Previewing the 13 council by-elections of 24th October 2024
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
Welcome one and all to the new home of Andrew’s Previews on Substack, at andrewspreviews.substack.com! This is a normally-weekly blog which aims to cover “all the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”. Our normal order of business is to tour the UK each Thursday and look in detail at areas where by-elections to our local councils are taking place: we’ll discuss what’s typical of the area, what’s unusual about each ward, and why you might (or might not) want to visit; and we’ll also examine what has happened here in previous elections, introduce the candidates, and leave you to make up your own mind as to the likely result.
We’re in an exceptionally busy period of local by-elections right now and there are thirteen polls on 24th October 2024. There’s no time to waste so let’s dive straight in:
Whickham North
Gateshead council, Tyne and Wear; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Sonya Hawkins.
Of today's thirteen polls, Labour are defending six, the Conservatives three, the Liberal Democrats two, Plaid Cymru one and the other seat was previously held by an independent. Six polls (four Labour, one Lib Dem and the Plaid seat) are to replace new MPs who have relinquished their previous council seats.
We'll start this week with one of the Lib Dem defences, which occurs just south of the Tyne. Whickham is a town to the west of Gateshead which expanded significantly in the 20th century, thanks to its close proximity to the Tyneside urban area. The town's North ward takes in the western part of Whickham proper up on the hill, together with the village of Swalwell on lower ground to the north.
Swalwell is noted in music as the birthplace of William Shield, a noted composer and string player of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Shield served as Master of the King's Musick from 1817 until his death in 1829, and he was the musical director for the 1821 coronation of George IV which was reputedly the most extravagant coronation of all time. His compositions included a large number of operas and other theatre music, and he was noted for using Northumbrian folk tunes in his work; these two tendencies have led to a long-running controversy over whether Shields composed the tune for Robert Burns' poem Auld Lang Syne. He certainly quoted that tune at the end of the overture to his 1781 English-language light opera Rosina. Ironically, Shields' death in 1829 was on Burns Night.
Swalwell lies next to the A1 Western Bypass, beyond which lies the largest single component of Whickham North's economy. Opened in 1986 on a site previously occupied by Dunston power station, the Metrocentre is still the UK's second-largest shopping centre (it was overtaken in 2018 by Westfield London), with over 190,000 square metres of retail floor space. It was originally financed by the Church Commissioners, who still have a 10% stake in the business. The Metrocentre has its own railway station, opened in 1987 by British Rail, with regular trains east to Newcastle city centre and west to Hexham and Carlisle.
Whickham joined the parliamentary map this year, with a namecheck as part of the new Gateshead Central and Whickham constituency. This is a safe Labour seat with a first-term MP: Mark Ferguson, a former editor of the LabourList website, was elected in July with a majority of 9,644 to succeed the previous Gateshead Labour MP Ian Mearns. Whickham had previously been part of the Blaydon constituency until it disappeared in this year's boundary changes.
The local authority here is Gateshead council. Even seasoned local government watchers struggle to find much of interest in Gateshead's local elections: the council composition hasn't changed all that much for many years, with a large Labour majority and an opposition consisting (apart from the occasional defection) entirely of Liberal Democrat councillors. Whickham is an area where the Lib Dems normally do well in local elections, and North ward is safely in their column. The outgoing councillor Sonya Hawkins was first elected here in 2012, and was re-elected in May for her fourth term of office with a 58-27 lead over Labour. She stood down from the council last month, after being promoted into a new role at her work.
Defending for the Liberal Democrats is Susan Craig, who is seeking to return to Gateshead council: she previously represented Low Fell ward from 2018 to 2022 before standing down after one term. Labour have reselected Jeff Bowe, who is their regular candidate for this ward and has finished as runner-up at every election since 2019. Also standing are Robert Ableson for the Conservatives and Pat Chanse for the Green Party,.
Parliamentary constituency: Gateshead Central and Whickham
ONS Travel to Work Area: Newcastle
Postcode districts: NE11, NE16
Robert Ableson (C)
Jeff Bowe (Lab)
Pat Chanse (Grn)
Susan Craig (LD)
May 2024 result LD 1331 Lab 614 C 204 Grn 149
May 2023 result LD 1497 Lab 647 C 197
May 2022 result LD 1510 Lab 707 C 255
May 2021 result LD 1464 Lab 574 C 448 Grn 92
May 2019 result LD 1637 Lab 524 C 164
May 2018 result LD 1543 Lab 768 C 255
May 2016 result LD 1510 Lab 747 UKIP 264 C 101
May 2015 result LD 1791 Lab 1451 UKIP 545 C 371 Grn 117
May 2014 result LD 1264 Lab 963 UKIP 445 C 144
May 2012 result LD 1282 Lab 1188 C 164
May 2011 result LD 1426 Lab 1402 C 276
May 2010 result LD 2159 Lab 1385 C 486 BNP 289
May 2008 result LD 1363 Lab 701 C 336 BNP 288
May 2007 result LD 1484 Lab 854 C 288
May 2006 result LD 1647 Lab 788 C 218
June 2004 result LD 1829/1803/1743 Lab 1196/1157/1135 C 339/323/300
Previous results in detail
Hemlington
Middlesbrough council, North Yorkshire; caused by the death of Labour councillor Jeanette Walker.
Our first Yorkshire poll this week is on the southern edge of Middlesbrough. Hemlington ward is a 1960s council estate set around Hemlington Lake, to the south of the A174 Parkway which runs through southern Middlesbrough. Even after decades of Right to Buy 47.9% of Hemlington's housing stock was socially rented as of the 2021 census, putting the ward into the top 70 in England and Wales for that statistic.
Middlesbrough is a bit too large to be a constituency of its own, and some of its southern wards like Hemlington are included within the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland parliamentary seat. This is a mixed area which is a traditional marginal seat, and it was gained in 2024 by Labour MP Luke Myer who had previously been a Redcar and Cleveland councillor. Myer narrowly defeated the previous Conservative MP Sir Simon Clarke, who had gained the seat against the national trend in 2017 and lost in 2024 by only 214 votes; Clarke had served in Cabinet during the five minutes of the Truss administration as L******** U*, Housing and Communities secretary. Luke Myer subsequently resigned his seat on Redcar and Cleveland council, and the Conservatives won the resulting by-election.
Might the same happen in this Middlesbrough ward? Well, next-door Coulby Newham ward has delivered some famous Conservative by-election wins in recent years, but in Hemlington the Tories have been also-rans over that period. Jeanette Walker, who passed away in August at the age of 76, had represented Hemlington ward continuously since 2007, normally serving alongside fellow Labour councillor Nicky Walker (they were not related). In 2019 Nicky lost her seat to independent candidate Allan Bell, but she got it back in 2023: shares of the vote on that occasion were 63% for Labour and 21% for Bell.
