Post by Robert Waller on Jan 10, 2024 23:06:53 GMT
Credits: original profile greenhert. Added information on Stowmarket industry @carlton 43. Paragraph on boundary changes and 2019 notional calculations Pete Whitehead. 2021 Census figures for new seat bjornhattan. Cumulative local election percentages for May 2023 Adam Gray. Assembly, updated and additional information, including speculations in final paragraph, myself
Bury St Edmunds has existed as a parliamentary constituency since 1614, but its boundaries have varied widely over the intervening 410 years. From 1614 to 1885 it was represented by two MPs instead of one. It experienced a major boundary change in 1997 when it lost the Forest Heath district to a new West Suffolk constituency whilst taking in Stowmarket, Needham Market, and the surrounding villages from the Central Suffolk constituency (which subsequently became Central Suffolk & North Ipswich). It covers the Bury St Edmunds part of the West Suffolk district, formed from a merger of the Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury districts, and the western half of the Mid Suffolk district.
The boundary review enacted as a result of the Commission’s report of 2023 makes a number of changes here without having much partisan impact. Needham Market and Ringshall in the far east of the seat are moved to Central Suffolk while a large rural area to the north of Stowmarket is donated to the new Waveney Valley seat. Horringer and Wheltenham, to the South of Bury, are moved to West Suffolk but in exchange around 8,000 voters are added from that seat in the area north of Bury. The name of Stowmarket, the second largest town, is added to the seat’s title. Although the changes increase the influence of the two towns in this seat, this does not reduce the 2019 Conservative notional majority as the area being added is extremely Conservative whereas the rural area lost to Waveney Valley is much less so - this area (Stowmarket, Haughley etc) has become a Green stronghold at the local level and historically harboured quite a large Labour vote. The departed Needham Market meanwhile has been something of a LD stronghold.
The current incarnation of Bury St Edmunds up to and including the last general election comprises the town of Bury St Edmunds itself, named after the last king of the East Angles, the town of Stowmarket, and picturesque East Anglian villages such as Woolpit. The eponymous town of Bury St Edmunds is clearly the largest town in the constituency (2021 census population 41,000), and being the seat of a diocese with a cathedral to boot is the closest thing Suffolk has to a city. It is also home to the only surviving Regency Theatre, the Theatre Royal, which despite being owned by the Greene King brewery is operated by the National Trust. Greene King, headquartered in Bury St Edmunds, is the largest British-owned brewery in the UK and owns thousands of pubs across the country; another major employer is British Sugar which also powers 110,000 homes nearby using sugar cane for fuel.
The second largest town in this constituency is Stowmarket, once home to a gun cotton factory which exploded disastrously in 1871, and home to the Museum of East Anglian Life. It is far from being a rural backwater. It has excellent railway links for a town of only 21,500 people, with lines terminating as far afield as Norwich, London, Cambridge, and Ipswich. Three important industries in Stowmarket are agricultural implements made by Atco-Qualcast Bosch whose Suffolk Works is on Gipping Lane and is one of the largest lawnmower factories in Europe; maltings and maltsters, for example Muntons on the B1113 to the south east of the town (which survived a major fire in January 2024),
www.eadt.co.uk/news/24029472.overnight-fire-muntons-factory-stowmarket-suffolk/
making Stowmarket known for the largest production of malted products for food and beer and by far the largest production of home brew beer kits in Britain; and also the large and innovative AkzoNobel paint factory making much of the domestic DIY paint (for example Dulux white and off-white) and products for industry coatings, which is also on the Needham Road leading out of Stowmarket.
