Brentwood & Ongar.

Brentwood and Ongar is an Essex commuter seat shaped by a single large town set among villages and open countryside. Brentwood itself holds 57,004 people, close to three-fifths of the constituency, while the remainder is dispersed across smaller settlements -- Ingatestone, Chipping Ongar, Doddinghurst and North Weald Bassett among them -- and scattered rural land. The population of around 100,826 is older than the national figure, with a median age of 43, predominantly White, and modestly above average on degree-level qualifications at a third of residents. Local services are run by two district authorities: Brentwood, which contributes thirteen of the seat's wards, and Epping Forest, which adds two.

The ward map has moved sharply. Across the sixteen most recent contests, held in May 2026, Reform UK took nine, the Liberal Democrats four and the Conservatives three -- a marked break from the area's long Conservative tilt, with Reform winning shares above fifty per cent in Ongar, Blackmore and Doddinghurst, and Brizes. The parliamentary picture lags that local shift. At the 2024 general election the Conservatives held the seat on 36.7 per cent, with Reform UK the runner-up on 24.3 per cent; five years earlier the Conservative share had stood at 68.6 per cent. Alex Burghart, the Conservative member since 2017, has registered no whipped dissent over the past 90 days.

The seat now looks contested in a way it has not been for some time, with the gap between a Conservative-held Westminster result and a Reform-led local council widening rather than closing. Recent local coverage has had a largely administrative and electoral character, turning on the new council arithmetic and on the coming reorganisation of Essex authorities. On the figures available, vehicle crime appears to run roughly half above the comparable constituency average, the one category that diverges clearly. The direction of travel, broadly, is away from settled Conservative dominance and toward a more open, multi-party contest.