"Amber Valley" is one of the biggest misnomers in British politics. The seat’s enchanting name, taken from the river Amber that flows through the constituency into Derbyshire’s main river, the Derwent, belies a landscape of abandoned coal seams, industrial estates and rows of Victorian terraced housing.
Created in 1983, Amber Valley was formed out of parts of the old Ilkeston and Belper constituencies, and lies to the north of Derby and south of Chesterfield - and is a gateway to the Peak District National Park.
The seat’s main population centres are the former mining towns of Alfreton, Heanor and Ripley, hardy East Midland communities that turned to light engineering following the demise of coal in the sixties, only to be hit by the economic recession of the nineties. The seat is now home to the headquarters of companies such as Thorntons chocolates, Denby pottery, Bowmer and Kirkland, the Derbyshire building society and substantial textile and tourism industries.
Unusually for a former mining seat, the Conservative Phillip Oppenheim held it from its inception in 1983 until the landslide of 1997.
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