Hastings & Rye.

Hastings and Rye is a coastal seat in East Sussex, anchored almost entirely by one town. Hastings, taking in St Leonards, holds roughly 86 per cent of the population, leaving the small market town of Rye and a thin scatter of villages -- Fairlight, Icklesham, Peasmarsh -- on the rural eastern edge. The seat is older than the national average at a median of 44, predominantly White, and below the average for degree-level qualifications. Two district authorities run local services here: Hastings Borough Council, which covers sixteen of the constituency's wards, and Rother District Council, which accounts for the three around Rye and Winchelsea.

That split shows in the politics. The most recent ward contests, held in May 2026, returned the Green Party in ten of the twenty-two seats decided -- several on commanding majorities across the central and old-town wards -- with Reform UK second on seven and the Conservatives reduced to the Rother fringe. The parliamentary picture sits apart from both. Labour took the seat in 2024 on 41.6 per cent, well ahead of the Conservatives on 22.8, a clear reversal of the Conservative hold of 2019. Helena Dollimore, returned for Labour and Co-operative that year, is one of three forces pulling at the area rather than its defining feature.

The direction of travel, on the figures available, is toward fragmentation: Green strength on the borough, Reform pressing hard behind, and a Labour grip at Westminster that the local results do not obviously underwrite. Recent local coverage has carried a forward-looking, administrative tone, weighted toward housing and planning rather than controversy. Crime is broadly unremarkable save for shoplifting, which appears to run well above the comparable average, with anti-social behaviour and public order offences also elevated. On the evidence, this is a contested seat in visible flux rather than a settled one.