1950–1974: The Municipal Borough of Kettering, the Urban Districts of Burton Latimer, Desborough, Corby and Rothwell, and the Rural Districts of Brixworth and Kettering.
1974–1983: The Municipal Borough of Kettering, the Urban Districts of Burton Latimer, Corby, Desborough, and Rothwell, and the Rural District of Kettering.
1983–1997: The Borough of Kettering, and the District of Daventry wards of Boughton and Pitsford, Brixworth, Clipston, Moulton, and Overstone and Walgrave.
The constituency created in 1950 included the generally (in the late 20th century) Labour-majority industrial town of Corby until the 1983 general election, when Corby gained its own constituency.
1997–2010: The Borough of Kettering, and the District of Daventry wards of Boughton and Pitsford, Brixworth, Clipston, Guilsborough, Moulton, Overstone and Walgrave, Spratton, and Welford.
2021–2024: With effect from 1 April 2021, the Borough of Kettering was absorbed into the new unitary authority of North Northamptonshire.[2] From that date, the constituency comprised the North Northamptonshire Council wards of Burton and Broughton, Clover Hill, Desborough, Ise, Northall, Rothwell and Mawsley, Wicksteed and Windmill.
The constituency covers the major town of Kettering, the smaller towns of Desborough, Rothwell and Burton Latimer together with a number of villages. A semi-rural seat, the preponderance of constituents live in the towns and a minority of the wards form a wide array of rural communities that have civil parishorhamlet status.
Economically, it is predominantly middle-class, well within managerial/directorial commuter zones for London and the West Midlands. Industry continues in some sectors ranging from, for example, lingerie,[4] food production, rigid containers, abattoirs, to the Weetabix factory in Burton Latimer, but the industrial activity of the area, as with the rest of the county, is reduced whereas the wider area's headline gross value added for the area per head has been mostly consistently higher, from £11,667 in 1997 in North Northamptonshire to £17,835.[n 3][5]
Prior to boundary changes in 1918, at least the majority of modern-day Kettering Constituency laid within the Mid Northamptonshire constituency.
North Northamptonshire Constituency (1832–1885)[edit]
Prior to boundary changes in 1885, at least the majority of modern-day Kettering Constituency laid within the North Northamptonshire constituency, which elected two members to Parliament.
Note: The boundary changes to the seat for the 1983 election meant that this seat would have been won by the Conservatives in 1979, as parts of the seat were moved into the newly created seat of Corby which was notionally Labour on the new boundaries and thus saw William Homewood attempt (unsuccessfully albeit) to seek re-election there.
^‘FERGUSON, Brig.-Gen. Algernon Francis Holford’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2016; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, April 2014 accessed 18 Sept 2017
Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN0-900178-06-X.