Demographically it is a relatively average constituency, with Bury St Edmunds being considerably more affluent than Stowmarket, with consequently higher education levels. For example Stowmarket West MSOA had 25.6% with no qualifications in the details of the 2021 census, a level only approached in the Howard Estate & Northgate section of Bury St Edmunds (25.4%). The Howard estate was notable as a destination for ‘London overspill’ in the 1960s, but many ex-council houses there have now been sold off, and there is a feeling that Bury as a whole has been moving up-market.
www.eadt.co.uk/news/21527388.bury-st-edmunds-victim-success-fears-younger-generation-forced-high-house-prices/
Meanwhile, the proportion with degrees reached 40% in Bury Central, 38% its eastern Moreton Hall MSOA, and 36% in Eastgate & Southgate. Moreton Hall itself was built to a Robert Adam design in 1773, but the private housing estate has been developed in stages since the 1980s, with another huge (Taylor-Wimpey) boost in the 2010s. In 2009 it was claimed to have the greatest longevity of anywhere in England
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214300/Moreton-Hall-The-town-live-26-years-longer.html
though quite how that was established is unclear. Similarly these three census middle layer areas all hovered around the 40% mark for those in professional and managerial occupations, whereas Stowmarket West had 30% in routine and semi-routine jobs. Stowmarket East was close to the constituency average in terms of socio-economic class, which is slightly more up-market than the national norm. All these findings are consonant with those for housing tenure. Overall the constituency is very close to conforming with the national picture in this regard - for example it ranks 285th out of 575 in England and Wales for both social rented and private rented housing – but the main concentrations of social rented are in Bury St Edmunds’ north western quadrant (Howard Estate & Northgate MSOA, at 40.2%), Stowmarket West (31.3%) and Bury West (18.1%).
Most other figures are also close to average, but the population is ageing noticeably: overall on new boundaries over 23% are over 65, with a peak of 32% in Bury St Edmunds Eastgate & Northgate, and significantly lower only in two other parts of that town: the ‘council estate’ Howard Estate & Northgate (17%) and the newish private estates of Moreton Hall, even more full of families and with only 14.5% aged over 65. The constituency’s Brexit vote was surprisingly in line with the rest of the country, with Bury St Edmunds having voted Remain, and Stowmarket and surrounding villages having decisively voted Leave, which fits in with the class and educational pattern.
Bury St Edmunds constituency has been consistently Conservative since 1885 when its representation was reduced to one MP; when it had two MPs it was frequently fought over by two noble families: the FitzRoys (holders of the title Earl of Euston) on the Whig/Liberal side, and the Herveys (holders of the title Marquess of Bristol; this was long before their infamous decline in the late 20th century) on the Tory/Conservative side. One of its most notable MPs was Walter Guinness, who helped bring British Sugar to the constituency and was the son of Guinness brewery founder Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh; before 1964 almost all MPs for Bury St Edmunds were sons/nephews of MPs or peers. It has usually been a very safe Conservative seat, although in 1997 the Labour candidate, Mark Ereira-Guyer, missed out on becoming Bury St Edmunds' first ever Labour MP by just 368 votes to the Conservatives' David Ruffley, with Richard Spring (now Baron Spring) having moved to the new West Suffolk constituency. Mr Ereira-Guyer later became a Green Party councillor and was their candidate in 2010, achieving one of the better Green Party results that year. Labour have since fallen far behind, and it reverted to being a safe Conservative seat. Mr Ruffley stood down in 2015 following being cautioned over the assault of his former partner, whereupon the seat's current Conservative MP, Jo Churchill (not related to the famous Spencer-Churchill dynasty) succeeded him.
The former St Edmundsbury part of the constituency has mostly Conservative locally, with a Tory overall majority on the council from 1999 through the final elections there in 2015. They also controlled the new West Suffolk authority from 2019 to 2023. However in the most recent contests in May 2023, the Tories lost 11 council seats, while Labour gained 12 and the Liberal Democrats one. With one Green (in Abbeygate, Bury St Edmunds) and 19 Independents also being elected, that council passed firmly to no overall control. Some of the Labour wins in West Suffolk were outside the lines of this constituency, for example in Haverhill and Newmarket, but they also returned seven in Bury St Edmunds, in Tollgate, Eastgate, Minden, St Olave’s and even Moreton Hall, five of these being gains in 2023.
