Post by Robert Waller on Jan 12, 2024 13:46:56 GMT
greenhert wrote the original profile. Pete Whitehead contributed the paragraph on boundary changes. As ever bjornhattan added up the Census stats for the new seat. Adam Gray's addition of the May 2023 local election results within the new boundaries produced particularly interesting results in his seat. I am responsible for the rest, and for any mistakes.
One cannot find a more easterly point in East Anglia or indeed the whole of Great Britain than Ness Point, which was up to and including the 2019 general election situated in the parliamentary constituency of Waveney - which was created in 1983 from the former Lowestoft constituency, and the actual town of Lowestoft still dominates. It was named after the old hundred of Waveney and council of the same name, which ceased to exist in 2019 when it merged with neighbouring Suffolk Coastal District Council to form a new East Suffolk District Council.
The boundary changes proposed for this seat reduce it to a core around Lowestoft itself (which will now contain two-thirds of the electorate) and Beccles. Bungay and the surrounding area (Wainford) are removed to the new Waveney Valley itself, a name now available due to the long overdue renaming of this seat as Lowestoft. Bungay can be marginal (it has voted Labour, Lib Dem and Green as well as Conservative at local level) but overall the area being removed is clearly more Conservative than that left behind. In the extreme result of 2019 this doesn't appear to make it look marginal but it would have been before and could be again. Labour would have won on these boundaries in 2010 (but not in 2015).
Lowestoft (with 71,000 inhabitants at the time of the 2021 census) is an old fishing port and seaside town which like many on the east coast of Britain has fallen on hard times. Its old fishing and shipbuilding industries have largely disappeared (the seat is not in the top 100 for employment in agriculture or fishing), with the renewable energy sector and food processing sector creating some new jobs, but nonetheless unemployment in Lowestoft is twice the average for the East of England and social mobility is low. Employment is much higher than average in the service sector, especially caring.
The Lowestoft constituency also includes the town of Beccles (population 9,800 in 2021), which has a well established historical centre, but also major modern retail facilities and a large industrial estate a couple of miles south of the town at Ellough Moor, the national headquarters if M & H Plastics for example (bottles, jars, medical containers) as well as commercial printing (AngliaPrint, CPI William Clowes).
Waveney is a safe Conservative seat although Labour were once competitive in good years for them. Notable "wet" and Cabinet Minister Jim Prior served as MP for Lowestoft/Waveney from 1959 to 1987, Labour having won it from 1945 through 1955. Bob Blizzard won the seat for Labour in 1997 and became the first Labour MP to represent the area since 1959, although like so many Labour MPs who won in the Blair landslide he lost his seat in 2010, to the Conservatives' Peter Aldous in his case. Mr Blizzard failed to recapture the seat from Mr Aldous in 2015, as the seat swung to the Conservatives by 1.6%. As with many old working-class seats this was a shape of things to come; in 2017 it was one of only seven seats where the Labour vote actually decreased and it saw a further pro-Conservative swing of almost 6.5%, although this is also partly attributable to its high Brexit vote not uncharacteristic of old fishing ports and seaside towns. In 2019 Mr Aldous achieved the highest Conservative majority ever in this seat, 18,002, whilst Labour's vote in Waveney that year was lower even than in 1983. The Green Party have built up a significant local base in this constituency and especially the town of Beccles, culminating in them saving their deposit here in 2019 and finishing ahead of the Liberal Democrats for the third consecutive election.
The most recent local election results suggest that at the least Labour should be able to bite considerably into the Conservative majority, which would notionally be nearly 15,000. The Lowestoft constituency comprises the nine north-eastern wards of the East Suffolk authority. The addition of the votes cast therein in May 2023 produced in raw figures the extraordinary close numbers of 7,097 Conservative and 7,089 Labour - both 35.4% of the total. Most of the remainder consists of a Green share of 23.6%, but this will remain a two major party contest at parliamentary level.
Delving into the details of these 2023 results, the Green strength was almost entirely in one ward the inland Beccles, the only other town apart from Lowestoft, where they have been successful in local elections since 2019. Four years after that, their three elected candidates in the Beccles & Worlingham ward obtained between 62% and 70% shares, far ahead of their pursuers, the best placed of which, a Conservative, managed just 21%. All the other wards within the Lowestoft division were won either by Labour (four) or Conservative (four) – this evenness being predictable from the overall photo-finish. Labour’s victories were all on the coast, and mainly in inner Lowestoft town. They have won Harbour & Normanston continuously since 2008, and Kirkley & Pakefield since 2010, but in 2023 they regained Gunton & St Margaret’s and the smaller single member Kessingland, situated to the south of the main town. The Conservatives won the inland wards of Oulton Broad and Carlton & Whitton, plus Carlton Colville, south west of Lowestoft, and Lothingland, to its north west.
