Castle Point (constituency)

Castle Point is a constituency in Essex represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Dame Rebecca Harris, a Conservative.

Constituency profile

The seat is located in Essex and is mostly coterminous with the Castle Point local authority area, which takes its name from Hadleigh Castle and Canvey Point. The constituency's largest town is Canvey Island with a population of around 38,000. It also includes the towns of South Benfleet, Thundersley and Hadleigh. Canvey Island was a popular seaside resort but, like many coastal towns in England, has experienced economic decline in recent decades. The town is an important centre for the petrochemical industry. Canvey Island has high levels of deprivation whilst the mainland areas are generally affluent.

Compared to national averages, residents of Castle Point are older, have similar levels of income and professional employment and high levels of homeownership. The constituency has one of the lowest proportions of university graduates of any constituency in the country. White people make up 95% of the population. but resigned the whip shortly afterwards and sat as an Independent MP. In the 2010 election, Spink lost in Castle Point to the Conservative candidate, Rebecca Harris.

At the 2017 election Castle Point had the largest Conservative majority, at 42.2%, of any constituency to have elected a Labour MP in the 1997–2010 government. This was increased even further, to 60.1%, at the 2019 election. In 2024, the Conservative vote was more than halved with Reform UK taking over 30%, reducing the majority to just 8%.

Boundaries

1983–2024

Since its creation in 1983 until the 2024 general election, the Castle Point constituency was contiguous with the boundaries of the district council of the same name. The seat is one of only a very few that were unchanged by the boundary reviews which came into effect in 1997 and 2010, having seen population growth in line with the average seat (which is slightly larger), including development in the designated development plans of the Thames Gateway.

Current

Further to the 2023 review of Westminster constituencies, which came into effect for the 2024 general election, the composition of the constituency was expanded slightly to meet the electorate size requirements, with the transfer in from South Basildon and East Thurrock of polling district DN of the Pitsea South East ward in the Borough of Basildon - equivalent to the civil parish of Bowers Gifford and North Benfleet.

Members of Parliament

{| class="wikitable"

!colspan="2"|Election!!Member

!Party

| style="color:inherit;background-color: " |

| 1983

| Sir Bernard Braine

| Conservative