page_title: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea / Politics
caption_attribution_description: It's a perfect picture of a cool train station in London.
context_page_description: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is an Inner London borough with royal status. It is the smallest borough in London and the second smallest district in England; it is one of the most densely populated administrative regions in the United Kingdom. It includes affluent areas such as Notting Hill, Kensington, South Kensington, Chelsea, and Knightsbridge.
  The borough is immediately west of the City of Westminster and east of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It contains major museums and universities in Albertopolis, department stores such as Harrods, Peter Jones and Harvey Nichols, and embassies in Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Kensington Gardens. The borough is home to the Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's largest, and contains many of the most expensive residential properties in the world.
  The local authority is Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council. Its motto, adapted from the opening words of Psalm 133, is Quam bonum in Unum habitare, which translates roughly as 'How good it is to dwell in unity'.
context_section_description: As of 2018, the Council has 36 Conservative, 13 Labour and 1 Liberal Democrat councillors. The first past the post electoral system is used. The Labour or Liberal councillors have tended to represent areas of the borough with pockets of economic deprivation; some marginal wards in the borough are concentrated towards the north, where north Kensington meets Kilburn, Kensal Rise/Green and Ladbroke Grove. All the wards in Holland Park, (parts of) Notting Hill, Kensington, South Kensington, and Chelsea have been safe Conservative seats since the Council's creation in 1965.
  The borough has combined a number of services and departments with its neighbours, Hammersmith & Fulham and Westminster City Council.
  The borough is divided between two constituencies represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom:
  Kensington, held by Felicity Buchan for the Conservative Party, and
  Chelsea and Fulham (partly in Hammersmith & Fulham), held by Greg Hands for the Conservative Party.
  At the 2005 General Election, the borough was divided differently:
  Kensington and Chelsea, held by Sir Malcolm Rifkind for the Conservative Party, and
  Regent's Park and Kensington North (partly in City of Westminster), held by Karen Buck for the Labour Party.
  Rifkind held the Kensington seat until the 2015 General Election when he stood down after becoming embroiled in a scandal, uncovered by a television investigation, over accepting money in return for access to influential British diplomats and politicians.
  Two of the more notable council leaders were Nicholas Freeman, from 1977 until 1989, and Sir Merrick Cockell who held the position from 2000 to 2013.
caption: A London Underground train departing from Earl's Court station
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