Waveney was a very working class constituency, and the boundary changes make Lowestoft even more so. Overall the seat now ranks 28th out of the 575 in England and Wales for the percentage of workers in routine and semi routine jobs: 32.8%. This reaches a peak of 43% in Lowestoft Central census middle layer output area (MSOA), but is also 38% in Gunton West, 36% in Lowestoft Harbour & Kirkley, 34% in Normanston & Oulton Broad East. Even Beccles, a respectable inland Suffolk town, has 31% in this category – below the constituency average and well above the national norm. Semi-routine employment is particularly high across the new Lowestoft seat.
In the 2021 census Lowestoft constituency lies 14th in the list of seats with the lowest number with educational degrees, less than 21%. This is partially due to its age profile being in the most elderly decile (highest being 33.5% in the census area that closely corresponds to the Lothingland ward). However that is not the main factor. In Lowestoft Central MSOA, for example, only 13.7% are aged over 65, but the percentage with degrees is only 16.4%, the lowest in the constituency. This figure is also less than 20% in Oulton, Gunton West, and Pakefield North.
Gunton West is also the area with the highest concentration of social housing (37%), but the private rented sector is larger across the Lowestoft seat, at 20%, and is highest in Lowestoft Harbour & Kirkley (41.5% and Lowestoft Central (43%). Household deprivation also peaks at 66% in Harbour & Kirkley and 64% in Central. Unusually, there is no part of the Lowestoft constituency that has less than a 50% deprivation rating. It is also in the lowest 20 seats in which residents report that their health is ‘very good’.
One might think that these demographics would not fit well with a seat that has recently been safely Conservative. However this is the east coast, and there are a chain of low-status an highly deprived seats that are also some of the strongest for the Tories, from Clacton in Essex up to Boston & Skegness in Lincolnshire. One very relevant thing they do have in common is their attitude towards the European Union. Like the aforementioned seats, Waveney / Lowestoft was very much in favour of Brexit, with a Leave vote of over 62%. The European issue will certainly have faded considerably by the time of a 2024 general election, and this is one reason why labour are likely to become much more competitive, though it remains moot whether they can gain and hold the seat as they did Waveney in the last period of Labour dominance under Tony Blair, for the disillusionment with the party in similar seats is deeper than merely opinions on Europe.
In 2019 the Conservatives won this easternmost seat in England, just as they did the most southerly, westerly (both in St Ives whether we count the Scilly Isles or not – otherwise Lizard Point and Lands End) and northerly (Berwick-upon-Tweed, now North Northumberland). Not too distant electoral history showed all these to be potentially vulnerable. In July 2024 the Tories lost all these 'extreme' seats, St Ives to the Lib Dems and the other two to Labour. This is just one more measure of the seismic shift in electoral fortunes that year, though Lowestoft (Labour majority barely over 2,000) is the one that looks easiest to win back.
General Election 2024: Lowestoft
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Jess Asato 14,464 34.6 +6.4
Conservative Peter Aldous 12,448 29.8 −31.1
Reform UK June Mummery 10,328 24.7 N/A
Green Toby Hammond 3,095 7.4 +2.2
Liberal Democrats Adam Robertson 1,489 3.6 −1.5
Lab Majority 2,016 4.8 N/A
Turnout 41,824 56.3 –5.1
Registered electors 74,332
Labour gain from Conservative
Swing 18.8 Can to Lab
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 26.2% 56/575
Owner occupied 65.7% 300/575
Private rented 20.0% 204/575
Social rented 14.3% 317/575
White 97.0% 66/575
Black 0.4% 481/575
Asian 1.1% 511/575
Managerial & professional 24.9% 485/575
Routine & Semi-routine 32.8% 28/575
Degree level 20.9% 562/575
No qualifications 23.0% 86/575
Students 4.4% 521/575
General Election 2019: Waveney
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Peter Aldous 31,778 62.2 +7.8
Labour Sonia Barker 13,776 26.9 -10.0
Green Elfrede Brambley-Crawshaw 2,727 5.3 +2.8
Liberal Democrats Helen Korfanty 2,603 5.1 +3.2
CPA Dave Brennan 245 0.5
C Majority 18,002 35.3 +17.8
Turnout 51,129 61.8 -3.4
Conservative hold
Swing 8.9 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Lowestoft consists of
91.2% of Waveney
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_074_Lowestoft_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional result - Lowestoft (Rallings & Thrasher)
One cannot find a more easterly point in East Anglia or indeed the whole of Great Britain than Ness Point, which was up to and including the 2019 general election situated in the parliamentary constituency of Waveney - which was created in 1983 from the former Lowestoft constituency, and the actual town of Lowestoft still dominates. It was named after the old hundred of Waveney and council of the same name, which ceased to exist in 2019 when it merged with neighbouring Suffolk Coastal District Council to form a new East Suffolk District Council.
