Cotswold (constituency)

The Cotswolds
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of The Cotswolds in Gloucestershire for the 2010 general election.
Location of Gloucestershire within England.
County	Gloucestershire
Electorate	78,439 (December 2010)
Current constituency
Created	1997
Member of parliament	Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative)
Number of members	One
Created from	Cirencester and Tewkesbury
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	South West England

The Cotswolds is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 1997 creation by Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a Conservative.

The Cotswolds is a safe Conservative seat in an area of natural beauty and heritage, with its market towns constructed of rare cream-to-yellow Cotswold stone. The area is welcoming to tourists and tourism has overtaken agriculture as the largest single employer in the area.

The largest town in the constituency is Cirencester, a compact traditional town. Other settlements include Andoversford, Bourton-on-the-Water, Chipping Campden, Fairford, Lechlade, Moreton-in-Marsh, Northleach, Stow-on-the-Wold, Tetbury (and the neighbouring village of Doughton, location of Highgrove, the Prince of Wales's estate), and Wotton-under-Edge.

The seat has the highest number of listed buildings of any constituency in Britain. It also contains eight of the 20 most popular attractions in Gloucestershire, including Westonbirt Arboretum, Hidcote Manor, and Chedworth Roman Villa.

Workless claimants, registered jobseekers, were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 1.6% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.