Labour control Middlesbrough council through the elected mayor Chris Cooke, but a council majority is also nice to have and the party need to hold this by-election to keep it. So the stakes are high for the defending Labour candidate Tom Mohan, who gives an address in the ward; in 2023 he contested Ladgate ward and finished as runner-up. There is one independent candidate standing: former policeman Barrie Cooper was an independent Middlesbrough councillor for Newport ward from 2019 to 2023, and he was also an independent candidate for Cleveland police and crime commissioner in 2021 (finishing in third place out of four candidates with 12%). Also on the ballot are Lewis Melvin for the Conservatives, Mehmoona Ameen for the Workers Party of Britain and Chris Henderson for the Liberal Democrats.
Parliamentary constituency: Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
ONS Travel to Work Area: Middlesbrough and Stockton
Postcode district: TS8
Mehmoona Ameen (Workers)
Barrie Cooper (Ind)
Chris Henderson (LD)
Lewis Melvin (C)
Tom Mohan (Lab)
May 2023 result Lab 620/577 Ind 207/181/99 C 153/145
May 2019 result Ind 454/365 Lab 427/422 C 140/104
May 2015 result Lab 1474/1377 UKIP 489 Ind 378 C 347
Previous results in detail
Talybolion
Isle of Anglesey council, North Wales; caused by the resignation of Plaid Cymru councillor Llinos Medi.
We'll now jump over to the north coast of Wales where two by-elections are taking place. One of these is actually offshore, on the Isle of Anglesey. Talybolion was an ancient commote or hundred of Anglesey, covering the north-west corner of Ynys Môn; the original commote also covered Holyhead, but that is now a separate ward.
This area is associated with the fifth-century figure of Pabo Post Prydain, the "Pillar of Britain". Pabo had been a Celtic king in the Hen Ogledd, but he was driven out of the Old North and ended up in Anglesey. Legend has it that he founded the church at Llanbabo, within this ward: the present 12th-century church building contains what is said to be Pabo's gravestone, which was dug up from the churchyard in the 17th century.
In modern times the largsst centre of population here may well be Llannerch-y-medd, which lies on the disused railway line to Amlwch on the northern coast. This line was open for freight until 2003 to serve a chemical plant at Amlwch, and two decades later the track is mostly still in place although heavily overgrown. Llanerchymedd railway station is now owned by the county council, and the Station Café is a polling station for this by-election.
Talybolion ward was created in 2013, when Anglesey's electoral arrangements were heavily overhauled following years of damaging political infighting among the council's independent-led administration: the Welsh Government were eventually forced to step in and impose direct rule from Cardiff. The independents lost their council majority at the delayed 2013 elections, and in 2017 Plaid Cymru became the largest party on the council. Llinos Medi, then aged 35, took over the council leadership and she led Plaid Cymru to a majority in the 2022 Isle of Anglesey council elections.
Medi has represented Talybolion ward since its creation in 2013. There were boundary changes for the 2022 elections at which Plaid Cymru won all three of the ward's seats: Medi's personal vote boosted the Plaid score to 47%, against 27% for independent councillor Kenneth Hughes (who lost his seat) and 17% for the Conservatives.
The island has been a single parliamentary seat since 1885 when the Beaumaris Boroughs constituency was abolished, with the only change to the Anglesey constituency since being the adoption of the Welsh-language name Ynys Môn in 1983. Despite its low electorate the seat was exempted from the recent Westminster boundary changes, after two previous failed boundary reviews had proposed combining it with Bangor. It was of course a complete coincidence that this change happened after Ynys Môn had been gained by the Conservatives at the 2019 general election; this happened despite Virginia Crosbie having been selected at the last possible moment, after the local and Welsh party objected to the original selection of the disgraced former Brecon and Radnorshire MP Chris Davies. Anglesey has represented by MPs from a large numbers of parties over the years, but no sitting MP for the island had actually lost re-election since Lady Megan Lloyd George in 1951 - until Crosbie went down to defeat in July by just 637 votes. Ynys Môn is now represented at Westminster by the previous leader of Isle of Anglesey council, Llinos Medi of Plaid Cymru.
In Senedd elections Ynys Môn has voted for Plaid Cymru candidates since the creation of the Welsh Assembly in 1999, and its current MS Rhun ap Iorwerth - who has served since winning a by-election in 2013 - is the leader of Plaid Cymru, as was his predecessor in the seat Ieuan Wyn Jones. The Anglesey-Bangor link may have been rejected for Westminster, but it looks likely to happen for the 2026 Senedd election which will take place under a new electoral system: the present 32 Welsh Westminster constituencies are to be paired off to form 16 Senedd constituencies which will each elect six MSs by proportional representation, and the first draft of the new Senedd map places Anglesey within a constituency called "Bangor Aberconwy Ynys Môn". An unwieldy name, but it's far from being the worst name on the draft map; hopefully the consultation process will come up with something better.
In the meantime, with Llinos Medi off to Westminster Plaid Cymru have a by-election to defend in Talybolion ward. Their candidate is Dafydd Arthur Williams, who is a hairdresser and long-standing community councillor in Llannerchymedd. Independent candidate Kenneth Hughes, who lost his council seat here in 2022, is trying to get it back: Hughes was an independent councillor for Talybolion ward from 2013 to 2022, and he previously represented the single-member Llanfaethlu ward from 2008 to 2013. The Conservatives have selected David Evans. Completing the ballot paper is Tomos Barlow of the Green Party of Wales, who are trying to pull the same trick they attempted in last week's Llanberis by-election by using the Welsh-only ballot paper description "Plaid Werdd Cymru".
Westminster and Senedd constituency: Ynys Môn
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bangor and Holyhead
Postcode districts: LL65, LL66, LL67, LL68, LL71
Tomos Barlow (Grn)
David Evans (C)
Kenneth Hughes (Ind)
Dafydd Williams (PC)
May 2022 result PC 1025/711/626 Ind 597/480/247 C 365/321/269 Grn 142 Heritage Party 48
Previous results in detail
Prestatyn North
Denbighshire council, North Wales; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Gill German.
Placenames in Wales can be a bit complicated. Most settlements in the country originally had Welsh-language names, and the reaction of English speakers to these has been inconsistent. Sometimes a town's English-language name is completely different from its Welsh one (see for example Caergybi/Holyhead). In other cases English speakers might adopt the Welsh name, but change its spelling or pronunciation to suit English norms; a lot of these Anglicised spellings have now gone out of fashion (Ca(e)rnarvon, Conway, Dolgelley, Llanelly) but some still persist. And in some cases the Welsh-language spelling hasn't entirely settled down either. Did you notice the three different valid spellings of Llan(n)erch(-)y(-)medd in the previous section?
In the case of Prestatyn, we have an example of this process working the other way with an English-language name being modified to suit Welsh speakers. In Old English prēosta tūn translates as "priests' village" or "priests' homestead". In the several English settlements of this name the first syllable was stressed, the second syllable disappeared over time, and we ended up with "Preston". But Welsh words are stressed on the penultimate syllable, so the Welsh settlement of that name evolved into "Prestatyn".
Today Prestatyn is a seaside resort, and North ward covers much of its Ffrith beach together with the Nova, an entertainment complex on the seashore. The 2021 census return gives Prestatyn North a rather old age profile and hilariously includes it in the top 70 wards for "English only identity". The sense of something having gone a bit wonky here is only strengthened by the fact that the census enumerators didn't record a single household in the ward living in a "caravan, mobile or temporary structure", which this column finds very hard to believe.
