There are three wards covering the community of Balham; Balham itself, Bedford and Nightingale. Nightingale, is effectively Balham West although it also includes areas that probably don't associate themselves particularly with Balham at all.

The ward is bisected by the rail line to and from Clapham Junction and is delineated by it - its northern boundary is approximately where Wandsworth Common Station lies, whereas Balham station forms its south eastern boundary and Tooting Bec underground station its south-western tip.

About a third of the ward lies east of the railway and this section of the ward, the Balham proper part of it and also the part that gives the ward its name (Nightingale Lane and Nightingale Square), is markedly different from the western section.

It is an essentially residential ward, containing no public open space; but then, it is immediately south of Wandsworth Common and not far north of Tooting Common. Trinity Road comes to an end in Nightingale, but this end is very different from the multi-lane northern beginnings of the road by Wandsworth Bridge. The Nightingale end of Trinity Road consists principally of housing, although there are some shops at the very southern end by Tooting Bec and on the edge of Wandsworth Common.

Nightingale is the only part of Wandsworth that has never elected Labour councillors, although it has also never been an overwhelmingly Conservative ward in the way Wandsworth Common, Thamesfield or Northcote wards now are.

Facts & figures

Population: 13,551

Housing tenure:
Owner-occupied: 55.9%
Public sector renting: 13.9%
Private sector renting: 26.5%

Household type:
Detached/Semi detached: 12.9%
Terraced: 24.9%
Purpose-built flats: 31.5%
Multi-occupancy house: 28.4%

Employment:
Full-time employed: 54.6%
Self-employed: 10.6%
Unemployed: 3.4%
Retired: 7.2%
Students: 6.0%

Socio-economic bands:
Professional/Managerial: 54.0%
Skilled/unskilled manual: 20.8%

Ethnicity:
White: 80.3%
Black/Minority Ethnic: 19.7%

Source: 2001 Census