Category: Very safe Labour seat

Geography: Yorkshire, South Yorkshire. Part of the Doncaster council area.

Main population centres: Mexborough, Adwick le Street, Bentley, Carcroft, Moorends, Askern, Stainforth.

Profile: The more rural northern part of Doncaster borough, studded with former pit towns and villages. This is a traditional mining seat but most of the collieries are now gone, bringing with it the strains of deprivation and unemployment and the slow transition from pit villages to commuter towns for Doncaster and Barnsley. Coal continues to be mined at Hatfield, one of the few remaining coal mines operating in Yorkshire, and a new carbon-capture coal fired power station is planned in the area.

Politics: Like other South Yorkshire mining seats Doncaster North is a solid Labour seat. At a local level Doncaster`s political history is more interesting. A corruption scandal in the 1990s led to the growth of independent groups on the council and ultimately Labour`s loss of control of the council. While Labour have since regained a majority on the council, Doncaster has an elected mayor and in 2009 returned the populist English Democrat candidate Peter Davies (the father of Conservative MP Philip Davies). In 2010 the dysfunctional state of the council was such that the Secretary of State appointed a Chief Executive and appointed Commissioners to oversee the running of the council.