Post by Robert Waller on Feb 3, 2024 23:38:56 GMT
This is based on the Reading West profile by batman on the previous Almanac board, plus a major contribution on the boundary changes by Pete Whitehead. I am responsible for the reorganisation and expansion of the profile.
Berkshire is entitled to nine seats and a new seat is created in the centre of the county, in the Reading suburbs, with the name of Earley & Woodley. Most of the remaining constituencies undergo varying degrees of changes to accommodate the new seat. In the case of Reading West the changes are sweeping, in terms of the numbers of voters added and removed and in the partisan impact. Nearly 30,000 voters in Reading itself are removed and these include most of the strongest Labour wards (Battle, Minster, Southcote and Whitley). To replace these 23,000 rural voters come in from West Berkshire district (from both Newbury and Wokingham constituencies) where Labour are very weak.
With only a minority of the constituency contained within Reading borough the seat is renamed 'Reading West and Mid Berkshire' but this is the successor to Reading West with two thirds of its voters coming from that source. Essentially this seat can be divided into three almost equal elements: The Reading borough wards (Norcot, Kentwood and Tilehurst); the West Berkshire wards which are already in this seat and contain Reading suburbs (Tilehurst, Pangbourne, Theale etc); the rural West Berkshire wards which are added. Labour would not have even carried the Reading wards here in 2019 as only Norcot is Labour with Kentwood being marginal and Tilehurst Conservative (in general elections).
Reading is a large town within easy reach of London to its east, with a fairly working-class social composition for the most part but some wards with notable prosperity. It is traditionally known for biscuit manufacture, brewing (both heavily reduced if even in existence at all) and its status as a vitally important railway junction with a fair number of railway workers. It belongs to the ceremonial county of Berkshire as it always has, although some of its wards north of the River Thames were historically in Oxfordshire many years ago. It can reasonably claim to be the largest town in Britain not yet to have been accorded city status, as its urban area, including some elements in other neighbouring boroughs, is something in the close region of 200,000.
The borough itself however has a rather lower population than that and was just small enough for many years to have just one compact urban constituency. In 1974 this permanently came to an end and two seats were created, Reading South containing a large element outside the borough boundary but Reading North being entirely contained within. Not surprisingly, of these two seats North was much the more marginal. Then in 1983 a new arrangement came into being, as Reading East and Reading West seats were created instead. Both contained elements outside the borough boundary, but both were still designated as Borough Constituencies, that is to say constituencies in which the great majority of electors are within urban areas. This western seat however was a little surprising in that designation, as it contained some entirely separate small towns and a small number of genuinely rural villages.
For a number of years, West despite being the less urban was the stronger of the two seats for Labour, but the situation was then reversed, as East was not only more built-up (increasingly a factor which tends to militate against the Conservatives somewhat) but also had a significantly larger student voting population (however, it also contained the only Reading borough wards which regularly voted Conservative). The West seat was however mostly marginal since it was gained in 1997 by Labour's Martin Salter, who was to develop a strong personal following in the constituency, with the most obvious exception of 2001, when Salter managed an unusually large majority for this area, making the seat at least temporarily safe. In 2010, when Salter retired rather early and Alok Sharma gained the seat for the Conservatives, and again in 2015 the Conservative majority was rather more than that of a genuine marginal, but it then declined a little, and marginal would now be a fair description for the seat in 2019, when the senior Conservative Alok Sharma increased his majority after a small swing to just over 4,000. This is not altogether surprising, as this was a very socially mixed seat as one would expect of a constituency stretching from the fringes of Reading town centre to the much more rustic Tidmarsh, for example.
The new seat of Reading West & Mid Berkshire can be conveniently divided into the Reading borough part to the east, and the section further to the west which lies within the West Berkshire unitary authority area - which may itself be analysed separately for the section already in Reading West, and that added in the 2023 boundary changes.