If this is an error, it wouldn't be first time that something has gone very wrong with a count in Prestatyn North. In the 2012 Denbighshire council elections the three seats in this ward were gained by Labour from the Conservatives, but during the count those ballots on which all three votes were cast for the Labour candidates were credited not to Labour candidate Paul Penlington but to the outgoing Conservative councillor Allan Pennington - who was wrongly declared as re-elected. Labour launched legal action which did get the result corrected and Penlington seated, but it took the Election Court more than eight months to sort out this very simple mistake.
Before then Prestatyn North had been the stronghold of the grandly-named "Democratic Alliance of Wales", a Labour splinter group associated with former councillor Mike German (who is not to be confused with the former Welsh Lib Dem leader of the same name). The DAW councillors stood for re-election in 2008 as independents but lost to the Conservatives; Labour gained the ward in 2012 as stated; in 2017 the three seats in Prestatyn North split two to the Conservatives and one to Labour; and in 2022 Labour got all three seats back in a rather fragmented result. Vote shares were 37% for Labour, 26% for the Conservatives, 19% for Plaid Cymru and 18% for independent candidates.
The local authority here is Denbighshire council, and Prestatyn is part of the Vale of Clwyd Senedd constituency which the Conservatives' Gareth Davies gained from Labour in 2021. The recent Westminster boundary changes created a new and rather curious constituency of Clwyd East, which runs along the spine of the Clwydian Hills from Prestatyn all the way to Llangollen; the seat boundaries also include Holywell, Mold and Ruthin. This seat was contested in July by two outgoing Conservative MPs, James Davies (previously of Vale of Clwyd) as the official Conservative candidate and sex pest Rob Roberts (previously of Delyn) as an independent; they both lost to Labour candidate Becky Gittins, who as this column related last year had given up her seat on Coventry council when she won the Labour selection. Gittins secured a majority of 4,622 votes over Davies, with Roberts finishing in seventh and last place.
This by-election is to replace a different newly-elected Labour MP. Gill German was elected as a councillor for Prestatyn North ward in 2022, and in July she became the Labour MP for the new seat of Clwyd North which is based on Rhyl, Denbigh and Colwyn Bay.
Defending this seat for Labour is Neil Gibson, who is notable enough for Wikipedia: Gibson is a former professional footballer who spent 15 years with Prestatyn Town FC as a player or manager. For much of that time Prestatyn Town were in the Welsh top flight, and they won the 2012-13 Welsh cup to qualify for the 2013-14 Europa League: Prestatyn Town beat Liepājas Metalurgs of Latvia on penalties in the first qualifying round, with Gibson scoring a last-gasp goal to force extra time, but they were then thrashed 8-0 on aggregate by Rijeka in the second qualifying round. The Conservatives, who won a by-election in a safe Labour ward in Rhyl last month, will be hoping that their candidate Anton Sampson can keep that momentum going: Sampson was a Denbighshire councillor for Prestatyn East from a 2015 by-election to 2022, and he still sits on Prestatyn town council. However, they may find their vote split by independent candidate Tony Flynn who was a Conservative councillor for this ward from 2017 to 2022 and finished as runner-up here two years ago; Flynn has been rapped on the knuckles during this campaign for putting the county council logo on his stakeboards without permission. Another defector on the ballot is the aforementioned Paul Penlington, who quit Labour in 2020 to join Plaid Cymru and unsuccessfully sought re-election here in 2022 on the Plaid ticket; Penlington was the Plaid candidate for Clwyd East in July's general election, and he's standing again here with their nomination. Gerry Frobisher for Reform UK and Keith Kirwan for the Liberal Democrats complete the ballot paper.
Westminster constituency: Clwyd East
Senedd constituency: Vale of Clwyd
ONS Travel to Work Area: Rhyl
Postcode district: LL19
Tony Flynn (Ind)
Gerry Frobisher (RUK)
Neil Gibson (Lab)
Keith Kirwan (LD)
Paul Penlington (PC)
Anton Sampson (C)
May 2022 result Lab 733/696/682 C 507/470/405 PC 380/278/250 Ind 344/310/255
Previous results in detail
Middleforth
South Ribble council, Lancashire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Will Adams.
From Prestatyn we now come to Preston - or, more accurately, to its suburb of Penwortham on the south side of the River Ribble. Middleforth was the lowest point where the Ribble could be forded, but the ford was replaced in 1759 by the five stone spans of Penwortham Old Bridge. Until the early 20th century this was the lowest bridge over the Ribble: but motorised traffic has now been diverted to more modern bridges further downstream, leaving the Penwortham Old Bridge for foot traffic only. The Middleforth ward rises south from the river along Middleforth Brow and Pope Lane; it includes Penwortham Hall, whose grounds have been filled with houses, and extends to the Skew Bridge over the West Coast Main Line.
Logically enough Penwortham is part of the South Ribble parliamentary seat, which was gained in July's general election by Labour candidate Paul Foster. He had previously been the leader of South Ribble council, on which Labour won a majority in 2023. Middleforth ward is part of that majority: it's a safe Labour ward, with the Labour slate defeating the Conservatives in 2023 by 58-25. The ward is divided between the two Penwortham-based divisions of Lancashire county council: Penwortham East and Walton-le-Dale is a Conservative-held division which Labour will need to gain if they want to get control of the county hall next year, while Penwortham West is one of only two Lancashire county council seats held by the Liberal Democrats.
Labour successfully defended a by-election in Bamber Bridge West two weeks ago to replace Paul Foster MP, and they will need to repeat that trick here following the resignation of Will Adams who had served on South Ribble council since 2019. Adams doesn't appear to be entirely leaving politics as he is still listed on the website of Penwortham town council, and he is the deputy mayor of Penwortham for 2024-25.
Defending this seat for Labour is Laura Crawford-Lane. The Conservatives have selected Joan Burrows, who is the county councillor for Penwortham East and Walton-le-Dale. Also standing on an all-female ballot paper are Clare Burton-Johnson for the Lib Dems and Ann Moorby for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: South Ribble
Lancashire county council division: Penwortham East and Walton-le-Dale (Kingsfold area), Penwortham West (Middleforth Green area)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Preston
Postcode district: PR1
Joan Burrows (C)
Clare Burton-Johnson (LD)
Laura Crawford-Lane (Lab)
Ann Moorby (Grn)
May 2023 result Lab 957/940/913 C 418/401/360 LD 271/269/235
May 2019 result Lab 869/824/807 C 673/666/645 LD 286
May 2015 result Lab 1754/1635/1573 C 1280/1239/1110 UKIP 787 LD 364
Previous results in detail
Calder
Calderdale council, West Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Josh Fenton-Glynn.
Let's get one thing out of the way first here. Describing Hebden Bridge as a "cesspit" is a bit strong. It's actually an extremely desirable and sought-after place to live. The town is located in the centre of the Pennines with excellent rail links to both Manchester and Leeds, which makes it a very good commuting base. It also has a reputation as a haven for little independent shops, and there are thriving artistic and New Age communities. And at this time of the year the woodland colours of nearby Hardcastle Crags will be something to behold.