The Mid Suffolk part of the constituency has a very different electoral pattern in municipal elections. There have been Green councillors since 2003 which by 2019 now stood at 11, mainly in the villages surrounding Stowmarket but also in Stowmarket itself. Labour, who once had a strong base in Stowmarket, no longer has any councillors in Mid Suffolk at all and in this council area rarely contests elections outside Stowmarket. In the all-out May 2023 contest the Greens easily gained overall control of the Mid Suffolk council, with 24 elected compared with 6 Conservatives, 4 Liberal Democrats – and no others. Within the part of Mid Suffolk included in Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket constituency, it was not quite a clean sweep for the Greens, but they only very occasionally missed out on representation completely, for example in the rural Rattlesden, which has been solidly Lib Dem since 1991. In the Combs Ford ward of south west Stowmarket the LDs and Green shared the two available council spots. Almost everywhere else the Greens triumphed, although the Green parliamentary candidate for Bury St Edmunds & Stowmarket, Emma Buckmaster, was not one of them - losing to a Conservative in Bramford ward (though it is not in the part if the council in her prospective constituency).
With Labour not in a position to make a credible challenge to the Conservatives in the general elections of the 2010s, this growing Green support has translated into general election votes more than in most constituencies; former Time Team archaeologist Helen Geake (who lives in Woolpit and was a councillor for Elmswell & Woolpit) achieved the 4th best Green result in the country here in 2019, receiving over 9,000 votes, aided by the Liberal Democrats standing down for her as part of the "Unite to Remain" alliance, although she still finished 3rd behind Labour. Overall across the new constituency lines in May 2023 despite the almost complete lack of Green success in the West Suffolk part of this seat (and the reduction in the Mid Suffolk element in the boundary changes) they still polled the second most votes: 27% to the 37% for the Tories. However the Labour strength in Bury St Edmunds town may cause a problem for them, as Labour took 25.5% across the seat.
As far as the 2024 general election is concerned, there is therefore division in the opposition to a much weakened Conservative party. Labour put up very few candidates in Mid Suffolk in May 2023 and had no success, while the Greens were almost sweeping the board. In West Suffolk, though, Labour are clearly the stronger of the alternative parties. One suspects that this will be true in a national contest in Bury St Edmunds & Stowmarket too, but will the Greens retain enough of their 2019 support, or even build on it, sufficiently to split the non-Tory vote with significant effect? It may seem odd to be discussing any threat at all to the Conservatives in a seat where their actual majority was over 25,000 in 2019, and their notional lead in Bury St Edmunds & Stowmarket estimated at over 21,000. However national opinion polls, byelections and recent local election results here and elsewhere suggest the Tory share may well drop significantly below 50% in a 2024 contest, and thus may be saved from a serious challenge by the strength of Labour in the West Suffolk section and the Greens in Mid Suffolk, along with the memory of the latter’s very creditable performance in the Bury St Edmunds seat in 2019.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 23.2% 123/575
Owner occupied 66.8% 267/575
Private rented 18.2% 285/575
Social rented 15.0% 285/575
White 94.8% 198/575
Black 0.8% 366/575
Asian 1.9% 403/575
Managerial & professional 35.9% 201/575
Routine & Semi-routine 24.8% 250/575
Degree level 31.2% 306/575
No qualifications 17.5% 309/575
Students 4.5% 496/575
General Election 2019: Bury St Edmunds
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jo Churchill 37,770 61.0 +1.8
Labour Cliff Waterman 12,782 20.6 -8.9
Green Helen Geake 9,711 15.7 +11.5
Independent Paul Hopfensperger 1,694 2.7
C Majority 24,988 40.4 +10.7
Turnout 61,957 69.1 -3.1
Conservative hold
Swing 5.3 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket consists of
76.3% of Bury St Edmunds
10.5% of West Suffolk
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_054_Bury%20St%20Edmunds%20and%20Stowmarket_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional result (Rallings / Thrasher)
[/quote]
Bury St Edmunds has existed as a parliamentary constituency since 1614, but its boundaries have varied widely over the intervening 410 years. From 1614 to 1885 it was represented by two MPs instead of one. It experienced a major boundary change in 1997 when it lost the Forest Heath district to a new West Suffolk constituency whilst taking in Stowmarket, Needham Market, and the surrounding villages from the Central Suffolk constituency (which subsequently became Central Suffolk & North Ipswich). It covers the Bury St Edmunds part of the West Suffolk district, formed from a merger of the Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury districts, and the western half of the Mid Suffolk district.