The Reading borough wards generally look very different, and their voting behaviour is also very different, with the main exception of Tilehurst ward. Tilehurst is one of the borough of Reading's wards which is furthest away from the town centre, and it is mostly owner-occupied, still mostly white, and relatively prosperous, although it does have a significant council estate element as many Reading wards do. It is the only Reading borough ward in the constituency which does not regularly elect Labour councillors, almost invariably preferring the Liberal Democrats in an echo of that party's strength just a short distance down the A4. In the most recent Reading borough elections in May 2023, they won by 30%, taking 51% themselves, with a photo finish between Labour (21.1%) and the Tories (21.0%) for second and third places. It is inevitable that many local Lib Dem voters will cast their ballots tactically in a general election. As far as can be told, the ward most likely divides its favours in general elections depending on the national picture, though the Tories might well fancy themselves to outpoll Labour a bit more often than vice versa. It does have a more middle-class social composition than the other Reading borough wards currently included in the constituency, and also has far fewer students than further into the town.
The other two wards, however, tend to vote Labour, although by rather varying amounts. Between Battle and Tilehurst wards lies Norcot, a more outer-city council estate ward. This is a Labour stronghold, In the May 2023 Reading council elections, Labour recorded a 40 point lead over the Conservatives, 58% to 18%. In the north-west of the town is Kentwood. This is very much a dichotomy between council estates and owner-occupied interwar semis. It tends to vote Labour, but sometimes not by very much; Labour won by only a few handfuls of votes in the most recent local elections at the time of writing, in both 2019 and 2023, when the margin was 6%.
Turning to the more rural west Berkshire section that was already in the Reading West seat, this part of the constituency is partly outer-suburban and partly consists of territory entirely separated by countryside from Reading; one ward, Theale, is not quite sure which of these categories it belongs to, as it is not separated by much in the way of genuine countryside, but rather by the M4 motorway. Mostly, the outer suburban wards, which all currently mention Tilehurst in their names (Tilehurst & Purley, Tilehurst Birch Copse and Tilehurst South & Holybrook), are united with the separated ones by one characteristic: political support for the Conservative Party. In the most recent local elections for West Berkshire unitary council, held in May 2023, the Tories claimed five of the seven available seats across these three wards, missing out in one spot each in the three member Tilehurst & Purley to the Liberal Democrats, and to Labour in the two seat Tilehurst Birch Copse – though this was by just one vote: 737 to 736.
Tilehurst is an outer suburb of Reading which straddles the borough boundary. The element of it which is in West Berkshire is a little more heavily owner-occupied and middle-class than the Reading borough section of it, though not extravagantly so. Labour is not negligible here, but is well behind the Tories. Further out, apart from Theale the principal towns or villages are Pangbourne and Tidmarsh - both within the Pangbourne ward a Lib Dem gain from Tory in May 2023. These vote quite heavily Conservative in general elections. Pangbourne is even weaker territory for Labour than the other two; it is a fine small town on the Thames with some very good houses overlooking the river, and its popularity and expensiveness as a place to buy property is enhanced by the railway station, on the line which leads from Oxford to London Paddington. Tidmarsh is almost twee and has some very fine old houses and the odd pub. There are also some entirely rural villages in between these larger villages and towns, perhaps most noteworthily Sulham with its pretty old church. The last of the West Berkshire wards is Theale. Theale is rather different in character from the other small towns and outer suburbs in this part of the constituency. It has a pleasant but relatively humdrum main street with small 19th-century cottages which are not particularly high on the posh scale, and also a fair-sized council estate element in its outskirts as well as some more luxurious owner-occupied homes.
It alone of this part of the constituency does not normally elect Conservative councillors, being more apt to elect the Liberal Democrats who have long had local strength in many other parts of West Berkshire. This was even more true than usual in 2023, when the LDs took a massive 71% share in Theale, to 18% for the Tories and 11% for Labour. However, it is a fair bet that many of its local Lib Dem voters vote tactically for either the Conservatives or Labour in general elections nowadays, and probably have done for well over 20 years, according to preference. Normally this would mean that the Conservatives retain a definite lead over Labour in the small town and its immediate surrounds, but in outstanding years Labour can just about rise to become competitive. Salter moved to Theale after his election to Parliament in 1997, and is estimated to have fought the Tories approximately to a draw in the town in the 2001 election; but usually the Tories can rely on at least some sort of lead here, however modest it might often be. Overall, the West Berkshire part of the constituency would be heavily more favourable to the Conservatives than Labour, even in their very poor year locally of 2001, and there was enough of this territory to be at least a considerable stumbling block for Labour in their attempts to win the constituency.
