YOUNG, fashionable professionals have colonised Britain’s previously deserted inner cities and could now redraw the country’s electoral map, if politicians can work out how to reach them.

The unpredictable hours that they keep and the secure apartments in which they live behind electric gates with unsmiling concierges have, however, failed to deter the party strategists. The Tories in particular believe that these elusive “gated-community voters” will prove highly receptive to David Cameron’s informal brand of socially liberal conservatism and could help to restore the party’s urban power base.

But their inaccessibility is a source of constant frustration to people such as Peter Smallbone, the Conservative candidate for Ladywood ward, in central Birmingham, for next month’s local elections.

The city is seen as something of a lightning conductor for Conservative fortunes. It is one of the few big cities where the party has a significant presence: the council is controlled by a Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition. Forty seats are up for re-election on May 4, enough to alter the balance of power on the council. In Labour-held Ladywood, which Mr Cameron visited this month, pockets of serious poverty sit alongside Birmingham’s brightest new developments, such as the bulbous Selfridges building and the Mailbox, home to Harvey Nichols and the Malmaison hotel.

Party strategists describe the ward as a long-term target but Mr Smallbone is convinced that he can win this time. If he succeeds, it would be the biggest political surprise in Birmingham since a judge found six Labour councillors guilty of fraud “that would disgrace a banana republic” after the 2004 elections.

Mr Smallbone’s strategy relies on mobilising the area’s affluent new arrivals. “They are a significant and growing part of the ward and a potentially decisive vote block but they’re very hard to get to,” he said. “The buildings they live in are difficult to access, they work long, unpredictable hours and they never remember when the election is.”

His attempt to canvas the Orion Building, 338 apartments near New Street station, proves the point. Leafleting the doctors, footballers and lapdancers who live there is out of the question, he has been told. “It’s an absolute no-no,” said Colin Thomas, the concierge. Instead Mr Smallbone has to leave his campaign material next to flyers for cleaning companies and Chinese takeaways.

“You see my problem?” he said. “I gave them my best spiel and they just said no. And even if they didn’t and I physically went knocking on residents’ doors they would call the police because they’re not used to it.”

Mr Smallbone, 30, should know. He is a gated-community voter himself. He is an IT consultant who lives in a converted city centre office block and is using Skype internet telephony, landline text message services and a personal weblog to reach his audience.

His pitch is partly about what the council has achieved and partly about the party’s new direction. “David Cameron’s influence is being translated on the doorstep,” he said. “People say they like his whole approach, from his bike riding to his personal demeanour. He looks like a man for the future, not a man from another era.”

Sir Albert Bore, the head of the Labour group on Birmingham council and a Ladywood councillor, has watched thousands of new voters move into his ward over the past few years and expects the influx to continue. They are part of the regeneration that has taken Birmingham from a “concrete jungle” 20 years ago to a place “you can show people with joy”, he said. The problem is reaching them.

“Campaigning has changed. Canvassing in these apartments is impossible. You wouldn’t even contemplate it,” he said. “A lot of work is done over the telephone instead and we try to stay in touch with them all year round.” There is, however, a complication for politicians chasing the tens or even hundreds of thousands of voters in gated communities. The people who live in them tend not to be interested in local politics.

David Mackintosh, the Conservative strategist for the Birmingham campaign, said: “They don’t see the point of local elections, they don’t know what ward they live in or who their candidate is.”

The challenge is clear from talking to some of Mr Smallbone’s target voters as they emerge from their glass-fronted development. Neither Peter Nesbitt nor Rian Palfrey, both 23, can name Mr Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party. Both are oblivious to the forthcoming local elections, but Mr Nesbitt said that he might vote if he knew more about the candidates: “I don’t watch the news, listen to party political broadcasts or read flyers so it is about getting the message across to me.”

BIRMINGHAM

Control: Tory/Lib Dem coalition

Total seats/Up for election:

Conservative 39/14

Labour 53/19

Lib Dem 28/7

The city’s MPs include Clare Short (Lab, Ladywood) and two Shadow Cabinet members: Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) and Caroline Spelman (Meriden)

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