County Greater London Created 2010 European Parliament constituency London | Electorate 62,784 (December 2010) Created from Kensington and Chelsea Member of parliament Victoria Borwick | |
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Created from Kensington North & Kensington South Replaced by Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea | ||
Kensington is a constituency in Greater London created in 2010 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Victoria Borwick, a Conservative. An earlier version of the seat existed between 1974 and 1997 covered by this article.
Contents
Boundaries
The constituency formed for the 2010 election comprises the northern and central parts of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in and around Kensington and has electoral wards:
From 1974 to 1983 the constituency comprised electoral wards:
From 1983 to 1997 the constituency comprised electoral wards:
First creation
The first incarnation of a Kensington seat in Westminster was for the February 1974 general election and which was abolished for the 1997 general election. The seat was mostly replaced by Regent's Park and Kensington North which was until its 2010 abolition served by Labour MPs, specifically, won three times during the Blair Ministry, and partially replaced by Kensington and Chelsea which was held by Malcolm Rifkind (Conservative) until his resignation at the 2015 general election.
The old seat returned Conservative MPs from 1974 up to and including its last general election in 1992. At its sole by-election in 1988 the seat was won by its smallest majority, a highly marginal 3.4% — a by-election which saw a majority turnout and a Labour splinter party candidate, for the Social Democratic Party (UK, 1988) achieve fourth place attracting 5% of the vote yet standing in the year of the formal amalgamation of the main SDP splinter group with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats who stood as the Social and Liberal Democrats and seven years after the formation of the official SDP-Liberal Alliance.
Second creation
The constituency was recreated by adopting the Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies of the Boundary Commission at the 2010 general election, combining elements of the two constituencies.
The 2015 result was a narrower result than 2010 and gave the seat the 126th most marginal majority of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority. The runner-up party remained the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats' share of the vote fell by 13.9% to 5.6% of votes cast.
Constituency profile
Kensington is mostly residential — housing varies between expensive apartments with manicured gardens in architecturally stunning squares or terraces and, by contrast, North Kensington and Ladbroke Grove have for the mostpart dense social housing, tower blocks in output areas with high rankings in the 2000-compiled Index of Multiple Deprivation. Kensington High Street is an upmarket shopping hub, Kensington Palace is the residence of several members of the Royal Family, and Kensington Palace Gardens is the site of many embassies and a few private residences for the super-rich. South Kensington also borders Hyde Park and includes Science Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert.
Earls Court, Brompton, Holland Park and Notting Hill have their own characters. Earls Court comparatively more run-down and cheap than its richer neighbour and while it is undergoing rapid gentrification and includes its own areas for the super-rich, it has still a minority of run-down hotels and bedsits around Earls Court Exhibition Centre, which extends into the marginal Hammersmith seat. Notting Hill is an affluent and trendy area which hosts the Notting Hill Carnival, led by the area's vibrant Afro-Caribbean community. It is a highly cosmopolitan area, but having fallen on hard times in the twentieth century, associated with dingy flats and multiple-occupancy homes but has undergone gentrification; old Victorian private houses in these areas similarly high as Fulham in price.