List of Parliamentary constituencies in Leicestershire and Rutland

The ceremonial county of Leicestershire (which includes the unitary authority of Leicester), is divided into 10 Parliamentary constituencies - 3 Borough constituencies and 7 County constituencies. One of these also includes the small historic county of Rutland, which was administratively a district of Leicestershire from 1974 to 1997. Since 1997, Rutland has been a separate unitary authority.

The county of Leicestershire in relation to England

Constituencies
Further information: 2019 United Kingdom general election

  Conservative †   Labour ‡   Liberal Democrat ¤


Name[nb 1] Electorate[1] Majority[2][nb 2] Member of Parliament[2] Nearest opposition[2] Map
Bosworth CC 81,542 26,278 Luke Evans † Rick Middleton‡
Charnwood CC 79,534 22,397 Edward Argar† Gary Godden‡
Harborough CC 80,151 17,278 Neil O'Brien† Celia Hibbert‡
Leicester East BC 78,433 6,019 Claudia Webbe‡ Bhupendra Dave†
Leicester South BC* 77,708 22,675 Jon Ashworth‡ Natalie Neale†
Leicester West BC 64,940 4,212 Liz Kendall‡ Amanda Wright†
Loughborough CC 79,764 7,169 Jane Hunt† Stuart Brady‡
North West Leicestershire CC 78,935 20,400 Andrew Bridgen† Terri Eynon‡
Rutland and Melton CC 82,705 26,924 Alicia Kearns† Andy Thomas‡
South Leicestershire CC 80,520 24,004   Alberto Costa† Tristan Koriya‡

Historic constituencies

In the unreformed House of Commons, Leicestershire and Rutland were represented by two Knights of the Shire each, and the only parliamentary borough was Leicester, which sent two burgesses.

Under the Reform Act 1832, Leicestershire was split into two divisions, North and South, which each elected two members. The Reform Act 1885 redistributed these seats into four single-member divisions: Melton, or Eastern, Loughborough, or Mid, Harborough, or Southern, and Bosworth, or Western.

At the 1918 general election, the four divisions of the county were retained, and the borough of Leicester was split into three single-member constituencies, Leicester East, Leicester South, and Leicester West. From 1950 to 1974 Leicester had four constituencies, these being Leicester North East, Leicester North West, Leicester South East and Leicester South West: the three seat arrangement of South, East and West was reverted to thereafter.

Rutland constituted a constituency on its own until 1918, when it became part of the Rutland and Stamford constituency, with nearby Stamford in Lincolnshire.

In 1983, seats in Leicestershire were redrawn. Rutland was merged with Melton to form Rutland and Melton, with Loughborough, Bosworth, and Harborough remaining as seat names. The new North West Leicestershire constituency was created. A further constituency, Charnwood was created in the north for the 1997 election.

Changes for the 2010 general election

Finalised proposals by the Boundary Commission for England retain the 10 constituencies, with changes to realign constituency boundaries with the boundaries of current local government wards, and to reduce the electoral disparity between constituencies. These changes were implemented at the 2010 United Kingdom general election. They have confirmed that the new constituency which almost corresponds to the existing Blaby is renamed South Leicestershire on the grounds that it does not match the borders of Blaby district, and the village of Blaby itself is not one of the major population centres.

No. on map Constituency 2005 boundaries 2010 boundaries
1 Bosworth
2 Charnwood
3 Harborough
4 Leicester East
5 Leicester South
6 Leicester West
7 Loughborough
8 North West Leicestershire
9 Rutland and Melton
10 South Leicestershire (previously Blaby)

Proposed boundary changes

The Boundary Commission for England submitted their final proposals in respect of the Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster Constituencies (the 2018 review) in September 2018. Although the proposals were immediately laid before Parliament they were not brought forward by the Government for approval. Accordingly, they did not come into effect for the 2019 election which took place on 12 December 2019, and which was contested using the constituency boundaries in place since 2010.

Under the terms of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, the Sixth Review was based on reducing the total number of MPs from 650 to 600 and a strict electoral parity requirement that the electorate of all constituencies should be within a range of 5% either side of the electoral quota.

On 24 March 2020, the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office, Chloe Smith, issued a written statement to Parliament setting out the Government's thinking with regard to parliamentary boundaries.[3] Subsequently, the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020[4] was passed into law on 14 December 2020. This formally removed the duty to implement the 2018 review and set out the framework for future boundary reviews. The Act provided that the number of constituencies should remain at the current level of 650, rather than being reduced to 600, while retaining the requirement that the electorate should be no more than +/- 5% from the electoral quota.

The Act specified that the next review should be completed no later than 1 July 2023 and the Boundary Commission formally launched the 2023 Review on 5 January 2021.[5] See 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies for further details.

