About Newcastle

Newcastle-under-Lyme is a great place to live, work and visit and is known as the ‘Ancient and Loyal Borough.’ 

It is situated in North Staffordshire - to the west of the Potteries towns of Stoke-on-Trent and midway between Manchester, to the north, and Birmingham, in the south - and was historically a market and coal-mining town.

Located between junctions 15 and 16 on the M6 motorway, the Borough spans an area of 81 square miles that includes the two towns of Newcastle and Kidsgrove as well as several attractive rural villages, some of which date back centuries. Newcastle Borough’s founding Royal Charter dates back to 1176.

The last coal mine – at Silverdale – closed in 1998 and, with its excellent communication links, Newcastle has become popular for significant inward investment in recent years, including major logistics operations at Lymedale Busines Park and along the A34. 

The local Keele University has also become one of the leading regional centres for medical technology and it has a flourishing science park, which houses five innovation centres. 
The new medical school, shared between Keele and the new Royal Stoke University Hospital, and Newcastle’s further education college have been great additions in the last decade following record investment before 2010.

Newcastle has a vibrant cultural life with a wealth of listed buildings, a museum, a cinema and a wide selection of nightclubs, bars and restaurants. The New Vic Theatre, situated at Basford, has established a strong reputation as an award winning theatre-in-the-round.

With its wide pedestrianised streets and floral displays, the centre of Newcastle is an attractive place to wander around or to shop. The focal point of the town is the historic Guildhall which dominates the town centre and forms the backcloth to ‘The Stones’, Staffordshire’s oldest open-air market.

The Newcastle constituency covers most of the urban area of the Borough, as well as some of the rural villages. 

The socio-economic profile of the constituency mirrors the UK average, although some urban areas are among the 20 percent most deprived wards in the Government’s index. 

These areas benefited from Government assistance through regeneration programmes, but funding has dried up since 2010 and the local Borough Council lacks the financial wherewithal to continue. Challenges are ever present, therefore, even though Newcastle’s demographics have changed greatly from its coal-mining history.