The boundary changes proposed for this seat reduce it to a core around Lowestoft itself (which will now contain two-thirds of the electorate) and Beccles. Bungay and the surrounding area (Wainford) are removed to the new Waveney Valley itself, a name now available due to the long overdue renaming of this seat as Lowestoft. Bungay can be marginal (it has voted Labour, Lib Dem and Green as well as Conservative at local level) but overall the area being removed is clearly more Conservative than that left behind. In the extreme result of 2019 this doesn't appear to make it look marginal but it would have been before and could be again. Labour would have won on these boundaries in 2010 (but not in 2015).
Lowestoft (with 71,000 inhabitants at the time of the 2021 census) is an old fishing port and seaside town which like many on the east coast of Britain has fallen on hard times. Its old fishing and shipbuilding industries have largely disappeared (the seat is not in the top 100 for employment in agriculture or fishing), with the renewable energy sector and food processing sector creating some new jobs, but nonetheless unemployment in Lowestoft is twice the average for the East of England and social mobility is low. Employment is much higher than average in the service sector, especially caring.
The Lowestoft constituency also includes the town of Beccles (population 9,800 in 2021), which has a well established historical centre, but also major modern retail facilities and a large industrial estate a couple of miles south of the town at Ellough Moor, the national headquarters if M & H Plastics for example (bottles, jars, medical containers) as well as commercial printing (AngliaPrint, CPI William Clowes).
Waveney is a safe Conservative seat although Labour were once competitive in good years for them. Notable "wet" and Cabinet Minister Jim Prior served as MP for Lowestoft/Waveney from 1959 to 1987, Labour having won it from 1945 through 1955. Bob Blizzard won the seat for Labour in 1997 and became the first Labour MP to represent the area since 1959, although like so many Labour MPs who won in the Blair landslide he lost his seat in 2010, to the Conservatives' Peter Aldous in his case. Mr Blizzard failed to recapture the seat from Mr Aldous in 2015, as the seat swung to the Conservatives by 1.6%. As with many old working-class seats this was a shape of things to come; in 2017 it was one of only seven seats where the Labour vote actually decreased and it saw a further pro-Conservative swing of almost 6.5%, although this is also partly attributable to its high Brexit vote not uncharacteristic of old fishing ports and seaside towns. In 2019 Mr Aldous achieved the highest Conservative majority ever in this seat, 18,002, whilst Labour's vote in Waveney that year was lower even than in 1983. The Green Party have built up a significant local base in this constituency and especially the town of Beccles, culminating in them saving their deposit here in 2019 and finishing ahead of the Liberal Democrats for the third consecutive election.
The most recent local election results suggest that at the least Labour should be able to bite considerably into the Conservative majority, which would notionally be nearly 15,000. The Lowestoft constituency comprises the nine north-eastern wards of the East Suffolk authority. The addition of the votes cast therein in May 2023 produced in raw figures the extraordinary close numbers of 7,097 Conservative and 7,089 Labour - both 35.4% of the total. Most of the remainder consists of a Green share of 23.6%, but this will remain a two major party contest at parliamentary level.
Delving into the details of these 2023 results, the Green strength was almost entirely in one ward the inland Beccles, the only other town apart from Lowestoft, where they have been successful in local elections since 2019. Four years after that, their three elected candidates in the Beccles & Worlingham ward obtained between 62% and 70% shares, far ahead of their pursuers, the best placed of which, a Conservative, managed just 21%. All the other wards within the Lowestoft division were won either by Labour (four) or Conservative (four) – this evenness being predictable from the overall photo-finish. Labour’s victories were all on the coast, and mainly in inner Lowestoft town. They have won Harbour & Normanston continuously since 2008, and Kirkley & Pakefield since 2010, but in 2023 they regained Gunton & St Margaret’s and the smaller single member Kessingland, situated to the south of the main town. The Conservatives won the inland wards of Oulton Broad and Carlton & Whitton, plus Carlton Colville, south west of Lowestoft, and Lothingland, to its north west.
