County Gloucestershire Electorate 77,937 (December 2010) Created 1832 Member of parliament Alex Chalk (Conservatism) Number of members 1 | Population 104,867 (2011 census) Major settlements Cheltenham European Parliament constituency South West England Major settlement Cheltenham | |
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Cheltenham /ˈtʃɛlʔ.nəm/ or /ˈtʃɛlt.nəm/ is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 7 May 2015 by Alex Chalk, a Conservative. As with all constituencies, the constituency elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election at least every five years.
Contents
Boundaries
1918-1983: The Municipal Borough of Cheltenham, and the Urban District of Charlton Kings.
1983-1997: The Borough of Cheltenham, and the Borough of Tewkesbury wards of Leckhampton with Up Hatherley, Prestbury St Mary's, and Prestbury St Nicolas.
1997-2010: The Borough of Cheltenham wards of All Saints, Charlton Kings, College, Hatherley and The Reddings, Hesters Way, Lansdown, Park, Pittville, St Mark's, St Paul’s, and St Peter's.
2010–present: The Borough of Cheltenham wards of All Saints, Battledown, Benhall and The Reddings, Charlton Kings, Charlton Park, College, Hesters Way, Lansdown, Leckhampton, Oakley, Park, Pittville, St Mark’s, St Paul’s, St Peter’s, Springbank, Up Hatherley, and Warden Hill.
The seat covers the town of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire with a slightly smaller, different area to the borough of the same name. It is bordered by the Tewkesbury and Cotswolds seats.
Constituency profile
Famous for its racecourse which hosts in March the annual Cheltenham Gold Cup, a long-established girls' school and right at the edge of the Cotswold Hills, Cheltenham has a large tourism sector. GE Aviation is a large employer and GCHQ, the government communications centre, is here, so numbers of highly skilled workers and professionals (47.5% in the year ended September 2014) are well above the national average (44.6%). One of the West of England's most upmarket towns, the few neighbourhoods of medium levels in the Index of Multiple Deprivation are almost wholly in Hester's Way ward which has the most social housing. About 10% of the electorate are students at the University of Gloucestershire just outside the compact town centre. A Liberal Democrat served the seat from 1992 when their candidate Nigel Jones overturned four decades of Conservative MPs to 2015 when the Tories regained the seat.
History
Cheltenham borough constituency was created in the Great Reform Act of 1832 and has returned nine Liberals (or Liberal Democrats) and nine Conservatives to Parliament since that time, along with one independent.
A Conservative served the constituency from 1950 until 1992. The Conservatives' campaign in the 1992 general election following the Poll Tax Riots saw a local party member's racist remarks about their own candidate, John Taylor, of Afro-Caribbean descent. Taylor lost the election to Nigel Jones of the Liberal Democrats.
In 2000, Jones was nearly murdered in a horrific incident at one of his MP's surgeries; a man attacked him and an assistant with a samurai sword. His colleague, Andrew Pennington, was killed in the attack. Jones was made a life peer in 2005. The Liberal Democrats held Cheltenham in the 2005 election when Martin Horwood won the election and held it again in 2010 but lost when the Conservatives retook the seat in 2015.
Election in the 1940s
General Election 1939/40:
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1940. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place from 1939 and by the end of this year, the following candidates had been selected;
Elections in the 1910s
General Election 1914/15:
A general election was due to take place by the end of 1915. By the autumn of 1914, the following candidates had been adopted to contest that election.
Due to the outbreak of war, the election never took place.