Thirdly, added to the former Reading West are five rural wards of West Berkshire, and a small part of a sixth. Between them these more than double the acreage of the seat compared with the former Reading West. In the north east corner of this section lies the Basildon ward, which also includes Ashampstead and reaches the Thames at Streatley, upstream from Pangbourne and opposite Goring in Oxfordshire. To its west is Ridgeway, named after the ancient track, and consisting of highly attractive countryside and villages, such as Hampstead Norreys and Compton, and the Ilsleys on each side of the A34 as it passes through the downs; near here there is also a minority part of the ward called Downlands, that around Beedon and Stanmore, though it only adds another 385 voters. South of Ridgeway ward is Bucklebury (the home area of Lord Cameron’s wife Samantha), another very affluent stretch of deep countryside, such as that around the aptly named Stanford Dingley and with a railway station at its southern edge in Woolhampton. East of Bucklebury is Bradfield ward, centred on the village that includes the well know private boarding school, Bradfield College, with its chain of immaculate cricket pitches lying along a wooded valley. Finally at the southern end of the new territory are two wards with defence, indeed Cold War, connections: Aldermaston and Burghfield (& Mortimer) – the former for the Atomic Weapons Establishment, a brooding presence there since 1950, and the latter for its assembly of Trident missiles in the so-called Burghfield bomb factory. Bradfield and Burghfield wards were formerly in Wokingham constituency, the rest in Newbury.
In the May 2023 West Berkshire elections, these added wards were mainly split between Conservative and Liberal Democrat victories. The Tories held on to Aldermaston, Bradfield, and Downlands. The Lib Dems gained Basildon and Bucklebury and completed their set of three in Burghfield & Mortimer. The exception to this duopoly was that the Greens held their one seat of Ridgeway massively, increasing their share to 69% compared with 25% for the Conservatives and 6% for Labour. It is notable for the new Reading West & Mid Berkshire constituency that Labour did not put up a full slate of candidates in the additional West Berkshire council territory and obtained wretched shares where they did. In all, adding up the votes cast in the local elections of May 2023 across all three parts of the new seat, the Conservatives had a narrow lead, though with only 35%. The Liberal Democrats were second with 32.4% and Laboir only third (21.2%) despite their strength in Reading itself. The Greens were in fourth place (11%).
Applying the 2021 census details to the new seat, compared with the figures for the former Reading West, with the essential help of bjornhattan, reveals just how different it will now be. For example, Reading West & Mid Berkshire moves up the rank order of constituencies in England and Wales for owner occupation by no fewer than 235 places, from 386th out of 575 to 151st. It rises 118 places for professional and managerial occupations, down 154 places for routine and semi routine workers. The percentage of Black residents halves from 6.8% to 3.4% and for Asians more than halves, from 13.2% to 6.0%. These changes are not just due to the removal of most of the wards within Reading, but to the nature of the newly added electors. Though on a map it may look rural and even agricultural, in the MSOAs covering the area around Compton, Bradfield, East Ilsley and Bucklebury are between 40% and 55% professional and managerial. Burghfield Common also reports over 48% in this category, Mortimer & Aldermaston Wharf over 46%. All these areas are over 90% White, and over 70% owner occupied.
The electoral balance is thus utterly transformed by the major boundary changes. Where Reading West would have been a key Labour target seat, Reading West & Mid Berkshire becomes a seat they might only dream of winning in the most exceptional landslide election.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 18.7% 309/575
Owner occupied 71.1% 151/575
Private rented 16.1% 379/575
Social rented 12.8% 393/575
White 85.8% 348/575
Black 3.4% 173/575
Asian 6.0% 241/575
Managerial & professional 40.1% 110/575
Routine & Semi-routine 19.7% 430/575
Degree level 36.0% 184/575
No qualifications 14.9% 425/575
Students 5.5% 299/575
General Election 2019: Reading West
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Alok Sharma 24,393 48.4 –0.5
Labour Rachel Eden 20,276 40.2 –3.1
Liberal Democrats Meri O'Connell 4,460 8.9 +3.0
Green Jamie Whitham 1,263 2.5 +0.6
C Majority 4,117 8.2 +2.6
Turnout 50,392 67.9 -1.6
Conservative hold
Swing 1.3 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Reading West and Mid Berkshire consists of
62.3% of Reading West
14.4% of Newbury
13.8% of Wokingham
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_352_Reading%20West%20and%20Mid%20Berkshire_Landscape.pdf
Notional result 2019 (Rallings & Thrasher)
Berkshire is entitled to nine seats and a new seat is created in the centre of the county, in the Reading suburbs, with the name of Earley & Woodley. Most of the remaining constituencies undergo varying degrees of changes to accommodate the new seat. In the case of Reading West the changes are sweeping, in terms of the numbers of voters added and removed and in the partisan impact. Nearly 30,000 voters in Reading itself are removed and these include most of the strongest Labour wards (Battle, Minster, Southcote and Whitley). To replace these 23,000 rural voters come in from West Berkshire district (from both Newbury and Wokingham constituencies) where Labour are very weak.