Waveney was a very working class constituency, and the boundary changes make Lowestoft even more so. Overall the seat now ranks 28th out of the 575 in England and Wales for the percentage of workers in routine and semi routine jobs: 32.8%. This reaches a peak of 43% in Lowestoft Central census middle layer output area (MSOA), but is also 38% in Gunton West, 36% in Lowestoft Harbour & Kirkley, 34% in Normanston & Oulton Broad East. Even Beccles, a respectable inland Suffolk town, has 31% in this category – below the constituency average and well above the national norm. Semi-routine employment is particularly high across the new Lowestoft seat.
In the 2021 census Lowestoft constituency lies 14th in the list of seats with the lowest number with educational degrees, less than 21%. This is partially due to its age profile being in the most elderly decile (highest being 33.5% in the census area that closely corresponds to the Lothingland ward). However that is not the main factor. In Lowestoft Central MSOA, for example, only 13.7% are aged over 65, but the percentage with degrees is only 16.4%, the lowest in the constituency. This figure is also less than 20% in Oulton, Gunton West, and Pakefield North.
Gunton West is also the area with the highest concentration of social housing (37%), but the private rented sector is larger across the Lowestoft seat, at 20%, and is highest in Lowestoft Harbour & Kirkley (41.5% and Lowestoft Central (43%). Household deprivation also peaks at 66% in Harbour & Kirkley and 64% in Central. Unusually, there is no part of the Lowestoft constituency that has less than a 50% deprivation rating. It is also in the lowest 20 seats in which residents report that their health is ‘very good’.
One might think that these demographics would not fit well with a seat that has recently been safely Conservative. However this is the east coast, and there are a chain of low-status an highly deprived seats that are also some of the strongest for the Tories, from Clacton in Essex up to Boston & Skegness in Lincolnshire. One very relevant thing they do have in common is their attitude towards the European Union. Like the aforementioned seats, Waveney / Lowestoft was very much in favour of Brexit, with a Leave vote of over 62%. The European issue will certainly have faded considerably by the time of a 2024 general election, and this is one reason why labour are likely to become much more competitive, though it remains moot whether they can gain and hold the seat as they did Waveney in the last period of Labour dominance under Tony Blair, for the disillusionment with the party in similar seats is deeper than merely opinions on Europe.
In 2019 the Conservatives won this easternmost seat in England, just as they did the most southerly, westerly (both in St Ives whether we count the Scilly Isles or not – otherwise Lizard Point and Lands End) and northerly (Berwick-upon-Tweed, now North Northumberland). Not too distant electoral history showed all these to be potentially vulnerable. In July 2024 the Tories lost all these 'extreme' seats, St Ives to the Lib Dems and the other two to Labour. This is just one more measure of the seismic shift in electoral fortunes that year, though Lowestoft (Labour majority barely over 2,000) is the one that looks easiest to win back.
General Election 2024: Lowestoft
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Jess Asato 14,464 34.6 +6.4
Conservative Peter Aldous 12,448 29.8 −31.1
Reform UK June Mummery 10,328 24.7 N/A
Green Toby Hammond 3,095 7.4 +2.2
Liberal Democrats Adam Robertson 1,489 3.6 −1.5
Lab Majority 2,016 4.8 N/A
Turnout 41,824 56.3 –5.1
Registered electors 74,332
Labour gain from Conservative
Swing 18.8 Can to Lab
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 26.2% 56/575
Owner occupied 65.7% 300/575
Private rented 20.0% 204/575
Social rented 14.3% 317/575
White 97.0% 66/575
Black 0.4% 481/575
Asian 1.1% 511/575
Managerial & professional 24.9% 485/575
Routine & Semi-routine 32.8% 28/575
Degree level 20.9% 562/575
No qualifications 23.0% 86/575
Students 4.4% 521/575
General Election 2019: Waveney
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Peter Aldous 31,778 62.2 +7.8
Labour Sonia Barker 13,776 26.9 -10.0
Green Elfrede Brambley-Crawshaw 2,727 5.3 +2.8
Liberal Democrats Helen Korfanty 2,603 5.1 +3.2
CPA Dave Brennan 245 0.5
C Majority 18,002 35.3 +17.8
Turnout 51,129 61.8 -3.4
Conservative hold
Swing 8.9 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Lowestoft consists of
91.2% of Waveney
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_074_Lowestoft_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional result - Lowestoft (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 27648 | 60.9% |
| Lab | 12798 | 28.2% |
| Green | 2362 | 5.2% |
| LD | 2333 | 5.1% |
| CPA | 245 | 0.5% |
| maj | 14850 | 32.7% |