Coordinates: 51°51′22″N 0°33′32″W / 51.856°N 0.559°W / 51.856; -0.559

Arundel and South Downs is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.

The constituency contains the town of Arundel, and many villages and hamlets along the South Downs, including Petworth, Pulborough and Steyning.

Following their review of parliamentary boundaries in West Sussex, the Boundary Commission for England has made alterations to all existing constituencies to deal with population changes. The modified Arundel and South Downs constituency is created with the following electoral wards:

Arundel and South Downs has always been a Conservative Party stronghold. The constituency shot to prominence in the run-up to the 2005 general election due to the deselection of its sitting Conservative member, Howard Flight, who had represented the constituency since its creation at the 1997 general election. Anne Marie Morris, Laura Sandys and Nick Herbert put themselves forward for nomination as replacement candidates. The chosen candidate, Nick Herbert, won the seat at the election. Morris and Sandys became MPs in 2010.

Coordinates: 50°51′16″N 0°33′14″W / 50.85439°N 0.5539°W / 50.85439; -0.5539

Arundel ( /ˈærəndəl/ or local /ˈɑːndəl/) is a market town and civil parish in the South Downs of West Sussex in the south of England. It lies 49 miles (79 km) south southwest of London, 18 miles (29 km) west of Brighton, and 10 miles (16 km) east of the county town of Chichester. Other nearby towns include Worthing east southeast, Littlehampton to the south and Bognor Regis to the southwest. The River Arun runs through the eastern side of the town. The town is famous for its historic castle and cathedral.

Arundel was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Reform Act 1835. In 1974 it became part of the Arun district, and now is a civil parish with a town council.

There are several theories about the meaning of the name 'Arundel'. One is that the upper reaches of the Arun, away from the sea, was once known as the Arnus, from the Brythonic word Arno, meaning run or go. So Arundel would mean Arno-dell or the dell of the flowing river. Another theory is that due to the preponderance of hoarhound on the slopes of the Arun near the town, Arundel would mean hoarhound-dell. A third explanation is that the town takes its name from the French word for swallow, hirondelle, a bird which is on the town's crest. The name was spelled Arundell until 1733, when the final l was dropped. A new theory (Theo Vennemann) relates the 'Arun' part to Basque aran 'valley' (substratic reduplication or tautology), like the placename Arendal in Norway and Sweden.^{[citation needed]} However, it seems rather more likely that the Scandinavian placenames derive from Old Norse arnardalr 'eagle dell' or arindalr 'dwelling dell'. Similarly, the name of Arundel could just as well derive from Old English earndæl or ærndæl, meaning 'eagle dell' and 'dwelling dell' respectively.

The South Downs is a range of chalk hills that extends for about 260 square miles (670 km²) across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the east. It is bounded on its northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose crest there are extensive views northwards across the Weald. The South Downs National Park forms a much larger area than the chalk range of the South Downs and includes large parts of the Weald.

The South Downs is characterised by rolling chalk downland with close-cropped turf and dry valleys, and is recognised as one of the most important chalk landscapes in England. It is one of the four main areas of chalk downland in southern England.

The South Downs is relatively unpopulated, although in Sussex there has been large-scale urban encroachment onto the chalk downland by major seaside resorts, including most notably Brighton and Hove.

The South Downs has been inhabited since ancient times and at periods the area has supported a large population, particularly during Romano-British times. There is a rich heritage of historical features and archaeological remains, including defensive sites, burial mounds and field boundaries. Within the South Downs Environmentally Sensitive Area there are thirty-seven Sites of Special Scientific Interest, including large areas of chalk grassland.

Nicholas Le Quesne "Nick" Herbert (born 7 April 1963) is a British Conservative Party politician and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Arundel and South Downs. He is currently Minister of State for Police and Criminal Justice, with his time split between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.

Herbert was educated at Haileybury and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read law and land economy. He was appointed as the director of public affairs at the British Field Sports Society in 1990 and remained in that position for six years. He joined Business for Sterling in 1998 as their chief executive where he helped launch the campaign against adopting the Euro currency, before becoming a director of the think tank Reform in 2000 until his election to parliament in 2005.

He unsuccessfully contested the Northumberland seat of Berwick-upon-Tweed at the 1997 general election where he finished in third place some 8,951 votes behind the veteran Liberal Democrat MP Alan Beith. His selection to contest the West Sussex seat of Arundel and South Downs at the 2005 general election did not come about without incident. The sitting Conservative MP, Howard Flight, had been forced to resign as a vice chairman of the party and had the whip removed by Michael Howard in 2005 after he had told a Conservative Way Forward meeting that the Conservatives would have to make more cuts than they were promising. With no whip, he was not considered as an approved candidate and, despite protest and the local association refusing to select a new candidate, he finally resigned just a month before the election. Herbert was selected and elected, holding the seat with a slightly reduced majority of 11,309. He made his maiden speech on 6 June 2005.