of blue Tory boroughs, how times change) due to the rising Liberal/SDP alliance making substantial gains putting the council into no overall control for the first time. The Alliance (later Liberal Democrats) gained overall control six months later at a by-election in Clockhouse ward in the neighbouring Carshalton and Wallington seat and remained in control of the council ever since.
In 1997 this was one of five constituencies in the south west London yellow triangle that the Tories lost to the Liberal Democrats. The MP who won this seat was Paul Burstow who, along with his wife Mary Burstow, were at the time of the election councillors for the Rosehill ward. He was the MP here for 18 years until the current Conservative MP Paul Scully gained the seat from him, despite Burstow being a popular constituency MP. The following two elections Paul Burstow did not stand and the seat temporarily returned to seeming safe Conservative, with a Conservative majority of 8,352 in December 2019 even after a modest swing of 3.9% to the Liberal Democrats.
Sutton Town and Belmont
We now start with the actual Sutton Town currently divided into 4 wards Central, North, South, and West (Sutton West and East Cheam in 2022, finally recognising the name of the neighboured inhabited by Tony Hancock’ character in the 1950s and 1960s). Sutton Central covers the large shopping centre, two smallish council estates (Benhill and Chaucer), the Victorian terraces of working class housing around Sutton Bus Garage and then some residential areas in the south between Benhill Avenue, Carshalton Road and Ringstead Road which contain large expensive Georgian houses. It is the only ward in the seat where Labour have been remotely competitive and even that has been recent. Part of this ward has had Liberal councillors every election since 1974 and Central has returned full slates of Lib Dems since 1986. In 2022 Labour finished a decent second.
Sutton West was originally carved from the old Sutton Central and Sutton South (which is very different to the current one, covering the southern more upscale part of Sutton Town centre and some affluent roads around Cheam Road and Grove Road). It is also been consistently Liberal/Lib Dem since the 1980's, but in 2018 elected two Conservatives, the previous Tory here was elected in 1982. Sutton United’s football ground (Gander Green Lane) is within this ward and they currently play in Football League 2; the club rose to fame in 1989 after defeating Coventry City 2-1 in the FA Cup Third Round. They had another good FA Cup too in which beat Leeds United in a giant killing fourth round tie in 2007. They were promoted from the National League in 2021 but risk returning there if relegated in the 2023-24 season. In the renamed Sutton West & East Cheam ward in May 2022 the Liberal Democrats won all three seats, which probably involved notional gains from the Conservatives, as the local boundary changes though not massive did lose some strongly LD areas to Sutton Central ward.
Sutton North is another consistently yellow ward (since 1986 as Rosehill) with the exception of 2006 where a Conservative was elected, the ward covers the Sutton Garden Suburb conservation area which was built by Thomas Wall (founder of Walls Ice Cream and sausages), this a generally affluent ward overall and it is very highly owner occupied.
Sutton South is one of the most affluent wards which a high Remain vote, originally a very safe Conservative ward (successor to the pre-1978 Sutton South East ward) until 1994 where two Lib Dems were elected, and has remained a Con/LD marginal ever since though the latter had never won it outright until they did so in May 2022. Sutton North and South may now be trending in opposite directions, as in North there was a swing to the Tories in 2022 and they gained one council seat, their first representation there since 2006.
To the south west is Belmont ward which is even more affluent than Sutton South. It does have one pocket of deprivation: a large part of the Shanklin Estate, the most deprived area of this otherwise very low deprivation seat. Belmont ward also includes ‘Belmont village’ around Station Road, and the Sutton branch of the Royal Marsden cancer hospital. It approaches Banstead Downs and Oaks Park, and extends as far east as to encompass parts of Carshalton Beeches. The Conservatives have won Belmont ever since 2002, and held it by just over 300 votes in May 2022.
Cheam and Stonecot Hill
Cheam is covered by three wards, North Cheam the more of a middle of the road suburban area is covered by North Cheam (formerly part of Nonsuch) and Stonecot wards. These had Liberal Democrats for a long time but elected Conservatives in 2018. In May 2022 the Lib Dems regained Stonecot after a single term, but the Tories won the renamed North Cheam.
The posher Cheam Village is in the Cheam ward, which as the old Cheam South before the Liberal invasion of Sutton was among the safest of safe Conservative wards. Even in 1990s and 2000s the Cheam ward was pretty safe until 2010 perhaps through personal vote Mary Burstow topped the poll, not once but for two successive elections. The other two seats were Conservative, the unelected Conservative had the most votes of an unelected councillor whilst the other two Lib Dem councillors were miles behind. In 2018 it reverted back to three Conservatives being elected, Mary Burstow was a little way behind this time with the other two Lib Dem candidates well off the radar. The Cheam ward contains South Cheam which is Sutton borough's wealthiest area and includes the super wealthy roads of Golfside and Higher Drive, both next to Cuddington golf course. Not surprisingly Cheam proved to be the strongest Tory ward in May 2022, though in a borough and constituency with many marginal wards, even in Cheam they did not reach a 50% share of votes cast.
Worcester Park
Since 2022 the two wards in this community within Sutton borough (part is in Epsom & Ewell) have again been named Worcester Park North and South wards, the latter largely having replaced the former Nonsuch ward. Like most of Sutton this was originally very safe Conservative territory, it first elected Liberal councillors in 1986 and since then has been a Con/LD marginal, the Tories managed to gain all three councillors in 2006, and then in 2010 and 2014 representation was been split between Lib Dems and Conservative. In 2014 the Tories returned all six councillors within the two wards. The Lib Dem resilience in 2018, when they gained two in Worcester Park (North) could be put down to the ward being more a strong Remain area like Kingston upon Thames. But in May 2022 the Conservatives regained complete predominance in both North and South.
A handful of voters move in the opposite direction and overall the effect will be to increase the Conservative majority in Carshalton & Wallington by a minuscule amount. Notional results for these seats would not be meaningful or worthwhile.
This area used to have quite a lot of residents who insisted it was in Surrey rather than Greater London, but it has many characteristics of being part of the capital. For example in the 2022 census figures the almost unaltered constituency had only 68% white residents. The highest concentration of Asians is 26% in Belmont & South Cheam MSOA (probably the wealthiest part of the borough as a whole), but it hovers around 20% in most sectors of this seat, including 21% in the less affluent Sutton North. The Black population is more focused, with 8.6% in Sutton Central being clearly the highest. Social rented housing is mainly in inner Sutton, with 21.7% in Sutton Central MSOA and 20% in Sutton South & Shanklin, with the Shanklin estate, which includes high and medium rise blocks, shared between South and Belmont wards. Private renting is highest also in these two areas but most of all in Sutton South West MSOA, around Mulgrave and Overton Roads chiefly in South ward. There is a high proportion of professional and managerial workers in all parts of the Sutton & Cheam seat. It is at its lowest in Stonecote MSOA, but it is still as high as 32% there. The same is true of educational qualifications, with the low end of the range being around 33% with degrees in both Stonecote and North Cheam East MSOAs, and the high being 52% in Belmont & South Cheam.
Overall Sutton & Cheam is ranked around 100th place out of the 575 in England and Wales for both professional and managerial workers and university education, high nationally but not particularly for Greater London. It may have been affected in the long term by the boost given to the Liberals by the 1972 byelection, but this has been sustained by the subsequent long term local government success, though the fact that Sutton was one of the five London Boroughs (all on the edge of the capital) to prefer Leave to remain in 2016 would have been a countervailing blow in favour of the Conservatives. In that sense the two Sutton seats are not similar to those in Richmond-upon-Thames and Kingston that are in the Liberal Democrats column now. But as the European issue faded somewhat, and the national Conservative government appeared so lastingly unpopular, another chapter in the parliamentary history of Sutton and Cheam started with the re-gain in July 2024 - though by the smallest margin of any in the renewed and slightly expanded (by Wimbledon) south west London triangle.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 16.0% 410/575
Owner occupied 66.2% 285/575
Private rented 24.7% 116/575
Social rented 9.2% 541/575
White 67.9% 477/575
Black 4.5% 145/575
Asian 19.2% 64/575
Managerial & professional 40.4% 103/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.5% 495/575
Degree level 42.1% 90/575
No qualifications 14.2% 456/575
Students 6.1% 233/575
General Election 2024: Sutton and Cheam
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Liberal Democrats Luke Taylor 17,576 36.9 +3.5
Conservative Tom Drummond 13,775 28.9 −21.1
Labour Chrishni Reshekaron 8,430 17.7 +3.4
Reform UK Ryan Powell 5,787 12.2 N/A
Green Aasha Anam 1,721 3.6 +1.3
Independent Hamilton Action-Man Kingsley 317 0.7 N/A
LD Majority 3,801 8.0 N/A
Turnout 47,606 66.0 −4.4
Registered electors 72,303
Liberal Democrats gain from Conservative
Swing 12.3 C to LD
General Election 2019: Sutton and Cheam
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Paul Scully 25,235 50.0 -1.1
Liberal Democrats Hina Bokhari 16,884 33.4 +6.7
Labour Bonnie Craven 7,200 14.3 -6.2
Green Claire Jackson-Prior 1,168 2.3 +0.6
C Majority 8,351 16.5 -7.8
Turnout 50,487 70.4 -3.4
Registered electors 71,760
Conservative hold
Swing 3.9 C to LD
Boundary Changes
Sutton and Cheam comprises
99.6% of Sutton and Cheam
0.2% of Carshalton & Wallington
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/london/London_175_Sutton%20and%20Cheam_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
As suggested by Pete Whitehead in the quote embedded in the profile above, Rallings & Thrasher have reproduced the 2019 general election results as their notional figures (as they have for Carshalton & Wallington)