This doesn't mean Hebden Bridge doesn't have problems. The town's location at a junction of two deep valleys makes the town centre vulnerable to flooding. The steep valley sides led to the development of unusual four-storey terraced houses, with the lower floors facing a downhill road and the upper floors forming a separate dwelling entered from an uphill road on the other side of the building. And the name of the TV series Happy Valley is an ironic reference to the Calder Valley's long-standing issues with drug and alcohol abuse. Last of the Summer Wine this is not.
And Hebden Bridge's social makeup is extremely unusual. In some ways the census return is what you would expect of a commuter centre: high levels of middle-class employment, a majority of adults holding degree-level qualifications. Calder ward is in the top 75 wards in England and Wales for the 45-64 age bracket (34.3%). The town's religious makeup is more unusual: 56.6% of the population ticked the "no religion" box on the census form, which is an extremely high proportion for Northern England. And while this sort of statistic isn't normally broken down to ward level, it has long been claimed that Hebden Bridge has one of the UK's highest proportions of lesbians. It also used to have a reputation for being a hippy stronghold, but as the years have rolled by most of the hippies have by now turned on, tuned in and dropped out.
Calder ward has a large acreage which takes in Hebden Bridge itself, Heptonstall, the eastern part of Todmorden and rather a lot of Pennine moorland, including the monument on Stoodley Pike which dominates the upper Calder valley. Its voting patterns look like those of a trendy part of a big city. The ward voted Liberal Democrat until 2010, and has been won by Labour since then with the exception of one last-gasp Lib Dem win in 2012. The Lib Dem vote here collapsed altogether after they lost their last seat in 2016, and Labour have pulled away strongly since then; in May 2024 Labour councillor Josh Fenton-Glynn was re-elected for a third term of office with a 68-14 lead over the Green Party, polling more then 3,000 votes. He was part of the Labour majority on Calderdale council, which administers this area from Halifax.
Two months later Fenton-Glynn was elected as Labour MP for the Calder Valley constituency which includes this ward. This is a bellwether seat which has voted for the government at all eleven general elections since its creation in 1983, and true to form Fenton-Glynn picked up a seat which had been left open by the retirement of Conservative MP Craig Whittaker. His final majority over the Conservatives was 8,991 votes.
Labour's defending candidate in the by-election to fill Josh Fenton-Glynn's council seat is Jonathan Timbers, a former mayor of Hebden Royd town council which combines Hebden Bridge with Mytholmroyd further down the valley. The Greens' Kieran Turner comes here hotfoot from the general election campaign, in which he was the Green parliamentary candidate for Calder Valley: in recent years Turner has been a regular Green candidate for Todmorden ward further up the valley, the ward which includes the good God-fearing Christian village of Cornholme. Hebden Bridge may well have its reputation as a lesbian hotspot, but the candidate list for this by-election is all-male: the ballot paper is completed by Brian Carter for the Conservatives, Chris Wadsworth for the Lib Dems, independent candidate Scott Borrows who runs a business in the town, and Jim McNeill for the Social Democratic Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Calder Valley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Halifax
Postcode districts: HX2, HX7, OL14
Scott Borrows (Ind)
Brian Carter (C)
Jim McNeill (SDP)
Jonathan Timbers (Lab)
Kieran Turner (Grn)
Chris Wadsworth (LD)
May 2024 result Lab 3008 Grn 638 C 574 LD 222
May 2023 result Lab 2615 Grn 617 C 555 LD 509 Ind 110
May 2022 result Lab 3046 C 745 Grn 465 LD 339 Freedom Alliance 57
May 2021 result Lab 3399 C 936 Grn 480 LD 220 Freedom Alliance 90
May 2019 result Lab 2517 Grn 757 LD 681 C 624
May 2018 result Lab 3075 C 1015 LD 460 Grn 399
May 2016 result Lab 2310 LD 1424 Grn 444 C 438
May 2015 result Lab 2762 C 1412 Grn 1396 LD 688 UKIP 581 Ind 177
May 2014 result Lab 1547 Grn 817 LD 628 C 595 Ind 466
May 2012 result LD 1599 Lab 1454 Grn 541 C 477
May 2011 result Lab 1660 LD 1042 C 915 Grn 754 Ind 262
May 2010 result LD 2775 C 1575 Lab 1538 Grn 762
May 2008 result LD 1188 Lab 1135 C 890 Grn 486
May 2007 result LD 1331 Lab 1254 Grn 821
May 2006 result LD 1222 Lab 884 Grn 780 C 702
June 2004 result LD 1515/1485/1436 Grn 1210 Lab 1183/1007/1000 C 1062/934/885 Red and Green 347/259
Previous results in detail
Croft
East Lindsey council, Lincolnshire; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Sid Dennis.
Now it's time for this column to break new ground, as Andrew's Previews covers the first ever local by-election in a Parliamentary seat which was won at its last election by a Reform UK candidate. Specifically, that's Richard Tice: he was leader of Reform UK from 2021 until being supplanted by Nigel Farage earlier this year, still serves as the party's deputy leader, and has previous experience in elected office as an MEP for the East of England from 2019 to 2020. Tice came to politics from a successful business career, in which he ran a number of large property and asset management firms.
So it's slightly disappointing that Reform UK haven't been able to find a candidate for a council by-election in Richard Tice's constituency of Boston and Skegness. Croft ward covers the sparsely-populated fenland to the south and west of Skegness, and the main road towards Boston and the railway line to Skegness both pass through here. Thorpe Culvert and Havenhouse railway stations lie within the ward boundary: these stations have a very limited service, and Thorpe Culvert recorded fewer than 400 passengers in the year 2022-23. Croft itself is the largest parish within this ward but it only has 685 electors on the roll; the ward includes six other parishes to the west, stretching as far as Great Steeping.
This corner of Lincolnshire has an unusually old, an unusually white and an unusually British demographic. In the 2021 census Croft also made the top 40 wards in England and Wales for detached housing, at 77% of households. Politically it has been fertile ground for Euroscepticism for a long time, and all of the present Croft ward was within the Wainfleet and Burgh division of Lincolnshire county council which voted for UKIP in 2013. This division was broken up at the 2017 county elections, with Croft itself now covered by the Skegness South division and the other parishes being part of the Wainfleet county division; both of these were safely Conservative at the last Lincolnshire county council elections in 2021.
East Lindsey council is one of England's most far-flung and sparsely-populated second-tier local government districts, and it had local politics to match with rural independent councillors holding a council majority into the 21st century. However, the Conservatives took over the council leadership in 2007 and have held it ever since: there is currently a Conservative minority administration after the 2023 council elections returned a hung council.
