On Saturday this week the East Surrey Conservative Association is set to choose their candidate for the next General Election. Although I will not be taking part in this process, I hope that I may be forgiven for expressing some interest in the outcome. Once a new candidate is in place, I suppose the reality of my own decision not to stand for Parliament again will finally hit home.

I have avoided invitations from the various candidates to offer them some inside knowledge. There’s plenty of information about East Surrey out there, not least between the pages of this newspaper; they can do their own donkeywork, as I did back in 1991 without any input from Geoffrey Howe.

But here are some observations for all who want to represent this part of the world in Parliament, whatever their Party.

I hope that whoever wins the nomination will work on the same basis which I have always tried to apply: that there is no such thing as a “safe seat” and that every vote has to be won all over again each time the country goes to the polls. In an age when traditional Party political loyalties are receding, any politician who takes the electorate for granted may find that they have an unexpectedly short career.

This is a demanding constituency. For a start, it comprises a growing population of over 100,000 people of whom about 80,000 are eligible to vote (the average UK constituency has about 68,000 voters). They regularly contact their MP by letter, email, phone, or by attending surgeries, and whoever succeeds me should expect to get hundreds of requests for help or attention from local people each week.

Although Surrey is generally affluent, there are real pockets of deprivation. The gradual erosion of Central Government funding in recent years has made it increasingly difficult for our public services to operate as they would wish. Attempting to get a fairer settlement for East Surrey should be a priority for any new MP.

There will be many tough individual cases involving housing, debt, benefits, sickness, marital breakdown and anti-social behaviour; but the overarching issue throughout my time as the local MP has been the state of the immediate environment, and this will remain the case. People really care about the place where they live, and any threat to the landscape or to tranquillity, or any scheme which would increase traffic on our crowded roads, receives a sharp and increasingly well organised response. So, whoever becomes the MP after the Election will find that the environment looms large in their lives.

Finally, stay away from duck houses.