Electorate 76,697 (December 2010) | Population 97,267 (2011 census) Created 1997 European Parliament constituency South East England Number of members 1 | |
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Major settlements | ||
Arundel and South Downs /ˈærᵿndəl ənd saʊθ daʊnz/ is a constituency created in 1997, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Nick Herbert of the Conservative Party.
Contents
Boundaries
The constituency contains the town of Arundel and villages and hamlets within the South Downs national park boundaries or encircled by the park, the largest of which are Petworth, Pulborough and Steyning (/stɛnɪŋ/).
Following their review of parliamentary boundaries in West Sussex which Parliament approved in 2007, the Boundary Commission for England formed new constituencies as a consequence of abolishing tge seat of Arundel. First contested in 2010 the seat was constituted as follows:
In their recommendations, the Boundary Commission for England mooted the name Chanctonbury after uninhabited Chanctonbury Ring, an ancient hill fort at its centre. This name was rejected during the local inquiry process at which the current name was chosen.
History
The 2015 result gave the victor for the seat an increased margin versus the runner up relative to the previous election — at 44.8% of votes over the closest runner-up, the majority is approximately double the smallest majority since the 1997 formation of the seat. It made the seat the 8th safest of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority.
The incumbent Howard Flight MP in 2005 had national media coverage in the run-up to the general election of that year due to his deselection requested by the party leader for membership of Conservative Way Forward, lobbying for spending cuts to be more severe than set out in the small cuts in the 2005 manifesto. Flight hinted his preferred cuts would be as implemented by a Conservative government in his view. He had represented the constituency since its creation at the 1997 general election. Anne Marie Morris, Laura Sandys and Nick Herbert put themselves forward for nomination as replacement candidates. The chosen candidate, Nick Herbert, won the seat at the election. Morris and Sandys became MPs elsewhere in 2010.
Arundel and South Downs and its predecessor seats have in the 20th century been a Conservative Party stronghold save that the minor contributory Horsham seat to the area's electorate saw victory by 8.6% of the vote over the Labour Party in 1966, followed statistically by a next-most-marginal victory again with the Labour Party as runner-up, in 1950, of 14.4%.
Between 1974 and 1983, much of the South Downs area was part of the Shoreham constituency, with the town of Arundel remaining in the Arundel constituency.
Prior to 1974, the seat was largely part of the Arundel and Shoreham constituency.