With only a minority of the constituency contained within Reading borough the seat is renamed 'Reading West and Mid Berkshire' but this is the successor to Reading West with two thirds of its voters coming from that source. Essentially this seat can be divided into three almost equal elements: The Reading borough wards (Norcot, Kentwood and Tilehurst); the West Berkshire wards which are already in this seat and contain Reading suburbs (Tilehurst, Pangbourne, Theale etc); the rural West Berkshire wards which are added. Labour would not have even carried the Reading wards here in 2019 as only Norcot is Labour with Kentwood being marginal and Tilehurst Conservative (in general elections).
Reading is a large town within easy reach of London to its east, with a fairly working-class social composition for the most part but some wards with notable prosperity. It is traditionally known for biscuit manufacture, brewing (both heavily reduced if even in existence at all) and its status as a vitally important railway junction with a fair number of railway workers. It belongs to the ceremonial county of Berkshire as it always has, although some of its wards north of the River Thames were historically in Oxfordshire many years ago. It can reasonably claim to be the largest town in Britain not yet to have been accorded city status, as its urban area, including some elements in other neighbouring boroughs, is something in the close region of 200,000.
The borough itself however has a rather lower population than that and was just small enough for many years to have just one compact urban constituency. In 1974 this permanently came to an end and two seats were created, Reading South containing a large element outside the borough boundary but Reading North being entirely contained within. Not surprisingly, of these two seats North was much the more marginal. Then in 1983 a new arrangement came into being, as Reading East and Reading West seats were created instead. Both contained elements outside the borough boundary, but both were still designated as Borough Constituencies, that is to say constituencies in which the great majority of electors are within urban areas. This western seat however was a little surprising in that designation, as it contained some entirely separate small towns and a small number of genuinely rural villages.
For a number of years, West despite being the less urban was the stronger of the two seats for Labour, but the situation was then reversed, as East was not only more built-up (increasingly a factor which tends to militate against the Conservatives somewhat) but also had a significantly larger student voting population (however, it also contained the only Reading borough wards which regularly voted Conservative). The West seat was however mostly marginal since it was gained in 1997 by Labour's Martin Salter, who was to develop a strong personal following in the constituency, with the most obvious exception of 2001, when Salter managed an unusually large majority for this area, making the seat at least temporarily safe. In 2010, when Salter retired rather early and Alok Sharma gained the seat for the Conservatives, and again in 2015 the Conservative majority was rather more than that of a genuine marginal, but it then declined a little, and marginal would now be a fair description for the seat in 2019, when the senior Conservative Alok Sharma increased his majority after a small swing to just over 4,000. This is not altogether surprising, as this was a very socially mixed seat as one would expect of a constituency stretching from the fringes of Reading town centre to the much more rustic Tidmarsh, for example.
The new seat of Reading West & Mid Berkshire can be conveniently divided into the Reading borough part to the east, and the section further to the west which lies within the West Berkshire unitary authority area - which may itself be analysed separately for the section already in Reading West, and that added in the 2023 boundary changes.
The Reading borough wards generally look very different, and their voting behaviour is also very different, with the main exception of Tilehurst ward. Tilehurst is one of the borough of Reading's wards which is furthest away from the town centre, and it is mostly owner-occupied, still mostly white, and relatively prosperous, although it does have a significant council estate element as many Reading wards do. It is the only Reading borough ward in the constituency which does not regularly elect Labour councillors, almost invariably preferring the Liberal Democrats in an echo of that party's strength just a short distance down the A4. In the most recent Reading borough elections in May 2023, they won by 30%, taking 51% themselves, with a photo finish between Labour (21.1%) and the Tories (21.0%) for second and third places. It is inevitable that many local Lib Dem voters will cast their ballots tactically in a general election. As far as can be told, the ward most likely divides its favours in general elections depending on the national picture, though the Tories might well fancy themselves to outpoll Labour a bit more often than vice versa. It does have a more middle-class social composition than the other Reading borough wards currently included in the constituency, and also has far fewer students than further into the town.
