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Surrey Heath is a constituency[n 1] represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Michael Gove, a Conservative who was the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities until July 2022, and returned to the office on October 25th 2022.[n 2] 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.

Surrey Heath
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Surrey Heath in Surrey
Location of Surrey within England
County	Surrey
Electorate	78,453 (December 2010)
Major settlements	Camberley, Lightwater and Ash
Current constituency
Created	1997
Member of Parliament	Michael Gove (Conservative)
Created from	North West Surrey, Guildford and Woking

History

The seat was created in 1997 from the most part of North West Surrey, a seat that was abolished, and smaller parts of Woking and Guildford, seats that remain.

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.[1] One of Hawkins' opponents for selection was future Speaker John Bercow, selected for Buckingham the same day.[2]

In 1999 then-party chairman Michael Ancram was intervened to prevent a move to deselect Hawkins following local party disquiet about him leaving his wife of 20 years for a local councillor.[3][4] 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.[5][6]

The MP since 2005, Michael Gove, served in three Conservative governments across multiple departments between 2010 and 2022, lasting 4 years as Secretary of State for Education until 2014, and most recently holding office as the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities from 2021 until 2022.

Boundaries

Surrey Heath occupies the northwest corner of the county. It has electoral wards:

• Bagshot, Bisley, Chobham, Frimley, Frimley Green, Heatherside, Lightwater, Mytchett and Deepcut, Old Dean, Parkside, St Michaels, St Pauls, Town, Watchett, West End, and Windlesham in the Surrey Heath District
• Ash South and Tongham, Ash Vale, and Ash Wharf in the Borough of Guildford.

The largest town[n 3] is Camberley. The Boundary Commission made no boundary changes for Surrey Heath in the Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies before the 2010 general election.

The large village of Ash with Ash Vale and smaller one of Tongham are contiguous, similar to Frimley and Frimley Green.

Constituency profile

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.[7] 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.[8]

According to the British Election Study, it was the most right-wing seat in the UK as of 2014.[9]

Constituents on balance voted to leave the European Union in 2016 but an analysis of YouGov polling by Focaldata suggested support for remain rose from 48% then to 50.2% in August 2018.[10]

Until the 2019 general election, the constituency was seen as one of the Conservative Party's safest seats. This election saw an unexpected 16% swing to the Liberal Democrats' candidate Alasdair Pinkerton, polling the highest second place since the constituency's creation, with Labour recording the lowest share of the vote since the seat's creation.

Surrey Heath is seen as the Liberal Democrats' 58th target seat,[11] having taken the Conservatives from a majority of 35 on the local council to a majority of one at the 2019 election[12] and pushed the Conservatives to the lowest number of councillors on Guildford Borough Council since its creation in 1973.[13]

Members of Parliament

Election		Member[14]	Party
	1997	Nick Hawkins	Conservative
	2005	Michael Gove	Conservative

Elections

Elections in the 2010s

2019 general election: Surrey Heath[15]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Michael Gove	34,358	58.6	–5.6
	Liberal Democrats	Alasdair Pinkerton	16,009	27.3	+16.5
	Labour	Brahma Mohanty	5,407	9.2	–11.9
	Green	Sharon Galliford	2,252	3.8	–0.1
	UKIP	David Roe	628	1.1	New
Majority			18,349	31.3	–11.8
Turnout			58,654	72.1	+0.5
	Conservative hold		Swing	–11.0

2017 general election: Surrey Heath[16]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Michael Gove	37,118	64.2	+4.3
	Labour	Laween Atroshi	12,175	21.1	+9.9
	Liberal Democrats	Ann-Marie Barker	6,271	10.8	+1.7
	Green	Sharon Galliford	2,258	3.9	–0.5
Majority			24,943	43.1	–2.5
Turnout			57,822	71.6	+3.1
	Conservative hold		Swing	–2.8

2015 general election: Surrey Heath[17]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Michael Gove	32,582	59.9	+2.3
	UKIP	Paul Chapman[18]	7,778	14.3	+8.0
	Labour	Laween Atroshi	6,100	11.2	+1.0
	Liberal Democrats	Ann-Marie Barker	4,937	9.1	–16.8
	Green	Kimberley Lawson[19]	2,400	4.4	New
	Christian	Juliana Brimicombe	361	0.7	New
	Independent	Bob and Roberta Smith[20]	273	0.5	New
Majority			24,804	45.6	+13.8
Turnout			54,431	68.5	–1.5
	Conservative hold		Swing

2010 general election: Surrey Heath[21]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Michael Gove	31,326	57.6	+6.1
	Liberal Democrats	Alan Hilliar	14,037	25.8	–3.0
	Labour	Matt Willey	5,552	10.2	–6.5
	UKIP	Mark Stroud	3,432	6.3	+3.3
Majority			17,289	31.8	+9.1
Turnout			54,347	70.0	+7.1
	Conservative hold		Swing	+4.5

Elections in the 2000s

2005 general election: Surrey Heath[22]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Michael Gove	24,642	51.5	+1.8
	Liberal Democrats	Rosalyn Harper	13,797	28.8	+3.1
	Labour	Chris Lowe	7,989	16.7	–4.7
	UKIP	Steve Smith	1,430	3.0	–0.3
Majority			10,845	22.7	–1.3
Turnout			47,858	62.9	+3.4
	Conservative hold		Swing	–0.7

2001 general election: Surrey Heath[23]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Nick Hawkins	22,401	49.7	–1.9
	Liberal Democrats	Mark Lelliott	11,582	25.7	+3.9
	Labour	James Norman	9,640	21.4	+0.4
	UKIP	Nigel Hunt	1,479	3.3	+2.1
Majority			10,819	24.0	–5.8
Turnout			45,102	59.5	–14.6
	Conservative hold		Swing

Elections in the 1990s

1997 general election: Surrey Heath[24]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Nick Hawkins	28,231	51.6
	Liberal Democrats	David Newman	11,944	21.8
	Labour	Susan Jones	11,511	21.0
	Referendum	John Gale	2,385	4.4
	UKIP	Richard Squire	653	1.2
Majority			16,287	29.8
Turnout			54,724	74.1
	Conservative win (new seat)

See also

• List of parliamentary constituencies in Surrey

Notes

References

Sources

• Election result, 2010 (BBC)
• Election result, 2005 (BBC)
• Election results, 1997 - 2001 (BBC)
• Election results, 1997 - 2001 (Election Demon)
• Election results, 1997 - 2010 (Guardian)

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