Rochester and Strood (UK Parliament constituency)

Coordinates: 51°24′N 0°30′E / 51.400°N 0.500°E

Rochester and Strood
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Rochester and Strood in Kent.
Location of Kent within England.
County	Kent
Electorate	75,001 (December 2010)[1]
Current constituency
Created	2010
Member of parliament	Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative)
Number of members	One
Created from	Medway
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	South East England

Rochester and Strood is a constituency^{[n 1]} represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Kelly Tolhurst, a Conservative.^{[n 2]}

Description

Rochester and Strood constituency is an urban area in north Kent situated alongside the River Medway, which joins the Thames Estuary, becoming a wide salty and sea-like waterway at its northern river mouth. It spans two of the five Medway Towns: Rochester and Strood, and the villages in Strood Rural Ward and on the Hoo Peninsula.

Medway (or Medway Towns) is the collective name for the municipal area, one of the largest conurbations in South East England outside London that encompasses the towns of Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham, Kent, Rochester, Strood and a surrounding narrow buffer: included among these are various rural villages on the Hoo Peninsula and on the west bank of the River Medway.

Chatham town centre is an important sub-regional shopping centre and in the 2010s benefited from a £1 billion regeneration programme transforming it into Medway's central business district. Rochester and Strood Riversides are the names of large urban brownfield sites, and are one of the main development projects in the Thames Gateway. A substantial new mixed use developments will include some 3,000 plus new mixed tenure homes, offices and shops, two new hotels, restaurants, river walks and open spaces and links to historic Rochester.^[2]

History

The Rochester constituency has ancient origins dating to the 16th century, but it has seen many changes in the 20th century. From 1885–1918 the wider area was split between Chatham, Gillingham and the "old", rural, Medway constituency. The Chatham seat joined Rochester to form Rochester and Chatham in 1950, which formed the core of Medway in 1983.

When the boroughs of Rochester upon Medway and Gillingham merged in 1998 to form, then confusingly, a unitary authority named Medway, the parliamentary constituency of Medway only covered part of the new borough, so since the boundary changes before the 2010 election the seat was renamed to more accurately reflect the area of Rochester and Strood which it now covers.

The seat of Rochester and Chatham, followed by Medway and then Rochester and Strood, had elected members of the party which won the popular vote in the UK at every election since 1959. This had meant that from 1959 to 2014 the area had always been represented by a member of the governing party, apart from the brief period between the February and October elections in 1974 (since Labour formed a minority government in February despite the Conservatives winning the popular vote).

In 2014, the sitting Conservative MP Mark Reckless defected to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), becoming the second MP in a matter of weeks to do so. Reckless resigned his seat, triggering a by-election in which he stood as the UKIP candidate. He won the by-election by just under 3,000 votes and became UKIP's second MP after Douglas Carswell. At the 2015 general election, Reckless was defeated by Conservative candidate Kelly Tolhurst, who had also fought the by-election. Tolhurst secured a majority of over 7,000 votes, meaning the Rochester area once again had an MP on the government benches.

Boundaries

The electoral wards incorporated within the parliamentary seat are as follows:

• Cuxton and Halling, Peninsula, River, Rochester East, Rochester South and Horsted, Rochester West, Strood North, Strood Rural and Strood South^[3]

Constituency profile

Rochester and Strood comprises a population whose earnings are close to the national average income,^[4][5] low unemployment compared to the national average (3.5% at the end of 2012)^[6] and can be considered aside from significant sources of employment, professions and trades in Kent as part of the London Commuter Belt. Levels of reliance on social housing are similar to most of the region in this seat.^[4]

Members of Parliament

Election		Member[7]	Party
	2010	Mark Reckless	Conservative
	2014 by-election		UKIP
	2015	Kelly Tolhurst	Conservative

Elections

Elections in the 2010s

General Election 2015: Rochester and Strood[8]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Kelly Tolhurst	23,142	44.1	-5.1
	UKIP	Mark Reckless	16,009	30.5	N/A
	Labour	Naushabah Khan	10,396	19.8	-8.7
	Green	Clive Gregory	1,516	2.9	+1.4
	Liberal Democrat	Prue Bray	1,251	2.4	-13.9
	TUSC	Dan Burn	202	0.4	N/A
Majority			7,133	13.6
Turnout			52,516	66.5
	Conservative gain from UKIP		Swing	-17.8

Rochester and Strood by-election, 20 November 2014[9][10]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	UKIP	Mark Reckless	16,867	42.1	N/A
	Conservative	Kelly Tolhurst	13,947	34.8	−14.4
	Labour	Naushabah Khan	6,713	16.8	−11.7
	Green	Clive Gregory	1,692	4.2	+2.7
	Liberal Democrat	Geoff Juby	349	0.9	−15.5
	Monster Raving Loony	Hairy Knorm Davidson	151	0.4	N/A
	Independent	Stephen Goldsborough	69	0.2	N/A
	People Before Profit	Nick Long	69	0.2	N/A
	Britain First	Jayda Fransen	56	0.1	N/A
	Independent	Mike Barker	54	0.1	N/A
	Independent	Charlotte Rose	43	0.1	N/A
	Patriotic Socialist Party	Dave Osborn	33	0.1	N/A
	Independent	Christopher Challis	22	0.1	N/A
Majority			2,920	7.3
Turnout			40,065	50.6	−14.3
	UKIP gain from Conservative		Swing	N/A

General Election 2010: Rochester and Strood[11][12]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Mark Reckless	23,604	49.2	+6.6
	Labour	Teresa Murray	13,651	28.5	−13.7
	Liberal Democrat	Geoff Juby	7,800	16.3	+3.9
	English Democrats	Ron Sands	2,182	4.5	N/A
	Green	Simon Marchant	734	1.5	N/A
Majority			9,953	20.7
Turnout			47,971	64.9	+2.5
	Conservative gain from Labour		Swing	+9.8

See also

• List of Parliamentary constituencies in Kent

Notes and references

Notes

1. A county constituency (for the purposes of election expenses and type of returning officer)
2. 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.

References

1. "Electorate Figures – Boundary Commission for England". 2011 Electorate Figures. Boundary Commission for England. 4 March 2011. Retrieved 13 March 2011.
2. Borough of Medway – Planning Policy Statements
3. 2010 post-revision map non-metropolitan areas and unitary authorities of England
4. 2001 Census
5. 2011 census interactive maps
6. Unemployment claimants by constituency The Guardian
7. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "R" (part 2)
8. "Election Data 2015". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
9. "By-election date set after MP Mark Reckless defects to Ukip". Telegraph.co.uk. 14 October 2014. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
10. "UKIP's Reckless wins Rochester seat". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
11. "Election Data 2010". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
12. "Rochester & Strood". BBC News. 7 May 2010.

External links

• Rochester and Strood on UKPollingReport