The other two wards, however, tend to vote Labour, although by rather varying amounts. Between Battle and Tilehurst wards lies Norcot, a more outer-city council estate ward. This is a Labour stronghold, In the May 2023 Reading council elections, Labour recorded a 40 point lead over the Conservatives, 58% to 18%. In the north-west of the town is Kentwood. This is very much a dichotomy between council estates and owner-occupied interwar semis. It tends to vote Labour, but sometimes not by very much; Labour won by only a few handfuls of votes in the most recent local elections at the time of writing, in both 2019 and 2023, when the margin was 6%.
Turning to the more rural west Berkshire section that was already in the Reading West seat, this part of the constituency is partly outer-suburban and partly consists of territory entirely separated by countryside from Reading; one ward, Theale, is not quite sure which of these categories it belongs to, as it is not separated by much in the way of genuine countryside, but rather by the M4 motorway. Mostly, the outer suburban wards, which all currently mention Tilehurst in their names (Tilehurst & Purley, Tilehurst Birch Copse and Tilehurst South & Holybrook), are united with the separated ones by one characteristic: political support for the Conservative Party. In the most recent local elections for West Berkshire unitary council, held in May 2023, the Tories claimed five of the seven available seats across these three wards, missing out in one spot each in the three member Tilehurst & Purley to the Liberal Democrats, and to Labour in the two seat Tilehurst Birch Copse – though this was by just one vote: 737 to 736.
Tilehurst is an outer suburb of Reading which straddles the borough boundary. The element of it which is in West Berkshire is a little more heavily owner-occupied and middle-class than the Reading borough section of it, though not extravagantly so. Labour is not negligible here, but is well behind the Tories. Further out, apart from Theale the principal towns or villages are Pangbourne and Tidmarsh - both within the Pangbourne ward a Lib Dem gain from Tory in May 2023. These vote quite heavily Conservative in general elections. Pangbourne is even weaker territory for Labour than the other two; it is a fine small town on the Thames with some very good houses overlooking the river, and its popularity and expensiveness as a place to buy property is enhanced by the railway station, on the line which leads from Oxford to London Paddington. Tidmarsh is almost twee and has some very fine old houses and the odd pub. There are also some entirely rural villages in between these larger villages and towns, perhaps most noteworthily Sulham with its pretty old church. The last of the West Berkshire wards is Theale. Theale is rather different in character from the other small towns and outer suburbs in this part of the constituency. It has a pleasant but relatively humdrum main street with small 19th-century cottages which are not particularly high on the posh scale, and also a fair-sized council estate element in its outskirts as well as some more luxurious owner-occupied homes.
It alone of this part of the constituency does not normally elect Conservative councillors, being more apt to elect the Liberal Democrats who have long had local strength in many other parts of West Berkshire. This was even more true than usual in 2023, when the LDs took a massive 71% share in Theale, to 18% for the Tories and 11% for Labour. However, it is a fair bet that many of its local Lib Dem voters vote tactically for either the Conservatives or Labour in general elections nowadays, and probably have done for well over 20 years, according to preference. Normally this would mean that the Conservatives retain a definite lead over Labour in the small town and its immediate surrounds, but in outstanding years Labour can just about rise to become competitive. Salter moved to Theale after his election to Parliament in 1997, and is estimated to have fought the Tories approximately to a draw in the town in the 2001 election; but usually the Tories can rely on at least some sort of lead here, however modest it might often be. Overall, the West Berkshire part of the constituency would be heavily more favourable to the Conservatives than Labour, even in their very poor year locally of 2001, and there was enough of this territory to be at least a considerable stumbling block for Labour in their attempts to win the constituency.
