County Essex Created 2010 Member of parliament Stephen Metcalfe | Electorate 71,819 (December 2010) European Parliament constituency East of England Number of members 1 | |
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Created from Basildon, Billericay and Thurrock Replaced by Basildon, Billericay, Thurrock | ||
South Basildon and East Thurrock is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 creation by Stephen Metcalfe, a Conservative.
Contents
History
Its predecessor seat, Basildon, was a much-referenced bellwether seat, having consistently voted for the most successful party (in terms of number of seats) in each election since its 1974 creation. In 2010, South Basildon and East Thurrock maintained this tradition by electing a Conservative MP, Stephen Metcalfe. The average Essex swing voters to which either party needs to appeal to win an election (matching the national outcome since 1966), have been represented by the combination of the old Billericay seat and its southern-part, Basildon replacements, this being the latest of these.
Before 1974 the area came within the older version of the Billericay constituency and, for just five years before 1950, this area was the eastern part of the Thurrock seat – from 1885–1945 the area was within the South East Essex seat. From 1832–1885 the area was in the South Essex seat.
Boundaries
Following their review of parliamentary representation in Essex, the Boundary Commission for England made a number of radical changes to existing constituencies to allow for an extra seat to be awarded to the county.
Despite its long name, this new constituency is to the greatest extent the successor to the Basildon constituency.
The Basildon constituency that existed after 1997 was never wholly within the Basildon district, nor even contained the whole of the Basildon urban area, but it extended south into the Thurrock council area to take in towns such as Stanford-le-Hope and Corringham.
This new seat retains all of the Thurrock wards, loses some areas around central Basildon, and replaces them with Pitsea to the east of Basildon. Additionally, the ward of East Tilbury is added from the Thurrock constituency.
The electoral wards in the seat are:
Constituency profile
Economically the seat has a very similar proportion of jobseekers to the national average seat 3.8%, at 4.0%, (based on The Guardian's November 2012 study). This is higher than the average for the Eastern counties of 3.1% but significantly lower than Bedford, Great Yarmouth, Peterborough, Luton South, Rochford and Southend East, and Thurrock seats.