The seat fell vacant when the constituency's Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), Geoffrey Hugh Dodsworth (born 7 June 1928) resigned due to ill health.

On 24 October 1979 he was appointed Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, a notional office of profit under the Crown, in order to vacate his Parliamentary seat.

The Conservative candidate was Richard Lewis Page (born on 22 February 1941), a mechanical engineer and company director.

Page had also contested Workington in the February 1974 and October 1974 general elections, at the time represented by senior Labour cabinet minister, Fred Peart.

Ffooks was an Independent, using the ballot paper label "Father Christmas: support Southampton University Rag".