Croft ward has been in the Conservative column since 2007 and finding opposition candidates to stand against the Tories here hasn't always been easy. In 2011 the ward was a straight fight between the Conservatives and UKIP; while in 2015 the Tories were challenged only by An Independence from Europe, a now-defunct UKIP splinter group associated with former MEP Mike Nattrass whose curious name was a blatant attempt to secure first place on the alphabetical ballot paper for European Parliament elections. Chris Pain, the county councillor here from 2013 to 2017, was originally elected for UKIP but ended up in An Independence from Europe; his wife Valerie contested this ward on that ticket in 2015 and polled 32.5%, which was the party's best-ever score in an actual election.
Croft ward was last contested all the way back in 2019, when new Conservative candidate Sid Dennis was elected with a 64-20 lead over an independent candidate. Dennis transferred here from St Clement's ward in Skegness, where he had been first elected in 2015; his chicken run proved to be a wise move, as in 2019 St Clement's ward voted in two councillors from the Skegness Urban District Society which wants self-government for the town. In 2023 nobody stood against Dennis in Croft ward, and he was re-elected unopposed for his final term. By day Sid Dennis ran the family scrapyard and recycling firm in Skegness; by night he worked as a comedian and after-dinner speaker, and until his death in July he was a member of the showbusiness fraternity and charity known as the Grand Order of Water Rats.
The by-election to replace Sid Dennis has generated a lot of interest. The defending Conservative candidate is Carl Drury, who is a town councillor in Wainfleet All Saints to the south of the ward and, like Dennis, runs a recycling firm. Standing as an independent is Paul Collins, who is a Skegness town councillor and was an unsuccessful Labour candidate for East Lindsey council last year. Also on the ballot are official Labour candidate Mark Anderson, Adrian Findley for the Skegness Urban District Society, Phil Gaskell for the Greens and David Tucker for the Lib Dems.
Parliamentary constituency: Boston and Skegness
Lincolnshire county council division: Skegness South (part: Croft parish), Wainfleet (part: Bratoft, Firsby, Great Steeping, Irby in the Marsh, Little Steeping and Thorpe St Peter parishes)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Skegness and Louth
Postcode districts: PE23, PE24, PE25
Mark Anderson (Lab)
Paul Collins (Ind)
Carl Drury (C)
Adrian Findley (Skegness Urban District Society)
Phil Gaskell (Grn)
David Tucker (LD)
May 2023 result C unopposed
May 2019 result C 406 Ind 130 Lab 48 Skegness Urban District Society 48
May 2015 result C 738 An Independence from Europe 355
May 2011 result C 559 UKIP 244
May 2007 result C 419 LD 320
May 2003 result LD 287 C 275 Lab 86
Previous results in detail
Histon and Impington
South Cambridgeshire council; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Pippa Heylings.
We now move south for our second Lib Dem defence of the week, to arrive in two large villages just to the north of Cambridge. But in truth, Histon and Impington - although they are still separate parishes - have merged together into a single urban area and they now share a parish council.
Histon and Impington ward has a very educated middle-class demographic these days, but Histon was traditionally an agricultural centre. Its main employers were Chivers and Sons, who started exporting jam from the village in the 1870s. By 1900 Chivers were employing over 1,000 people at their canning factory next to Histon railway station, and they were one of the UK's largest manufacturers of preserves. The business was sold to Schweppes in 1959 and ended up as part of Premier Foods, which built a new Histon factory in the 1980s. This factory is still very much in operation: now owned by the Hain Daniels Group, it manufactures "a number of the UK's favourite jams, marmalades, jellies, honey, mincemeat, fruit fillings and fruit ingredients, pure and blended maple syrups and natural sweeteners" right here in Histon.
Histon railway station is now part of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, which - continuing the fruity theme - continues south-east to Orchard Park. This consists of housing from the 21st century on the northern edge of the city of Cambridge and is essentially an overspill development of that city, although for the time being it is outside the Cambridge boundary. Orchard Park declared independence from Impington and became a parish of its own in 2009.
Despite all this population growth over the decades, Histon and Impington ward has survived successive boundary reviews to have unchanged boundaries since at least 1976. Impington was officially added to the ward name in 2004, but the current name seems to have been in regular use long before then. The ward had some Liberal and Liberal/SDP Alliance activity in the early 1980s, but then the Liberals gave up and Histon and Impington became a marginal Conservative v Labour ward in the 1990s. Labour won it in 1995, 1996 and 1998.
Histon and Impington ward's first Liberal Democrat candidate was Sal Brinton, now Baroness Brinton, who many years later became the party's president and briefly served as acting leader following the defeat of Jo Swinson in 2019. Brinton finished a poor third here in 1992, and it took ten years from that point for the Lib Dems to win the ward. For much of this century Histon and Impington then developed into a close fight between the Lib Dems and independent candidates, with the exception of Conservative wins in 2003 and 2015 when no independent stood.
South Cambridgeshire council came off the thirds electoral cycle and moved to whole-council elections in 2018, and since then Histon and Impington ward has had a full slate of Lib Dem councillors. The last district elections here were in 2022 when the Lib Dems had 41% against 21% for independent candidate Edd Stonham, 14% for Labour and 12% for the Conservatives. This Lib Dem score is inflated by a very large personal vote for Pippa Heylings, who ran a long way ahead of her running-mates; indeed the third Lib Dem councillor, who has a Muslim name, was elected rather narrowly. Since 2017 this ward has had the same boundaries as the Histon and Impington division of Cambridgeshire county council, which last went to the polls in 2021; on that occasion there was no indepenedent candidate and the Lib Dems enjoyed a 57-18 lead over the Conservatives. South Cambridgeshire council has a Lib Dem majority, while the Liberal Democrats run the county council in coalition with Labour and independent councillors.
Cambridgeshire's strong population growth in recent years resulted in the creation of the St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire parliamentary seat in July. This seat, which includes Histon and Impington, voted Liberal Democrat at its first contest: Ian Sollom, a consultant in the energy industry, defeated Anthony Browne who had been the outgoing Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire. Browne's old South Cambridgeshire seat also returned a Lib Dem MP, as Pippa Heylings won what was essentially an open seat with a majority of 10,641 votes over the Conservatives. Heylings, who has become the Lib Dem spokesperson for energy security and net zero, has now stood down from South Cambridgeshire council.
