| Surrey Heath | |
| Parliament: | uk |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Type: | County |
| Electorate: | 70,825 (2023)[1] |
| Mp: | Al Pinkerton |
| Party: | Liberal Democrats |
| Region: | England |
| County: | Surrey |
| Borough: | Surrey Heath |
Surrey Heath is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Al Pinkerton, a Liberal Democrat. The Home counties suburban constituency is in the London commuter belt, on the outskirts of Greater London. Surrey Heath is in the north west of Surrey and borders the counties of Berkshire and Hampshire.
The seat was created under the Fourth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies in 1997 from the majority of North West Surrey, a seat that was abolished, and smaller parts of Woking and Guildford, seats that remained.
On its creation, Nick Hawkins was elected to parliament as Surrey Heath's MP, after Michael Grylls, who had in 1992 achieved a majority of 28,392, retired.[2] One of Hawkins' opponents for selection was future Speaker John Bercow, selected for Buckingham the same day.[3]
In 1999 then-party chairman Michael Ancram intervened to prevent a move to deselect Hawkins following local party disquiet about him leaving his wife of 20 years for a local councillor.[4] [5] In 2004, the Conservative constituency association, then the richest in the country, deselected Hawkins for the next election, following accusations of racism, in the hope of obtaining an MP of cabinet calibre.[6] [7]
Until the 2019 general election, the constituency was generally considered to be one of the Conservative Party's safest seats. But the 2019 election saw an unexpected 11.1% swing to the Liberal Democrats' candidate Al Pinkerton, who secured the second-highest second place since the constituency's creation, with Labour recording their lowest share of the vote since the seat's creation.
Surrey Heath as a seat and heath occupies much of the northwest corner of the county. From its inception in 1997 until 2024, it covered the Borough of Surrey Heath and the Guildford wards knows as 'The Ashes'.:[8]
Since the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, enacted by the Parliamentary Constituencies Order 2023, the constituency from the 2024 United Kingdom general election has the following wards:
Surrey Heath Borough - all wards.
Guildford Borough - Normandy and Pirbright. (The two wards were amalgamated into one two-member ward, after the review began, so figure individually in the review and Statutory Instrument.)
The electorate is cut by one ward to bring it within the permitted range: by transferring the three Guildford Borough wards which constitute Ash to a new seat, Godalming and Ash; and adding the two small wards of Normandy and Pirbright that lay in the Woking seat.
70% of homes were detached or semi-detached at the 2011 census. The detached percentage (45.2%) was at that time the second highest in the South East, behind the New Forest.[9] The area is well connected to London Heathrow Airport, IT, telecommunications and logistics centres of the M3 and M4 corridors, and to the military towns of Aldershot and Sandhurst. Farnborough, with its civil, private aviation base with certain military uses, is also nearby, as is Blackbushe Airport.
Workless claimants, registered jobseekers, were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 1.7% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.[10]
According to the British Election Study, it was the most right-wing seat in the UK as at 2014.[11]
Constituents voted to leave the European Union in 2016 but an analysis of YouGov polling by Focaldata suggested that subsequently support for Remain rose from 48% in the 2016 Referendum to 50.2% in August 2018.[12]
Prior to the 2024 General Election, Surrey Heath was numerically the Liberal Democrats' 58th target seat (before boundary changes),[13] and in the 2023 local elections the Lib Dems had ended 49 years of continuous Conservative administration by taking overall control of Surrey Heath Council[14] and had also pushed the Conservatives to two very poor results on Guildford Borough Council in the local election years of 2019 and 2023.[15]
North West Surrey, Guildford and Woking prior to 1997
| Election | Member | Party | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Nick Hawkins | Conservative | ||
| 2005 | Michael Gove | Conservative | ||
| 2024 | Al Pinkerton | Liberal Democrats | ||
| 2019 notional result[16] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Vote | % | |
| 30,161 | 57.9 | ||
| 14,609 | 28.0 | ||
| 4,888 | 9.4 | ||
| 1,845 | 3.5 | ||
| Others | 628 | 1.2 | |
| Turnout | 52,131 | 73.6 | |
| Electorate | 70,825 | ||