MORE than a quarter of candidates standing at next month’s election do not live in the constituency they hope to represent.

Twenty-two of the 79 candidates standing in the county’s 16 constituencies have registered addresses elsewhere in the country.

Long-distance candidates include Lib Dem Shweta Kapadia standing in Arundel and South Downs but living 50 miles away in Esher, Circus of Horrors performer Doktor Haze who lives 55 miles from Brighton Kemptown in Wimbledon and Conservative Emma Warman who lives 80 miles away from Brighton Pavilion in Reading.

The full list of candidates confirmed this week also shows less than a third of candidates are women.

Voters in the constituencies of Crawley and Bognor Regis and Littlehampton have an all-male list of candidates to select from when they head to the polls on June 8.

The high proportion of male candidates mirrors a similar discrepancy as the recent local elections when less than a quarter of the 400 hopefuls standing in West Sussex were women.

Sussex elected five female MPs out of 16 at the last election and realistically it could drop to four after June 8.

Voters in Lewes have the most limited choice when it comes to a constituency-residing candidate with just one of three candidates living in Lewes, while in Brighton Pavilion just two of the five candidates actually live there.

In Chichester two candidates live in a different county – Ukip’s Andrew Moncrieff from Haslemere in Surrey and Lib Dem Jonathan Brown from Hampshire.

Ukip has the highest number of out-of-constituency wannabe-MPs with seven of its 11 Sussex candidates living elsewhere while the Greens have the most home-grown candidates with only Hove candidate Phelim MacCafferty living just over the border in Brighton Pavilion.

Lib Dem Kelly-Marie Blundell is the only Lewes-based candidate in the running and she only moved to Seaford a year ago.

She said: “I think it is very important to live in the constituency. We have got many towns and village in the constituency and you need to be involved in it to get the real sense of the community that is here.”

Conservative Maria Caulfield, defending her seat in Lewes, said: “I live half a mile from the constituency boundary and so Lewes is my local town and has been for over 20 years. I shop in the town, get the train from there and go to church in the constituency, so I share many of the issues local people face.”

Chris Bowers, standing for the Lib Dems in Wealden, said: “I have never sought to be the candidate for any area I don’t know, as to me the whole point of standing for election is to represent an area you do know, not one you’re parachuted into. I live outside the Wealden constituency, but only by about two miles, and I regularly drive into the constituency to do shopping, take my daughter to gymnastics classes, play tennis, etc, so I have lots of first-hand experience of it.”.

Conservative Tim Loughton, defending a majority of almost 15,000 in East Worthing and Shoreham, said: “This has never been an issue for me. My home is the same address as it was since before I was first elected in 1997. It is 12 minutes’ drive from the constituency. Members of my family have lived in the constituency since the Second World War, have been to school in the constituency and work in the constituency. I am there nearly every day I am not in Westminster.”