Heywood and Middleton North

Heywood and Middleton North is a constituency in Greater Manchester represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Elsie Blundell of the Labour Party.

Before the 2024 general election, the constituency was known as Heywood and Middleton. The 2023 review of Westminster constituencies proposed that two of the Middleton wards be included in a new constituency named Blackley and Middleton South and this seat be renamed Heywood and Middleton North.

Constituency profile

The constituency covers the west half of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, including the towns of Heywood and half of the town of Middleton, and some of the western fringes of Rochdale itself such as Castleton, and Spotland and Falinge. Norden and Bamford are strong Conservative areas, with several million-pound houses, but all other wards are mostly favourable to Labour. The part of Middleton in this constituency includes the large overspill council estate of Langley.

The 2024 boundary changes added the ward of Spotland and Falinge, a ward close to Rochdale town centre, to the constituency, in place of East and South Middleton, which included the relatively affluent area of Alkrington Garden Village which were added to the new Blackley and Middleton South constituency.

Electoral Calculus categorises the seat as a "Somewhere" demographic, indicating socially conservative, economically soft left views and strong support for Brexit.

History

The constituency was created in 1983 from parts of the former seats of Heywood and Royton and Middleton and Prestwich and was held by the Labour Party since then until the 2019 Election.

From 1983 until his retirement in 1997, the MP was Jim Callaghan, not to be confused with a former Prime Minister with the same name.

In a 2014 by-election UKIP came within 617 votes of winning the seat, which was on the same day as the Clacton by-election, and in 2015 it produced one of their largest results in the country. Subsequently, the constituency heavily voted to Leave in the EU referendum and swung to the Conservatives for the first time in 2019, in line with many other Leave-voting Labour seats in the North and Midlands.

Under the 2023 boundary changes, it was estimated that the newly named seat would notionally have been held by Labour on a slim majority.

:East Middleton and South Middleton wards were transferred to the new constituency of Blackley and Middleton South, partly compensated by the addition of the Spotland and Falinge ward from Rochdale.