Thirdly, added to the former Reading West are five rural wards of West Berkshire, and a small part of a sixth. Between them these more than double the acreage of the seat compared with the former Reading West. In the north east corner of this section lies the Basildon ward, which also includes Ashampstead and reaches the Thames at Streatley, upstream from Pangbourne and opposite Goring in Oxfordshire. To its west is Ridgeway, named after the ancient track, and consisting of highly attractive countryside and villages, such as Hampstead Norreys and Compton, and the Ilsleys on each side of the A34 as it passes through the downs; near here there is also a minority part of the ward called Downlands, that around Beedon and Stanmore, though it only adds another 385 voters. South of Ridgeway ward is Bucklebury (the home area of Lord Cameron’s wife Samantha), another very affluent stretch of deep countryside, such as that around the aptly named Stanford Dingley and with a railway station at its southern edge in Woolhampton. East of Bucklebury is Bradfield ward, centred on the village that includes the well know private boarding school, Bradfield College, with its chain of immaculate cricket pitches lying along a wooded valley. Finally at the southern end of the new territory are two wards with defence, indeed Cold War, connections: Aldermaston and Burghfield (& Mortimer) – the former for the Atomic Weapons Establishment, a brooding presence there since 1950, and the latter for its assembly of Trident missiles in the so-called Burghfield bomb factory. Bradfield and Burghfield wards were formerly in Wokingham constituency, the rest in Newbury.
In the May 2023 West Berkshire elections, these added wards were mainly split between Conservative and Liberal Democrat victories. The Tories held on to Aldermaston, Bradfield, and Downlands. The Lib Dems gained Basildon and Bucklebury and completed their set of three in Burghfield & Mortimer. The exception to this duopoly was that the Greens held their one seat of Ridgeway massively, increasing their share to 69% compared with 25% for the Conservatives and 6% for Labour. It is notable for the new Reading West & Mid Berkshire constituency that Labour did not put up a full slate of candidates in the additional West Berkshire council territory and obtained wretched shares where they did. In all, adding up the votes cast in the local elections of May 2023 across all three parts of the new seat, the Conservatives had a narrow lead, though with only 35%. The Liberal Democrats were second with 32.4% and Laboir only third (21.2%) despite their strength in Reading itself. The Greens were in fourth place (11%).
Applying the 2021 census details to the new seat, compared with the figures for the former Reading West, with the essential help of bjornhattan, reveals just how different it will now be. For example, Reading West & Mid Berkshire moves up the rank order of constituencies in England and Wales for owner occupation by no fewer than 235 places, from 386th out of 575 to 151st. It rises 118 places for professional and managerial occupations, down 154 places for routine and semi routine workers. The percentage of Black residents halves from 6.8% to 3.4% and for Asians more than halves, from 13.2% to 6.0%. These changes are not just due to the removal of most of the wards within Reading, but to the nature of the newly added electors. Though on a map it may look rural and even agricultural, in the MSOAs covering the area around Compton, Bradfield, East Ilsley and Bucklebury are between 40% and 55% professional and managerial. Burghfield Common also reports over 48% in this category, Mortimer & Aldermaston Wharf over 46%. All these areas are over 90% White, and over 70% owner occupied.
The electoral balance is thus utterly transformed by the major boundary changes. Where Reading West would have been a key Labour target seat, Reading West & Mid Berkshire becomes a seat they might only dream of winning in the most exceptional landslide election.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 18.7% 309/575
Owner occupied 71.1% 151/575
Private rented 16.1% 379/575
Social rented 12.8% 393/575
White 85.8% 348/575
Black 3.4% 173/575
Asian 6.0% 241/575
Managerial & professional 40.1% 110/575
Routine & Semi-routine 19.7% 430/575
Degree level 36.0% 184/575
No qualifications 14.9% 425/575
Students 5.5% 299/575
General Election 2019: Reading West
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Alok Sharma 24,393 48.4 –0.5
Labour Rachel Eden 20,276 40.2 –3.1
Liberal Democrats Meri O'Connell 4,460 8.9 +3.0
Green Jamie Whitham 1,263 2.5 +0.6
C Majority 4,117 8.2 +2.6
Turnout 50,392 67.9 -1.6
Conservative hold
Swing 1.3 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Reading West and Mid Berkshire consists of
62.3% of Reading West
14.4% of Newbury
13.8% of Wokingham
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_352_Reading%20West%20and%20Mid%20Berkshire_Landscape.pdf
Notional result 2019 (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 28078 | 56.8% |
| Lab | 11320 | 22.9% |
| LD | 8356 | 16.9% |
| Grn | 1690 | 3.4% |
| Majority | 16758 | 33.9% |