The boundary review enacted as a result of the Commission’s report of 2023 makes a number of changes here without having much partisan impact. Needham Market and Ringshall in the far east of the seat are moved to Central Suffolk while a large rural area to the north of Stowmarket is donated to the new Waveney Valley seat. Horringer and Wheltenham, to the South of Bury, are moved to West Suffolk but in exchange around 8,000 voters are added from that seat in the area north of Bury. The name of Stowmarket, the second largest town, is added to the seat’s title. Although the changes increase the influence of the two towns in this seat, this does not reduce the 2019 Conservative notional majority as the area being added is extremely Conservative whereas the rural area lost to Waveney Valley is much less so - this area (Stowmarket, Haughley etc) has become a Green stronghold at the local level and historically harboured quite a large Labour vote. The departed Needham Market meanwhile has been something of a LD stronghold.
The current incarnation of Bury St Edmunds up to and including the last general election comprises the town of Bury St Edmunds itself, named after the last king of the East Angles, the town of Stowmarket, and picturesque East Anglian villages such as Woolpit. The eponymous town of Bury St Edmunds is clearly the largest town in the constituency (2021 census population 41,000), and being the seat of a diocese with a cathedral to boot is the closest thing Suffolk has to a city. It is also home to the only surviving Regency Theatre, the Theatre Royal, which despite being owned by the Greene King brewery is operated by the National Trust. Greene King, headquartered in Bury St Edmunds, is the largest British-owned brewery in the UK and owns thousands of pubs across the country; another major employer is British Sugar which also powers 110,000 homes nearby using sugar cane for fuel.
The second largest town in this constituency is Stowmarket, once home to a gun cotton factory which exploded disastrously in 1871, and home to the Museum of East Anglian Life. It is far from being a rural backwater. It has excellent railway links for a town of only 21,500 people, with lines terminating as far afield as Norwich, London, Cambridge, and Ipswich. Three important industries in Stowmarket are agricultural implements made by Atco-Qualcast Bosch whose Suffolk Works is on Gipping Lane and is one of the largest lawnmower factories in Europe; maltings and maltsters, for example Muntons on the B1113 to the south east of the town (which survived a major fire in January 2024),
www.eadt.co.uk/news/24029472.overnight-fire-muntons-factory-stowmarket-suffolk/
making Stowmarket known for the largest production of malted products for food and beer and by far the largest production of home brew beer kits in Britain; and also the large and innovative AkzoNobel paint factory making much of the domestic DIY paint (for example Dulux white and off-white) and products for industry coatings, which is also on the Needham Road leading out of Stowmarket.
Demographically it is a relatively average constituency, with Bury St Edmunds being considerably more affluent than Stowmarket, with consequently higher education levels. For example Stowmarket West MSOA had 25.6% with no qualifications in the details of the 2021 census, a level only approached in the Howard Estate & Northgate section of Bury St Edmunds (25.4%). The Howard estate was notable as a destination for ‘London overspill’ in the 1960s, but many ex-council houses there have now been sold off, and there is a feeling that Bury as a whole has been moving up-market.
