Mansfield (UK Parliament constituency)

Mansfield
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire.
Location of Nottinghamshire within England.
County	Nottinghamshire
Electorate	79,849 (December 2010)
Major settlements	Mansfield
Current constituency
Created	1885
Member of parliament	Sir Alan Meale (Labour)
Number of members	One
Created from	North Nottinghamshire
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	East Midlands

Mansfield is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 1987 by Sir Alan Meale of the Labour Party.

The constituency covers the town of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

The Boundary Commission for England caused changes to constituency to allow for regional and local population changes, noticeably by moving the small town of Market Warsop from Bassetlaw into Mansfield constituency. The boundaries since the Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies (since the 2010 general election) were coterminous with the Borough of Mansfield, to have wards:

Mansfield's elected Executive Mayor Tony Egginton unilaterally decided to reduce the number of ward councillors (from 46 to 36) whilst simultaneously increasing the number of wards from 17 + 2 (shown above) to 36 by applying to the Boundary Commission to re-structure ward layout and boundaries from 2011:

The seat was created in the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 and is a constituency with a coal mining tradition that has been held by the Labour Party for generations. Since 1923 Mansfield has usually been regarded as a safe seat for them, however in the general elections of the 1980s they came close to losing to the Conservative Party. At the 1983 election, they held the seat by just over 2,000 votes. However, at the 1987 election their majority was just 56. That election was set against the background of the Miners Strike of 1984, which was not supported by the majority of miners in Nottinghamshire.