County Somerset Major settlements Weston-super-Mare Number of members One | Electorate 78,778 (December 2010) Created 1918 | |
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Member of parliament John Penrose (Conservative) | ||
Weston-super-Mare is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by John Penrose, a Conservative.
Contents
History
The seat was created under the Representation of the People Act 1918. Its forerunner was the North Somerset division created in 1885.
The by-election of 1934 was triggered by the acceptance of the appointment of Lord Erskine to the position of Governor of Madras Presidency, that of 1958 by the death of Ian Orr-Ewing and that of 1969 by the death of David Webster following an accident.
The seat has alternated in representation between 1992 and 2005: in the election of 1997 the fresh Conservative candidate, Margaret Daly failed to hold the seat which led to Weston Super Mare's first marginal majority since 1923, obtained by Brian Cotter, a Liberal Democrat. Since this date all of the majorities have been lower than 3,000 votes, remaining strongly marginal and seeing in 2005 Cotter lose the seat to John Penrose.
In terms of other parties, the last occasion on which the Labour candidate achieved second place was at the 1970 general election.
Boundaries
1918-1950: The Urban Districts of Clevedon, Portishead, and Weston-super-Mare, and the Rural Districts of Axbridge and Long Ashton.
1950-1983: The Municipal Borough of Weston-super-Mare, the Urban District of Clevedon, the Rural District of Axbridge, and in the Rural District of Long Ashton the civil parishes of Kenn, Kingston Seymour, and Yatton.
1983-1997: The District of Woodspring wards of Banwell, Blagdon, Churchill, Congresbury, Hutton, Locking, Weston-super-Mare Ashcombe, Weston-super-Mare East, Weston-super-Mare Ellenborough, Weston-super-Mare North, Weston-super-Mare South, Weston-super-Mare Uphill, Weston-super-Mare West, Winscombe, Wrington, and Yatton.
1997-2010: The District of Woodspring wards of Banwell, Blagdon, Churchill, Congresbury, Hutton, Locking, Weston-super-Mare Ashcombe, Weston-super-Mare East, Weston-super-Mare Ellenborough, Weston-super-Mare North, Weston-super-Mare South, Weston-super-Mare Uphill, Weston-super-Mare West, and Winscombe.
2010–present: The District of North Somerset wards of Banwell and Winscombe, Blagdon and Churchill, Congresbury, Hutton and Locking, Kewstoke, Weston-super-Mare Central, Weston-super-Mare Clarence and Uphill, Weston-super-Mare East, Weston-super-Mare Milton and Old Worle, Weston-super-Mare North Worle, Weston-super-Mare South, Weston-super-Mare South Worle, and Weston-super-Mare West.
The constituency covers the southern half of North Somerset Unitary Authority, including its only town, Weston-super-Mare on the Bristol Channel.
History of boundaries
Under the first periodic review the Weston constituency lost Portishead, Gordano, Nailsea, Backwell and Long Ashton wards/areas to North Somerset constituency.
Under the third periodic review the Weston constituency lost Berrow, Brent Knoll, Axbridge, Cheddar, and Mark and Wedmore wards to Wells, and Clevedon to Woodspring which temporarily took the place of North Somerset until 2010.
Under the fourth periodic review the Weston constituency lost Yatton and Wrington to Woodspring.
Parliament accepted the Boundary Commission's Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies by making slight changes to this constituency for the 2010 general election, namely the loss of only 181 electors in Butcombe (in the ward of Wrington, no longer in the seat at all) to North Somerset.
Constituency profile
The town grew as a relatively late-Victorian affluent resort with many green spaces and gardens south of the headland, Sand Point which denotes the sandier beach of the town and of Burnham on Sea relative to northerly shores such as at Clevedon.
Work in tourism and visitor attractions is seasonal but other areas of the economy locally, such as customer services operations, freight, haulage and distribution, social, care, elderly and health services as well as retail, manufacturing and materials/foods processing provide employment. Workless claimants who were registered jobseekers were in November 2012 lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 3.5% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.