Defending this by-election for the Lib Dems is James Rixon, who is an architect and runs his own architectural firm in Cambridge. Independent candidate Edd Stonham is back for another go after his runner-up placing in 2022: Stonham sits on the parish council and he was previously a district councillor for this ward from 2010 to 2018, being elected first with the Lib Dem nomination and then as an independent. Labour have selected William Mason, who is a teacher and union rep. Standing for the Conservatives is lawyer and property investment expert Clive Pelbrough-Power. Kathryn Fisher completes the ballot paper for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire county council division: Histon and Impington
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cambridge
Postcode districts: CB4, CB24
Kathryn Fisher (Grn)
William Mason (Lab)
Clive Pelbrough-Power (C)
James Rixon (LD)
Edd Stonham (Ind)
May 2022 result LD 2133/1615/1279 Ind 1106 Lab 753/626/498 C 611/478/409 Grn 594
May 2021 county council result LD 2240 C 715 Lab 630 Grn 327
May 2018 result LD 1508/1217/1159 Ind 1155/895 Lab 842/775/669 C 695/581/506 Grn 242/202/116
May 2017 county council result LD 1938 C 834 Lab 602 Grn 224
May 2016 result Ind 1278 LD 698 Lab 533 C 520 Grn 174
May 2015 result C 1917 LD 1850 Lab 1264 Grn 695
May 2014 result Ind 1117 LD 876 Lab 780 C 621
May 2012 result Ind 1287 LD 568 Lab 473 C 438
May 2011 result LD 1293 Ind 1184 C 635 Lab 378 UKIP 98
May 2010 result LD 1775 Ind 1462 C 1189 Lab 561 UKIP 176
May 2008 result Ind 957 LD 900 C 632 Lab 129 Grn 73
May 2007 result LD 1309 C 1008 Lab 191
May 2006 result Ind 861 C 816 LD 614 Grn 191
June 2004 result Ind 1213/354 LD 1155/772/627 C 861/824/650 Lab 603 Grn 329
May 2003 result C 837 LD 779 Lab 367 Grn 82
May 2002 result LD 897 C 718 Lab 612 Grn 73
May 2000 result C 1001 Lab 807 LD 334
May 1999 result C 881 Lab 634 LD 378
May 1998 result Lab 695 C 659 LD 429
May 1996 result Lab 984 C 915 LD 271
May 1995 result Lab 1145 C 958
May 1994 result C 1073 Lab 987
May 1992 result C 1116 Lab 613 LD 406
May 1991 result C 1397 Lab 913
May 1989 result C 1242 Lab 1174
May 1988 result C 976 SDP 422 Ind 388 Lab 363
May 1987 result C 1435 Lab 514 All 165
May 1986 result C 1134 All 910 Lab 444
May 1984 result All 1005 C 915 Lab 373
May 1983 result Ind 993 All 911 Lab 411
May 1982 result All 1490 Lab 502
May 1980 double vacancy Lib 976 Ind 893/601 Lab 348/301
May 1979 result Lib 2045 Ind 735 Lab 704
May 1978 result Ind 515 Ind 433 Lab 175
May 1976 result Ind 889/726/636/431 Lib 742 Lab 404/248
Previous results in detail
Old Dean
Surrey Heath council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Lewis Mears.
From Cambridgeshire we now travel to Cambridge Town, as the Surrey town of Camberley was known before the Post Office decided in 1877 that it had had enough of sending post to the wrong county. Camberley is a rather modern town on the old road from London to Basingstoke, and it is a creation of the military: it was spawned by the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and the nearby Staff College, which opened in 1812 and 1862 respectively. Indeed the original name of Cambridge Town is a tribute to Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, who was commander-in-chief of the Army for much of his cousin Victoria's reign and laid the foundation stone for the Staff College. Malcolm Arnold's march HRH The Duke of Cambridge is a reference to him, rather than to the present Duke.
Here we are in another parliamentary seat which the Lib Dems gained in July 2024. Surrey Heath is now represented in Parliament by Al Pinkerton, who presumably never sleeps: Pinkerton is now the party's Northern Ireland spokesman, and before entering the Commons he was an academic at Royal Holloway specialising in geopolitics. He took his constituency over from the retiring Michael Gove, who was one of the Conservatives' most prominent frontbenchers throughout his 19 years in the Commons.
Al Pinkerton's party also controls Surrey Heath council, which takes its name from the large amounts of heathland in the district. Much of this is military land, as with the Barossa nature reserve on the Surrey-Berkshire border to the north of Camberley: this is a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its heathland habitat and the associated flora and fauna, and it's also in use by the Army for dry training purposes. Visiting humans and resident animals should be prepared for sudden noises.
As stated the military have been in the Camberley area for a long time, and during the Second World War much of Old Dean Common was in use as a camp for the Free French Army. General de Gaulle was a regular visitor. After the war the camp was used to intern German prisoners of war, before it was redeveloped in the 1950s and 1960s by Camberley urban district council as a London overspill estate. Old Dean ward is still 36% socially-rented and in that respect it sticks out like a sore thumb in western Surrey. The ward also makes the top 30 wards in England and Wales for Buddhism at 2.6% of residents, which may also be linked to the military: the Blackwater Valley urban area, of which Camberley is part, became a favourite location for retired Gurkhas after they gained the right to settle in the UK.
Old Dean ward contains Surrey's largest secondary school, Collingwood College. Its former pupils include the UK's youngest-ever female murderer Sharon Carr, who killed an adult stranger in Camberley in 1992 while she was a 12-year-old schoolchild. Carr's 14-year minimum prison term expired in 2011, but more than a decade later she is still considered too dangerous to be let out of HMP Bronzefield. More wholesomely, Luke and Matt Goss and Craig Logan - the three members of Bros - all met each other as Collingwood College pupils.
The fact that this is a council estate ward has made Old Dean electorally unusual in that it traditionally returns Labour members of Surrey Heath council. Indeed, in November 2014 Labour successfully defended the ward in a council by-election - something which the party haven't managed to do in the Surrey county council area at any point in the following ten years. But Labour's grip on Old Dean ward has slipped over the last decade: the Conservatives gained one seat here in 2015 and the other in 2023, when Old Dean ward voted 59% Conservative and 41% Labour in a straight fight. The ward is part of the Camberley East division of Surrey county council, which is safely Conservative.
The outgoing Conservative councillor Lewis Mears is a young man who took his A-levels at Collingwood College in 2021, and was then elected to Surrey Heath council two years later as one of its youngest-ever councillors. Mears graduated from Ravensbourne University London over the summer with a first-class degree in broadcast and media systems engineering, and that industry has given him a job offer which was too good to turn down. He has now left these shores to work in Hong Kong as a broadcast engineer for Bloomberg.
There will not be a straight fight this time, with five candidates seeking to replace Mears on the council. Defending for the Conservatives is Catherine Gibbard, who does a lot of community work in the ward. The Labour candidate Charlie Wilson is even younger than Mears, having taken his A-levels last year; he is the youth, media and communications officer for the party's Surrey Heath branch. Also standing are independent candidate Tal Belnik, Sam Goggin for Reform UK and Dave Hough for the Liberal Democrats.
Parliamentary constituency: Surrey Heath
Surrey county council division: Camberley East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Guildford and Aldershot
Postcode district: GU15
Tal Belnik (Ind)
Catherine Gibbard (C)
Sam Goggin (RUK)
Dave Hough (LD)
Charlie Wilson (Lab)
May 2023 result C 563/504 Lab 393/382
May 2019 result Lab 474/386 C 455/446
Previous results in detail
Northgate and West Green
Crawley council, West Sussex; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Peter Lamb.
Moving now to the south of London, we come to the New Town of Crawley. Northgate and West Green ward wraps around Crawley town centre on (surprisingly enough) the north and west sides; Northgate takes its name from a tollgate on the London-Brighton turnpike road, which passed through Crawley town centre before the New Town was built. West Green was the first part of the New Town to be developed, with building work starting in 1949 - about the same time that the Acid Bath Murderer John Haigh was found to have murdered several people at a workshop on Leopold Road in the neighbourhood.
