Croydon North Malcolm Wicks 14,274 32,672 4,066 0 396 Croydon North West 25,865 25,705 6,340 0 0 Conservative London boroughs lost a number of seats in the recent boundary changes, and the large south London borough of Croydon was one of them. Essentially the two undersized seats of Croydon NW and Croydon NE crash together. This is somewhat unfortunate for the current Labour MP for North West, Malcolm Wicks, who went to all the hard trouble of gaining his seat from the Tories in 1992. Now the wards from the safer Conservative seat of North East which come in means that Wicks will start behind again - and have to win 'his' seat all over again. That deficit should be only a few hundred votes, though, and with the expected swing to Labour in 1997, Malcolm Wicks should be favourite to continue his career in the Commons. The new Croydon North has a considerable quantity of old terraced housing, and a non-white population of nigh on 30 per cent. This northern half of Croydon resembles the inner city as much as Outer London. Places like Thornton Heath are far from glamorous. North actually looks the part of a Labour seat - and probably will be one, even if technically recorded as a 'gain' rather than a 'hold'.

	165	0.35	9.03	4
	1,127	2.39	11.17	21
	3,125	6.62	11.25	59
	111	0.24	14.70	2
	31,083	65.85	10.45	630
	0	0.00	2.81	0
	1,403	2.97	8.01	37
	433	0.92	15.25	6
	2,609	5.53	7.13	78
	7,108	15.06	10.17	148