Results history

Primary data source: House of Commons research briefing - General election results from 1918 to 2019[6]

2019

The number of votes cast for each political party who fielded candidates in constituencies comprising Leicestershire and Rutland in the 2019 general election were as follows:

Party Votes % Change from 2017 Seats Change from 2017
Conservative 281,019 53.3% 4.4% 7 0
Labour 169,475 32.1% 8.0% 3 0
Liberal Democrats 51,606 9.8% 3.2% 0 0
Greens 18,705 3.5% 1.4% 0 0
Brexit 4,050 0.8% new 0 0
Others 2,835 0.5% 1.8% 0 0
Total 527,690 100.0 10

Percentage votes
Election year 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010 2015 2017 2019
Conservative 50.6 52.0 48.7 36.8 38.1 37.4 41.0 43.9 48.9 53.3
Labour 25.3 27.3 33.0 43.8 41.5 36.1 27.6 30.6 40.1 32.1
Liberal Democrat1 22.7 20.2 17.1 15.1 17.0 20.8 23.3 8.0 6.6 9.8
Green Party - * * * * * 0.4 2.7 2.1 3.5
UKIP - - - * * * 2.6 14.4 1.8 *
Brexit Party - - - - - - - - - 0.8
Other 1.4 0.5 1.2 4.3 3.4 5.8 5.1 0.4 0.5 0.5

11983 & 1987 - SDP-Liberal Alliance

* Included in Other

Seats
Election year 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010 2015 2017 2019
Conservative 8 6 6 5 5 5 7 7 7 7
Labour 1 3 3 5 5 5 3 3 3 3
Total 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

11983 & 1987 - SDP-Liberal Alliance

Maps
  • 1983
  • 1987
  • 1992
  • 1997
  • 2001
  • 2005
  • 2010
  • 2015
  • 2017
  • 2019

Historical representation by party

A cell marked → (with a different colour background to the preceding cell) indicates that the previous MP continued to sit under a new party name.

1885 to 1918

  Conservative   Labour   Liberal   Liberal-Labour

Constituency 1885 1886 88 91 1892 94 1895 1900 04 1906 06 Jan 1910 Dec 1910 13 16
Bosworth Ellis C. McLaren H. McLaren
Harborough Paget Tapling Logan Stanhope Lehmann Logan Harris
Leicester McArthur Whitehead Broadhurst Thomasson Crawshay-Williams Hewart
Picton Hazell Rolleston MacDonald
Loughborough Johnson-Ferguson de Lisle Johnson-Ferguson Levy
Melton J. Manners H. Manners E. Manners C. Manners Walker Yate

1918 to 1974

From 1918 to 1983 Rutland was categorised with Lincolnshire.

  Coalition Liberal (1918-22) / National Liberal (1922-23)   Coalition National Democratic & Labour   Conservative   Labour   Liberal   National Labour   National Liberal (1931-68)

Constituency 1918 22 1922 1923 1924 27 1929 31 1931 33 1935 1945 1950 50 1951 1955 56 57 1959 62 1964 1966 67 1970
Bosworth McLaren Paget Ward Gee Edge → Allen Wyatt Butler
Harborough Fraser Black Winby Stuart Tree Attewell Baldock Farr
Leicester East / Leicester NE (1950) Hewart Banton Evans Banton Loder Wise Lyons Donovan Ungoed-Thomas Bradley
Leicester South / Leicester SW (1950) Blane Reynolds Allen Waterhouse Bowden Boardman
Leicester West / Leicester NW (1950) Green Hill Pethick-Lawrence Pickering Nicolson B. Janner G. Janner
Leicester South East Waterhouse Peel
Loughborough Guest Spears Rye Winterton Kimball Follick Cronin
Melton Yate Everard Nutting Pike

1974 to present

  Conservative   Labour   Liberal Democrats   Social Democratic

Constituency Feb 1974 Oct 1974 1979 81 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 04 2005 2010 11 2015 2017 2019
Blaby / South Leicestershire (2010) Lawson Robathan Costa
Bosworth Butler Tredinnick Evans
Harborough Farr Garnier O'Brien
Leicester East Bradley → Bruinvels Vaz Webbe
Leicester South Boardman Marshall Spencer Marshall Gill Soulsby Ashworth
Leicester West G. Janner Hewitt Kendall
Loughborough Cronin Dorrell Reed Morgan Hunt
Melton / Rutland and Melton (1983) Latham Duncan Kearns
North West Leicestershire Ashby Taylor Bridgen
Charnwood Dorrell Argar

See also

Footnotes
  1. BC denotes borough constituency, CC denotes county constituency.
  2. The majority is the number of votes the winning candidate receives more than their nearest rival.

References
General
  • "Boundary Commission for England: Fifth Periodical Report" (PDF). Boundary Commission for England. Crown Copyright. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2009.
  • Craig, Frederick Walter Scott (1972). Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885–1972. Chichester, Sussex: Political Reference Publications. ISBN 0-900178-13-2.
Specific
  1. Baker, Carl; Uberoi, Elise; Cracknell, Richard (2020-01-28). "General Election 2019: full results and analysis". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. "Constituencies A-Z - Election 2019". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-04-22.
  3. "Update: Strengthening Democracy:Written statement - HCWS183". UK Parliament. Retrieved 2020-04-20.
  4. "Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020".
  5. "2023 Review launched | Boundary Commission for England". Retrieved 2021-01-08.
  6. Watson, Christopher; Uberoi, Elise; Loft, Philip (17 April 2020). "General election results from 1918 to 2019".
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