Crawley New Town has grown to be big enough for a parliamentary seat of its own. The Crawley constituency was created in 1983 and has had the same boundaries as Crawley borough since 1997. Like Calder Valley above, it is a bellwether which has voted for the government in all eleven general elections since its creation. This means it was a Labour gain in 2024, and Labour councillor Peter Lamb was elected here in July at his second attempt; he took a seat which had been left open by the retirement of Conservative MP Henry Smith.
Lamb had previously spent eight years as leader of Crawley council from 2014 to 2022. The council had been hung from 2020 to 2022, but Labour have made significant gains since then and they now lead the Conservatives on the council 24-11, with this result to come. Not a good situation for the Crawley Conservatives. Northgate and West Green ward is safely part of the Labour majority, with Labour winning in May by 54-29 over the Conservatives. The Northgate and West Green division of West Sussex county council, which extends into parts of neighbouring wards, is also in Labour hands although it was close at the last county elections in 2021.
Defending this seat for Labour is Khayla Abu Mosa, who came to the UK from her native Palestine in 2009 and works as a learning associate in local schools. The Conservatives have selected Jonathan Purdy, who previously sat on Crawley council from 2019 to 2021 for the neighbouring Three Bridges ward. Also standing are Nick Park for the Green Party, Robin Burnham for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Linda Bamieh for the Workers Party of Britain and Tim Charters for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Crawley
West Sussex county council division: Northgate and West Green
ONS Travel to Work Area: Crawley
Postcode districts: RH10, RH11
Khayla Abu Mosa (Lab)
Linda Bamieh (Workers)
Robin Burnham (TUSC)
Tim Charters (RUK)
Nick Park (Grn)
Jonathan Purdy (C)
May 2024 result Lab 1188 C 641 Grn 278 TUSC 113
May 2023 result Lab 1136 C 696 Grn 249
May 2022 result Lab 1021 C 747 Grn 219 LD 134
May 2021 result Lab 1097 C 965 Ind 287 LD 213
May 2019 result Lab 1126/1016/996 C 827/734/662 Grn 419 LD 366
Previous results in detail
Barton and Becton
New Forest council, Hampshire; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Keith Craze.
We now come to two wards in Bournemouth or its general area. Bournemouth and Christchurch were transferred from Hampshire to Dorset at the 1974 reorganisation, but the county boundary stops just before the town of New Milton which remains in Hampshire. At New Milton's southern end we find Barton on Sea: this lies on a clifftop, with those cliffs being made up of grey and brown clays laid down in the Eocene around 40 million years ago when all this was an inland sea. These rocks are rich in fossils and are of great interest to palaeontologists, who now recognise a Bartonian age within the Eocene era based on the fossils which are found here. The Bartonian age is considered to run from 41 million to 37 million years ago.
The human population here is almost as ancient. In the 2021 census the Barton ward which existed then was ranked number 4 in England and Wales for residents in the 65-84 age bracket (41.1%) and made the top 20 for residents aged 85 or over (8.3%). Related to this, the ward had the third-highest Christian population in the south-east (61.5%). Barton was one of 12 wards in England and Wales where an absolute majority of the population were retired (52.5%). Boundary changes for the 2023 election merged Barton ward with Becton ward, whose demographics aren't quite so extreme but are definitely in the same vein: Becton was in the top 50 wards in England and Wales for its over-85 population (7.4%).
It will not come as a surprise to learn that this area votes strongly Conservative. The only previous election on the current boundaries was in 2023, when the Conservative slate led the Lib Dems by 53-23 even in a poor Conservative year generally. Previous election results in this century for the two predecessor wards were entirely consistent with that. The ward is part of the New Milton division of Hampshire county council which is also safely Conservative. There are no dinosaur fossils in the Bartonian rocks, but the local Conservative MP - representing the New Forest West constituency since 1997, and easily re-elected in July for his eighth term of office - is Sir Desmond Swayne.
This by-election is to replace Keith Craze, who suddenly passed away in August. Craze had been a New Forest councillor since 2019, and he was mayor of New Milton in 2021-23; before entering politics he had a 40-year career in HR. His wife Madalaine is also a New Milton town councillor and she is currently serving as deputy mayor.
The Conservative majority on New Forest council would go down to 25 out of 48 if this by-election is lost, but in the current political climate the local party should feel fairly confident about their chances. The by-election is a straight fight between two New Milton town councillors, John Adams (retired) for the Conservatives and Wynford Davies (chartered engineer and maritime historian) for the Lib Dems.
Parliamentary constituency: New Forest West
Hampshire county council division: New Milton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bournemouth
Postcode districts: BH25, SO41
John Adams (C)
Wynford Davies (LD)
May 2023 result C 1147/1087 LD 489/421 Grn 310/216 Lab 200
Previous results in detail
Muscliff and Strouden Park
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, Dorset; caused by the death of independent councillor Brian Castle.
Parliamentary constituency: Bournemouth East
It's now to go into Bournemouth proper. Muscliff and Strouden Park are residential areas on the northern edge of the town, located either side of the large Castlepoint shopping centre. The ward also includes a more rural fringe, which was reorganised this year as the parish of Throop and Holdenhurst; Holdenhurst is a small village now as it always has been, but it was once the centre of a large parish which included most of what became Bournemouth.
Until 2024, the Bournemouth-Poole conurbation was the only large urban area of England which had never elected a Labour MP. It has now has three Labour MPs. Muscliff and Strouden Park ward is part of the Bournemouth East constituency, which was won in July by Labour candidate Tom Hayes. Hayes had previously been deputy leader of Oxford council, from which he resigned in March a couple of months before his term was due to expire anyway. He defeated long-serving Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, who had spent much of the last Parliament as chair of the defence select committee, by 5,479 votes.
Local government in Bournemouth has also been a disaster area for the Conservatives in recent years. A local government reorganisation in 2019 created a massive new council called Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole - unwieldy name, unwieldy politics. Both BCP elections to date have returned hung councils, and in 2023 the Liberal Democrats became the largest party. They run the three towns in coalition with localist and independent councillors.
The Tories might well have hoped to have a safe council to work with, having won 51 seats out of a possible 54 at the last Bournemouth council elections in 2015. On that occasion just two Bournemouth wards voted for opposition councillors, including Throop and Muscliff which re-elected an independent councillor, Anne Rey. She retired to Spain a couple of years later, and the resulting by-election in January 2018 went to another independent, Kieron Wilson.
Wilson was elected in the expanded Muscliff and Strouden Park ward in 2019 at the top of the poll, as the ward's three seats split two to independents and one to the Conservatives. The Tories then lost their remaining seat in 2023 to a third independent, Brian Castle: shares of the vote were 47% for independents, 26% for the Conservatives and 21% for Labour. Kieron Wilson again topped the poll; in July he stood for Parliament as an independent candidate for Bournemouth East, finishing in a poor sixth place with 3.4% of the vote.
Brian Castle was diagnosed with cancer in July this year, and he passed away the following month at the early age of 50. Away from the council he had worked for Parcelforce and the Post Office, where he was a deputy union rep, and before that he had been a chef at several Bournemouth hotels.
