County West Midlands Major settlements Solihull Number of members One | Electorate 77,354 (December 2010) Created 1945 | |
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Member of parliament Julian Knight (Conservative) | ||
Solihull is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Julian Knight, a Conservative.
Contents
Boundaries
1945-1974: The Urban District of Solihull.
1974-1983: The County Borough of Solihull.
1983-present: The Metropolitan Borough of Solihull wards of Elmdon, Lyndon, Olton, St Alphege, Shirley East, Shirley South, Shirley West, and Silhill.
The constituency is one of two covering the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull. It covers the town of Solihull itself, as well as Shirley and Olton. It is a largely well-off, residential area, in the south-east of the West Midlands conurbation.
History
The Conservative Party held the seat since it was established in 1945 until 2005.
In the 2005 general election it was won by the Liberal Democrats, with Lorely Burt beating the incumbent John Taylor by a majority of 279 votes. Burt won the seat again at the 2010 general election, this time by just 175 votes following two recounts. Since 2015 the seat has been represented by Julian Knight, who holds the seat with a majority of 12,902 beating incumbent Lorely Burt.
Constituency profile
The Solihull area is home to some of the West Midlands's more affluent residents and includes a high proportion of Birmingham workers and the managerial classes in manufacturing, retail, industry and the public sector. There are smaller villages and undeveloped green belt areas in its peripheral countryside, though the seat is primarily suburban and middle-class, with low levels of deprivation throughout. Workless claimants stood at only 2% of the population in November 2012, below every regional average in the UK. In the study of that date, only three of the 59 West Midlands seats had a lower proportion of registered jobseekers.
Following boundary changes, the northernmost tip of the seat now contains the point in England furthest from the coast in any direction.