This is one of London’s poorest inner-city constituencies, and includes the deprived and run down Elephant and Castle neighbourhoods and defunct Bermondsey docklands. However, the development of some of the docklands area into luxury flats is breathing some new economic life into the seat.
The main landmarks contained in the seat are Southwark Cathedral, London Bridge Station, Guy’s Hospital and the Elephant and Castle shopping centre.
One of the most pressing local issues in the seat is secondary education. There are six secondary schools - three are local authority, two are Roman Catholic and one is a Church of England technology college. All the Church schools are oversubscribed and the local authority schools are much less popular. The sitting MP Simon Hughes is campaigning for a City Academy school to alleviate the problem - and give parents extra choice.
This seat has been held for the Liberal Democrats (the only true inner city seat held by the party) by Simon Hughes since a by-election in February 1983, which was caused the resignation of the Labour MP Bob Mellish.