No fewer than three independent candidates have come forward to succeed Castle. Taking them in ballot paper order, Julie-Anne Houldey is vice-chair of Throop and Holdenhurst parish council and works in PR and marketing; Conor O'Luby is involved with a public forum for the ward; and Peter Rogers is a retired airline pilot. The Conservative candidate Toby Slade is a letting expert. Labour's Eyyup Kilinc has already been elected if you believe his LinkedIn, which describes him as a "Labour councillor" - this was not correct at the time of writing this Preview. Also standing are Richard Blackwell-Whitehead for the Lib Dems and Roger Mann for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Bournemouth East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bournemouth
Postcode districts: BH8, BH9, BH10
Richard Blackwell-Whitehead (LD)
Julie-Anne Houldey (Ind)
Eyyup Kilinc (Lab)
Roger Mann (Grn)
Conor O'Luby (Ind)
Peter Rogers (Ind)
Toby Slade (C)
May 2023 result Ind 1595/1227/1058/879 C 894/870/817 Lab 724/703/640 LD 195/188/157
May 2019 result Ind 2129/1581/846/652 C 1022/973/841 Grn 694 UKIP 621 Lab 531/427/410
Previous results in detail
Town
Monmouthshire council, Gwent; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Catherine Fookes.
We finish for the week in the beautiful Welsh marches. And don't just take my word for the Wye valley being beautiful: for Monmouth is one of the UK's oldest tourist destinations. A tourist is literally someone who tours, and the Wye Tour was particularly popular for seekers of the Picturesque during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The standard Wye Tour was a two-day boat trip downstream from Ross-on-Wye to Chepstow, with an overnight stay in Monmouth in between.
Today Monmouth town centre is cut off from the Wye by the A40 road, which runs through the Wye valley as a fast dual carriageway link between south Wales and the English Midlands. The town centre itself is located on low ground between the Wye and Monnow rivers, and it is full of nice-looking and historic buildings. Monmouth Castle was the birthplace of Henry V in 1386; it was mostly demolished after the English Civil War, and its site was reused for Great Castle House which is now the headquarters of the most senior Army Reserve regiment, the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia). The Shire Hall, which celebrates its 300th birthday this year, was used as a court building into the 21st century and was the place where the Chartist leaders of the 1840 Newport Rising were tried and became the last people in the UK to be sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered - a punishment which was subsequently commuted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land for life. Today the Shire Hall is the offices of Monmouth town council, and the county council have plans to move the town's museum here.
The town centre ends at the Monnow Bridge, which is the last fortified river bridge in Great Britain: it is a mediaeval structure with a gatehouse in the middle of the stream. Road traffic went through this gate until 2004, when a new road bridge over the Monnnow was built slightly downstream and the Monnow Bridge became a footbridge. Crossing either the old or new bridge will bring you to the suburb of Overmonnow, which in ancient times was an ironworking centre: the name of Cinderhill Street, referring to the wastage from that industry, is a relic of those times. Much of Overmonnow is a ward of its own, but the parts close to the Monnow Bridge are covered by Town ward.
In the 2022 census Town ward was in the top 15 wards in England and Wales for population aged 85 or over (8.6%), which may point to the presence of a number of care homes here given that the rest of the age profile is fairly ordinary. Only one ward in Wales (Gorllewin Tywyn, on the west coast of Gwynedd) had a higher 85+ figure.
Town ward was created by boundary changes in 2022 which added an extra, fifth, councillor to Monmouth town. At the previous election in 2017 all four Monmouth wards had voted Conservative, but the Tories performed poorly in the 2022 Monmouthshire county elections and lost their majority; despite polling fewer votes than the Conservatives, Labour became the largest party on the council and formed a minority administration with 22 out of 46 seats. Three of the Labour councillors represent Monmouth wards, with Town ward returning Labour candidate Catherine Fookes by 46% against 29% for the Conservatives and 19% for an independent candidate.
Monmouth was given a seat in Parliament by Henry VIII, but like other Welsh parliamentary boroughs of the time it had to share the right to an MP with other towns in the county. In 1680 Monmouth tried to elect an MP without involving the other boroughs, which led to legal action that confirmed the electors to be the resident freemen of Monmouth, Newport and Usk and unseated Charles Somerset as the MP. Somerset was only 18 at the time, but he was the heir to the Duke of Beaufort (whose seat was at Raglan Castle) and there wasn't really a lower age limit for MPs in those days: this was before the Parliamentary Elections Act 1695 set the minimum age at 21. (It was reduced to 18 in the 21st century.)
The Monmouth Boroughs eventually became a pocket borough of the Beaufort family, but this changed with the Reform Acts and the growth of Newport into a major industrial town. The Beaufort stranglehold on the borough was broken in 1831-2 by Liberal MP Benjamin Hall (the Ben who gave his name to the bell Big Ben), while other 19th century MPs for the Monmouth Boroughs included the industrialist Crawshay Bailey who, so it is said, had an engine.
In 1918 the Monmouth Boroughs were dissolved and Monmouth became the centre of its own county constituency. This is quite a right-wing seat by Welsh standards, and Monmouth is the only constituency to have been won by the Conservatives at all six Senedd elections to date. The current Monmouth MS is the Conservatives' Peter Fox, who took the seat over in 2021 after 13 years as leader of the county council; the previous MS Nick Ramsay, who had been deselected by the Conservatives, sought re-election as an independent and finished in sixth place with a lost deposit.
Monmouth has, however, returned Labour MPs to Westminster: Donald Anderson (now Lord Anderson of Swansea) was the first Labour candidate elected here in 1966, while Huw Edwards (no, not that one) won a 1991 by-election, lost his seat in 1992, returned in 1997 and was re-elected in 2001. In 2005 Monmouth went back to the Conservatives by electing David T C Davies, who had previously represented the seat in the Welsh Assembly since 1999. In Westminster Davies served for nine years as chair of the Welsh Affairs select committee before being appointed to the Whips office by Boris Johnson; he made it to Cabinet in 2022, serving throughout the Sunak administration as Welsh secretary. David T C Davies then went down to defeat at the 2024 general election, losing an expanded and renamed Monmouthshire constituency to Labour candidate Catherine Fookes by 3,338 votes.
Fookes has now relinquished her Monmouthshire county council seat, so Labour have a by-election to defend in Monmouth's Town ward. They have selected Jackie Atkin, who is the current deputy mayor of Monmouth and works in business development. She already represents this ward on Monmouth town council, as does the Conservative candidate Martin Newell. This time there is no independent standing, so completing the ballot paper are Paul Rollins for the Green Party and Jez Becker for the Liberal Democrats.
Westminster constituency: Monmouthshire
Senedd constituency: Monmouth
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cinderford and Ross-on-Wye
Postcode district: NP25
Jackie Atkin (Lab)
Jez Becker (LD)
Martin Newell (C)
Paul Rollins (Grn)
May 2022 result Lab 339 C 212 Ind 142 Grn 39
Previous results in detail
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them - going back to 2016 - in the Andrew's Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale