Hornchurch and Upminster (UK Parliament constituency)

Hornchurch and Upminster is a constituency in Greater London most recently represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament by Julia Lopez, a member of the Conservative Party, currently Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who succeeded Angela Watkinson in 2017. Watkinson had been elected in 2010 as the constituency's first MP.

2010–present
The London Borough of Havering wards of Cranham, Emerson Park, Gooshays, Hacton, Harold Wood, Heaton, St Andrew's, Upminster. Further to the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, which was based on the ward boundaries in place on 1 December 2020, the composition of the constituency from the 2024 general election was reduced slightly to bring it within the permitted electoral range. Parts of the Emerson Park ward, primarily that part of polling district EM2 to the west of the River Ravensbourne, were transferred to Romford; and parts of the St Andrew's and Hacton wards, mainly to the west of Abbs Cross Lane and South End Road, were transferred to Dagenham and Rainham. These minor changes largely reflected the revised ward boundaries following a local government boundary review which came into effect in May 2022.

History
The seat was the proposal of the Boundary Commission's Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies in 2008–9 and was after consultation accepted by Parliament. Hornchurch and Upminster is essentially an expansion of the old Upminster seat to include a chunk of the old Hornchurch seat, specifically Hornchurch itself. Most of the western wards of Hornchurch went to the new Dagenham and Rainham seat. The electoral wards in Havering were redrawn in 2022 and subsequently the constituency no longer aligns with ward boundaries.

Constituency profile
The easternmost seat in Greater London, it includes the suburbs of Cranham, Emerson Park, Harold Wood, Hornchurch, Upminster and part of Elm Park. The constituency includes the semi-rural Noak Hill and North Ockendon and the large Harold Hill estate, built by the London County Council and completed in 1958.

There are London Underground stations at Hornchurch, Upminster, Upminster Bridge and another on the boundary at Elm Park. Harold Wood is served by a station on the Elizabeth line and there is a London Overground station at Emerson Park. Upminster is an interchange station with National Rail services on the Fenchurch Street line as well as London Underground and London Overground services.

Pockets of deprivation exist in the north of the constituency. Most output areas have high levels of retired constituents by Greater London standards, and the borough as a whole is similar to the London Borough of Bromley in that it has high levels of home ownership, on statistics compiled in the 2011 UK Census. The seat, like the London borough, is the only one in London that extends beyond the M25 motorway.

The predecessor seats were lost by the Conservatives in Labour's landslide 1997 victory, but Upminster was one of the few Conservative gains in 2001 and Hornchurch was lost by Labour in 2005; this area is now very safe territory for the Conservatives since it gained their strongest areas from Hornchurch in the boundary changes. The 2015 result made the seat the 146th safest of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority. At the 2015 general election, the constituency was one of five in Greater London where the UK Independence Party came in second place.

The constituency is unusual in that for local elections to Havering Council, the Havering Residents Association dominates the results rather than the Conservative Party who have held the seat since it was created.

Elections in the 2010s



 * * Served as MP for Upminster in the 2005–2010 Parliament
 * The seat was contested for the first time in 2010, so percentage changes are based on notional results of the 2005 election.