www.eadt.co.uk/news/21527388.bury-st-edmunds-victim-success-fears-younger-generation-forced-high-house-prices/
Meanwhile, the proportion with degrees reached 40% in Bury Central, 38% its eastern Moreton Hall MSOA, and 36% in Eastgate & Southgate. Moreton Hall itself was built to a Robert Adam design in 1773, but the private housing estate has been developed in stages since the 1980s, with another huge (Taylor-Wimpey) boost in the 2010s. In 2009 it was claimed to have the greatest longevity of anywhere in England
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214300/Moreton-Hall-The-town-live-26-years-longer.html
though quite how that was established is unclear. Similarly these three census middle layer areas all hovered around the 40% mark for those in professional and managerial occupations, whereas Stowmarket West had 30% in routine and semi-routine jobs. Stowmarket East was close to the constituency average in terms of socio-economic class, which is slightly more up-market than the national norm. All these findings are consonant with those for housing tenure. Overall the constituency is very close to conforming with the national picture in this regard - for example it ranks 285th out of 575 in England and Wales for both social rented and private rented housing – but the main concentrations of social rented are in Bury St Edmunds’ north western quadrant (Howard Estate & Northgate MSOA, at 40.2%), Stowmarket West (31.3%) and Bury West (18.1%).
Most other figures are also close to average, but the population is ageing noticeably: overall on new boundaries over 23% are over 65, with a peak of 32% in Bury St Edmunds Eastgate & Northgate, and significantly lower only in two other parts of that town: the ‘council estate’ Howard Estate & Northgate (17%) and the newish private estates of Moreton Hall, even more full of families and with only 14.5% aged over 65. The constituency’s Brexit vote was surprisingly in line with the rest of the country, with Bury St Edmunds having voted Remain, and Stowmarket and surrounding villages having decisively voted Leave, which fits in with the class and educational pattern.
Bury St Edmunds constituency has been consistently Conservative since 1885 when its representation was reduced to one MP; when it had two MPs it was frequently fought over by two noble families: the FitzRoys (holders of the title Earl of Euston) on the Whig/Liberal side, and the Herveys (holders of the title Marquess of Bristol; this was long before their infamous decline in the late 20th century) on the Tory/Conservative side. One of its most notable MPs was Walter Guinness, who helped bring British Sugar to the constituency and was the son of Guinness brewery founder Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh; before 1964 almost all MPs for Bury St Edmunds were sons/nephews of MPs or peers. It has usually been a very safe Conservative seat, although in 1997 the Labour candidate, Mark Ereira-Guyer, missed out on becoming Bury St Edmunds' first ever Labour MP by just 368 votes to the Conservatives' David Ruffley, with Richard Spring (now Baron Spring) having moved to the new West Suffolk constituency. Mr Ereira-Guyer later became a Green Party councillor and was their candidate in 2010, achieving one of the better Green Party results that year. Labour have since fallen far behind, and it reverted to being a safe Conservative seat. Mr Ruffley stood down in 2015 following being cautioned over the assault of his former partner, whereupon the seat's current Conservative MP, Jo Churchill (not related to the famous Spencer-Churchill dynasty) succeeded him.
The former St Edmundsbury part of the constituency has mostly Conservative locally, with a Tory overall majority on the council from 1999 through the final elections there in 2015. They also controlled the new West Suffolk authority from 2019 to 2023. However in the most recent contests in May 2023, the Tories lost 11 council seats, while Labour gained 12 and the Liberal Democrats one. With one Green (in Abbeygate, Bury St Edmunds) and 19 Independents also being elected, that council passed firmly to no overall control. Some of the Labour wins in West Suffolk were outside the lines of this constituency, for example in Haverhill and Newmarket, but they also returned seven in Bury St Edmunds, in Tollgate, Eastgate, Minden, St Olave’s and even Moreton Hall, five of these being gains in 2023.
The Mid Suffolk part of the constituency has a very different electoral pattern in municipal elections. There have been Green councillors since 2003 which by 2019 now stood at 11, mainly in the villages surrounding Stowmarket but also in Stowmarket itself. Labour, who once had a strong base in Stowmarket, no longer has any councillors in Mid Suffolk at all and in this council area rarely contests elections outside Stowmarket. In the all-out May 2023 contest the Greens easily gained overall control of the Mid Suffolk council, with 24 elected compared with 6 Conservatives, 4 Liberal Democrats – and no others. Within the part of Mid Suffolk included in Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket constituency, it was not quite a clean sweep for the Greens, but they only very occasionally missed out on representation completely, for example in the rural Rattlesden, which has been solidly Lib Dem since 1991. In the Combs Ford ward of south west Stowmarket the LDs and Green shared the two available council spots. Almost everywhere else the Greens triumphed, although the Green parliamentary candidate for Bury St Edmunds & Stowmarket, Emma Buckmaster, was not one of them - losing to a Conservative in Bramford ward (though it is not in the part if the council in her prospective constituency).
With Labour not in a position to make a credible challenge to the Conservatives in the general elections of the 2010s, this growing Green support has translated into general election votes more than in most constituencies; former Time Team archaeologist Helen Geake (who lives in Woolpit and was a councillor for Elmswell & Woolpit) achieved the 4th best Green result in the country here in 2019, receiving over 9,000 votes, aided by the Liberal Democrats standing down for her as part of the "Unite to Remain" alliance, although she still finished 3rd behind Labour. Overall across the new constituency lines in May 2023 despite the almost complete lack of Green success in the West Suffolk part of this seat (and the reduction in the Mid Suffolk element in the boundary changes) they still polled the second most votes: 27% to the 37% for the Tories. However the Labour strength in Bury St Edmunds town may cause a problem for them, as Labour took 25.5% across the seat.
As far as the 2024 general election is concerned, there is therefore division in the opposition to a much weakened Conservative party. Labour put up very few candidates in Mid Suffolk in May 2023 and had no success, while the Greens were almost sweeping the board. In West Suffolk, though, Labour are clearly the stronger of the alternative parties. One suspects that this will be true in a national contest in Bury St Edmunds & Stowmarket too, but will the Greens retain enough of their 2019 support, or even build on it, sufficiently to split the non-Tory vote with significant effect? It may seem odd to be discussing any threat at all to the Conservatives in a seat where their actual majority was over 25,000 in 2019, and their notional lead in Bury St Edmunds & Stowmarket estimated at over 21,000. However national opinion polls, byelections and recent local election results here and elsewhere suggest the Tory share may well drop significantly below 50% in a 2024 contest, and thus may be saved from a serious challenge by the strength of Labour in the West Suffolk section and the Greens in Mid Suffolk, along with the memory of the latter’s very creditable performance in the Bury St Edmunds seat in 2019.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 23.2% 123/575
Owner occupied 66.8% 267/575
Private rented 18.2% 285/575
Social rented 15.0% 285/575
White 94.8% 198/575
Black 0.8% 366/575
Asian 1.9% 403/575
Managerial & professional 35.9% 201/575
Routine & Semi-routine 24.8% 250/575
Degree level 31.2% 306/575
No qualifications 17.5% 309/575
Students 4.5% 496/575
General Election 2019: Bury St Edmunds
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jo Churchill 37,770 61.0 +1.8
Labour Cliff Waterman 12,782 20.6 -8.9
Green Helen Geake 9,711 15.7 +11.5
Independent Paul Hopfensperger 1,694 2.7
C Majority 24,988 40.4 +10.7
Turnout 61,957 69.1 -3.1
Conservative hold
Swing 5.3 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket consists of
76.3% of Bury St Edmunds
10.5% of West Suffolk
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_054_Bury%20St%20Edmunds%20and%20Stowmarket_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional result (Rallings / Thrasher)
| Con | 33023 | 62.9% |
| Lab | 10938 | 20.8% |
| Grn | 6520 | 12.4% |
| Ind | 1435 | 2.7% |
| LD | 565 | 1.1% |
| maj | 22085 | 42.1% |
[/quote]
