Previewing the five local by-elections of 2nd October 2025
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
Five by-elections, for seven seats, on 2nd October 2025:
Harrietsham, Lenham and North Downs
Maidstone council, Kent; caused by the resignation of independent councillors Kathy Cox and Janetta and Tom Sams.
Today is the first edition of Andrew’s Previews which is being sent out early to paying subscribers. And as a treat for that we have an extremely rare event to bring you: a triple by-election.
For the location of this we are on the southern slopes of the North Downs, in a ward which many people pass through but where few stop - except on those occasions where Operation Stack is in effect. More on that story later. All the main communication links from London to Folkestone - the Maidstone to Ashford railway line, High Speed 1, the M20 motorway and the A20 road which it relieved - pass through the valley of the River Len to the east of Maidstone.
The Rivers Len and Great Stour both rise near Lenham, which lies on the original A20 road. Lenham is technically a town because it has a market charter, and a farmer’s market is held here monthly. The A20 also passes through the larger village of Harrietsham to the west. Harrietsham, Lenham and Hollingbourne are all stops within the ward for trains between Maidstone and Ashford. To the north of the railway line, and within the Kent Downs National Landscape, can be found six smaller parishes on top of the escarpment: they are Hucking, Bicknor, Wormshill, Frinsted, Wichling and Otterden.
The M20 motorway past Harrietsham and Lenham has frequently appeared in road traffic reports over the years. Ever since this stretch of motorway first opened in 1993 it has been the main focus of Operation Stack, under which Kent Police close the motorway when there is serious disruption with the Dover ferries or the Channel Tunnel: this allows the carriageway to be turned into a parking area for lorries waiting to cross the Channel until things get back to normal. Operation Stack could last for days at a time, resulting in enormous traffic disruption in Harrietsham and Lenham. In 2019 Stack was superseded by Operation Brock, under which a moveable barrier has been installed on this section of the M20 to allow one of the carriageways to be retained for local traffic (in the form of a contraflow) if lorries are queueing on the other carriageway.
And there could be more local traffic in future. Maidstone council have big development plans here, which involve turning one corner of Lenham parish into a garden village called Heathlands with 5,000 homes and all the necessary school, service and employment provision including a new railway station. If Heathlands gets off the ground it will be bigger than Harrietsham and Lenham put together: according to the notice of poll for this by-election Harrietsham parish has 2,683 electors, while the two polling stations at Lenham community centre serve 4,031 electors although not all of them are in Lenham parish.
We may be about to see just how politically toxic this plan is, because it has led to the resignation of all three Maidstone councillors for Harrietsham, Lenham and North Downs ward. First to go were husband and wife Tom and Janetta Sams, who were very long-serving councillors. Tom Sams was first elected for the former Harrietsham and Lenham ward in 1995 on the Labour ticket, with Janetta joining him in 2002. Tom lost his seat to the Conservatives in 2006 but got it back as an independent in 2007 when Janetta stood down. He then resigned from the council in advance of the 2014 election, provoking an election for two seats which went to Janetta (this time as an independent) and to UKIP. Tom got his seat back from UKIP in 2015 and the two Samses had had continuous service since then.
Boundary changes for the 2024 Maidstone election merged Harrietsham and Lenham ward with the former North Downs ward and added a third councillor. North Downs had been a safe Conservative ward prior to 2024, but it was comfortably outvoted by Harrietsham and Lenham and the combined ward went on to return three independents. Topline figures here in 2024 were 58% for independent candidates and 17% for the Conservative slate, with the Samses running quite a long way ahead of the third independent candidate Kathy Cox. Maidstone council has now moved off its previous thirds electoral cycle, so the next scheduled second-tier elections here are in 2028.
Maidstone council is very balanced, with the 2024 election returning 13 Conservatives, 12 Lib Dems, 10 Greens, 8 independent and 6 Labour councillors; a previous Conservative minority administration has been replaced by a coalition of Lib Dem, Green and independent councillors, with the Green Party supplying the council leader. Kathy Cox, who became Maidstone’s cabinet member for corporate resources, is also uncomfortable with the Heathlands scheme and she was not happy to continue on the council after the Samses had quit. She subsequently handed in her notice to allow a single by-election to be held for all three seats.
Doing this saves time and money for everyone involved, but a triple by-election is still an extremely rare event. Your columnist is only aware of two previous occasions of this happening this century: both of those were in July 2005, when the Aston and Bordesley Green wards of Birmingham went to the polls for all three seats after their 2004 elections were voided in the notorious “banana republic” Election Court case. Which isn’t the most promising of precedents.
Harrietsham, Lenham and North Downs ward is part of the Maidstone Rural East division of Kent county council, which was convincingly gained in May by Reform UK having previously voted Conservative. At Westminster level it is covered by the Faversham and Mid Kent constituency, which has been in Conservative hands since its creation in 1997: since 2015 the local MP has been Helen Whately, who never rose above junior ministerial rank when the Conservatives were in government but is now in the shadow cabinet, shadowing the work and pensions portfolio.
These results from other levels of government may be important here in the UK’s first triple by-election for 20 years, because only two new independent candidates have come forward for the three vacated seats. This means we will definitely have a change in council composition. The two independents are Gary Butler, who has a long previous electoral history in the Maidstone area as a far-right candidate, and Sam Lawrence-Rose who is the head of adult social care and health at Kent county council but will not be helped by giving an address in Tonbridge and Malling district. On the Conservative slate Onyekachukwu Chukwuma, who is the only candidate here from 2024 to return for another go, is joined by two students: Isobelle Horne is reading politics at the University of Leeds, while Darcy Rotherham was an unsuccessful candidate for the county council in May while also sitting her A-level exams at the same time. Reform UK have selected three candidates with no previous electoral track record: Chris Houlihan is a parish councillor in Detling to the north of Maidstone, Mariela Nedelcheva is a nurse who came to the UK from her native Bulgaria in 2002, while Steve Povey has recently retired from a career in the telecoms industry. The Liberal Democrats, who have not normally stood against the Samses in recent years, have nominated a slate of Sam Burrows, Andrew Cockersole and Jennifer Horwood; the Green Party candidates Reshmi Kalam, James Snyder and Callum Sweetman, and the Heritage Party’s Sean Turner complete a ballot paper of fifteen candidates chasing three seats. This is an English local by-election, so electors here have three votes.
Parliamentary constituency: Faversham and Mid Kent
Kent county council division: Maidstone Rural East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Medway
Postcode districts: ME9, ME13, ME14, ME17, TN27
Sam Burrows (LD)
Gary Butler (Ind)
Onyekachukwu Chukwuma (C)
Andrew Cockersole (LD)
Isobelle Horne (C)
Jennifer Horwood (LD)
Chris Houliham (RUK)
Reshmi Kalam (Grn)
Sam Lawrence-Rose (Ind)
Mariela Nedelcheva (RUK)
Steve Povey (RUK)
Darcy Rotherham (C)
James Snyder (Grn)
Callum Sweetman (Grn)
Sean Turner (Heritage Party)
May 2024 result Ind 1515/1455/923 C 435/396/301 Lab 364 RUK 305
Previous results in detail
Lake North
Isle of Wight council; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor David Maclean.
We now go offshore for the this week’s by-election defence by those new kids on the political block Reform UK. After winning the May 2025 local elections the Faragists have continued their momentum into the local by-elections since May: after last week’s results, Reform UK have won 38 of the 111 seats up for election since May, which is a net gain of 33 seats. It’s only 17 months since the party first won seats in an ordinary council election in their own right, and most Reform UK councillors haven’t been around long enough to resign yet. But there are some councillors elected in May who have nonetheless handed in their notice since.
Which brings us to the parish of Lake, which is on the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight overlooking Sandown Bay. Lake lies in between the towns of Sandown (to the north) and Shanklin (to the south) and effectively merges into both of them. It is the last stop on the Island Line railway before its southern terminus at Shanklin. Lake railway station was opened by British Rail in 1987, which makes it younger than the trains serving it: the Island Line has recently taken delivery of some new trains, which were originally built in 1978 for the District Line of the London Underground.
The Isle of Wight formed a single Parliamentary seat from 1885 - when the island’s main town of Newport was disenfranchised by the Third Redistribution - to 2024, when it was split into two seats with very low electorates. In last year’s general election the Isle of Wight East constituency returned a brand-new Conservative MP in the form of Joe Robertson. Robertson came to the Commons from local government: he still sits on the Isle of Wight council, where he represents Bembridge, and he was leader of the Conservative group from 2021 to 2023.
In recent years Wight council has frequently alternated between Conservative and independent control, often with little reference to what might be going on on the English mainland. We are currently in an independent-led phase after the 2021 Wight election returned a hung council: the Conservatives won 18 seats against 13 independents, 2 seats for the Green Party, 2 seats for the Island Independent Network and 1 each for Labour, the Lib Dems and localist parties Our Island and the Vectis Party. The Vectis Party councillor was subsequently sent to prison for historic child sex offences, and his party are no longer represented on the council. The Island Independent Network are one of a number of localist groups around the country who share a single “Independent Network” party registration with the Electoral Commission, and accordingly the Local Elections Archive Project lists their candidates under the party name “Independent Network”.
Lake North ward voted Labour in 2005 and 2013, but more recently it had been in the Conservative column. The current ward boundaries were introduced in 2021, when the wonderfully-named Conservative councillor Tig Outlaw was re-elected with 44% of the vote, against 31% for the Island Independent Network candidate Adrian Whittaker and 15% for Labour.
The 2025 Isle of Wight council elections were cancelled pending local government reorganisation, which was a bizarre decision by central government. The only possible changes to the current state of the island’s local government would either involve splitting it up - which would undo the change made when the present council was created in 1995 - or result in the construction of a cross-Solent local authority which would be both unpopular and unworkable. The latter opinion was clearly shared by Tig Outlaw, who has moved to the mainland but still commutes to Sandown, and he resigned from the council earlier this year to allow a by-election to held on the originally-scheduled Wight election date of 1st May.
May’s Lake North by-election was gained from the Conservatives by Reform UK candidate David Maclean, a semi-retired tobacco dealer who left his native Zimbabwe (or “Rhodesia”, as he called it when interviewed by the local press) in 1986. He polled 36% of the vote against 29% for Adrian Whittaker who this time had the Conservative nomination, 12% for the Greens and 11% for the Lib Dems. Maclean resigned from the council in August after just four months in office, having come under criticism for not attending council meetings; Reform UK have blamed this on a recent family bereavement.
The winner of this by-election won’t serve for much longer than that, because the delayed Isle of Wight council elections are due to go ahead in May 2026. This time Reform UK have selected Bill Nigh, who is hoping to make it third time lucky after finishing second in two Wight council by-elections earlier this year (first in Freshwater South ward, then in Wroxall, Lowtherville and Bonchurch ward). Also hoping to make it third time lucky is the Conservatives’ Adrian Whittaker, the vice-chair of Lake parish council, who was runner-up here in 2021 for the Island Independent Network and then runner-up in May’s by-election for the Conservatives. The Green Party have selected Robert May, who contested Shanklin Central ward at the last two Wight local elections. Standing for the Lib Dems is Bob Blezzard, a retired senior local government officer who was runner-up here in 2017 and is having another go after his fourth-place finish here in May. Labour’s Christopher Lloyd completes an all-male ballot paper for Lake North ward’s second by-election of the year.
Parliamentary constituency: Isle of Wight East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Isle of Wight
Postcode district: PO36
Bob Blezzard (LD)
Christopher Lloyd (Lab)
Robert May (Grn)
Bill Nigh (RUK)
Adrian Whittaker (C)
May 2025 by-election RUK 291 C 232 Grn 97 LD 85 Ind 55 Lab 47
May 2021 result C 399 Ind Network 284 Lab 135 Grn 92
Previous results in detail
Hutton South
Brentwood council, Essex; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Mark Reed.
This month Andrew’s Previews is going to be visiting a number of districts which haven’t been covered in this column in some years, including ticking off the last two districts in Great Britain which have never had the full treatment from this column. Today Brentwood council features here for the first time in ten years, our last profile in this district being for Shenfield ward in October 2015.
At the time Shenfield railway station was am important junction on the Great Eastern main line, with frequent local stopping trains to Liverpool Street starting and terminating here. Those local stopping trains have now been transferred to the Elizabeth Line and they now run through central London to Paddington and Heathrow Airport, leading to a large increase in the number of passengers commuting from Shenfield station.
The Brentwood suburb of Hutton lies to the east of the railway line, and Shenfield station can be found in the northern corner of Hutton South ward. This ward includes most of the affluent enclave of Hutton Mount, and it definitely has a commuter economic profile. In the 2021 census, when the ward was smaller than it is now, Hutton South was in the top 50 wards in England and Wales for residents working in the financial and insurance sector (15.0%).
This demographic has kept Hutton South safely in the Conservative column so far this century. Since a 2009 by-election one of the ward councillors has been Roger Hirst, who has held the role of Essex police and crime commissioner since 2016 in addition to his Brentwood council duties. The 2024 election here, fought on expanded boundaries with a large number of voters and an additional councillor transferred from Brentwood South ward, gave 45% to the Conservative slate, 28% to Labour and 16% to the Liberal Democrats. However, this places the ward in the minority on Brentwood council, which is hung with a Lib Dem-Labour coalition running the show.
This Tory dominance still extends to other levels of government. The Brentwood and Ongar parliamentary seat safely re-elected its Conservative MP Alex Burghart last year; he is now in Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet, shadowing the dual roles of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Northern Ireland because the Tories no longer have enough MPs to put a full shadow cabinet together. Martin Bell, who finished second here as an independent candidate in 2001, still holds the record of being the closest a non-Conservative candidate has come to winning Brentwood and Ongar. The Tories also hold the two Essex county council divisions which cover this ward, Brentwood Hutton and Brentwood South; the 2025 Essex county elections were cancelled.
This by-election is to replace Conservative councillor Mark Reed, who suddenly died in July at the early age of 57. Reed was a long-serving councillor who had continuous service here since winning a by-election in October 2008, and he was the Mayor of Brentwood in 2015-16. He was elected in second place in 2024, so the winner of this by-election will take over the remainder of a three-year term ending in 2027.
Defending for the Conservatives is Thomas Bridge, who is hoping to get back on the council after losing his seat in 2024: Bridge previously represented Ingatestone, Fryerning and Mountnessing ward from 2016 to 2021 and then Tipps Cross ward from 2021 to 2024. Labour have reselected Jonathan Saunders, a 24-year-old student at the University of London who fought this ward last year. The Lib Dems’ Brenner Munden is a former Brentwood councillor who won a 2023 by-election in South Weald ward, but lost his seat the following year as a result of boundary change. Another all-male ballot paper is completed by David Hale for the Green Party and Russell Quirk, a former Conservative councillor for Hutton North ward (2011-15) and now a regular contributor to Talk TV, for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Brentwood and Ongar
Essex county council division: Brentwood Hutton (most), Brentwood South (part previously in Brentwood South ward)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Chelmsford
Postcode district: CM13
Thomas Bridge (C)
David Hale (Grn)
Brenner Munden (LD)
Russell Quirk (RUK)
Jonathan Saunders (Lab)
May 2024 result C 757/752/698 Lab 464/461/428 LD 263/260/180 Grn 183
Previous results in detail
Strawberry
Cheshire West and Chester council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Gareth Gould.
Nothing is real, and nothing is forever. The strawberries of last summer are now but a memory. The Strawberry Fields children’s home in Liverpool immortalised by John Lennon is no more: the house Lennon knew was demolished in the 1970s due to structural problems, and its site is now run by the Salvation Army as a tourist attraction. On the other side of the Mersey, the strawberry fields of Ellesmere Port have suffered a different fate: they have been built on for housing, and the only reminder of the Strawberry Farm and Strawberry Cottages shown on old maps here are the arterial road of Strawberry Way West and Strawberry Way East, either side of the Strawberry Roundabout. And the Strawberry ward, which lies in the south-west of Ellesmere Port’s urban sprawl.
Ellesmere Port has a reputation as a working-class town dominated by the Vauxhall car factory, and while this does influence Strawberry ward’s demographics and politics it should be stressed that this is a relatively better-off part of the town. There is almost no social housing here, and Strawberry ward is ranked in the top 30 wards in England and Wales for owner-occupation at 90.6% of households.
Despite this Strawberry ward has voted strongly for the Labour Party over the last 15 years, because this is Ellesmere Port and that’s the local culture. The local authority here is Cheshire West and Chester council, which has a Labour majority: the 2023 elections returned 39 Labour councillors against 23 Conservatives, 5 independents, 2 Greens and 1 Lib Dem, and Labour carrying eight of the nine Ellesmere Port wards was crucial to that majority. The one that got away was Whitby Park, which voted Green: Strawberry was safely in the Labour column in 2023 with a 69-25 lead over the Conservatives. Andrew’s Previews needs to declare an interest here: one of the Labour councillors in Cheshire West and Chester is Britain Elects’ very own head honcho Ben Walker.
The town has had a Labour MP continuously since 1992: since 2015 the local representative has been Justin Madders, who had previously served as the last leader of Ellesmere Port and Neston council before its abolition in 2009. Boundary changes for the 2024 election mean that Madders’ constituency is now Ellesmere Port and Bromborough, crossing the boundary between the counties of Cheshire and Merseyside.
Strawberry ward took on its current boundaries in 2019, and since then its councillor had been Gareth Gould who has now stood down on health grounds. Defending the seat for Labour is Kris Fisher, who works for a firm which promotes green energy technology: he is not to be confused with the Kris Fisher who was a former regular character in the Cheshire soap Hollyoaks. The Conservatives have selected Nicholas Hebson, a retired teacher who represented the predecessor ward of Strawberry Fields on Ellesmere Port and Neston council from 2007 to 2009. Also on the ballot are the Lib Dems’ Lizzie Jewkes who is not to be confused with cheap jewellery from Argos, Paul Bowers for the Green Party who is a former councillor for Helsby ward, left-wing independent candidate Ray McHale, and Reform UK’s Jason Moorcroft who was their parliamentary candidate for Runcorn and Helsby in 2024.
Parliamentary constituency: Ellesmere Port and Bromborough
ONS Travel to Work Area: Chester
Postcode district: CH66
Paul Bowers (Grn)
Kris Fisher (Lab)
Nicholas Hebson (C)
Lizzie Jewkes (LD)
Ray McHale (Ind)
Jason Moorcroft (RUK)
May 2023 result Lab 972 C 349 LD 95
May 2019 result Lab 962 C 464
Previous results in detail
Wigan Central
Wigan council, Greater Manchester; caused by the death of Labour councillor George Davies.
Last time this column wrote about Wigan Central ward, back in March 2011, it was a hatchet job. It was intended to be: I’m a Boltoner, after all. Fourteen years later, it’s time to venture again into the wild country beyond the Chequerbent Roundabout so let’s see if I can be nicer this time.
Wigan is, of course, a town built on heavy industry: in many ways coalmining and textiles created large parts of the local landscape. More than a thousand pit shafts have been sunk within five miles of the town centre. We can see one effect of this by visiting Wigan town hall: this is an Edwardian building which was originally the Wigan Mining and Technical College, before the council moved in here in 1990.
Long before all this heavy industry, Wigan was a Roman town at the junction of roads from Manchester, Preston and Warrington, and it’s likely that there was a fort here. Excavations on the site of the Grand Arcade shopping centre, which opened in 2007, found significant Roman remains including a hypocaust. This has been restored and re-erected outside the shopping centre.
The Grand Arcade is on a site previously occupied by Wigan Central railway station and by the legendary Wigan Casino nightclub, which was one of the centres of the Northern Soul movement during the eight years it operated (1973 to 1981). Within the shopping centre can be found a statue of another of Wigan’s gifts to music, George Formby.
Next to the Grand Arcade can be found the brutalist Wigan Civic Centre, which was opened in 1970 as offices for the old county borough. It has recently been restored into offices for start-up companies and freelance workers.
The Civic Centre looks out onto Believe Square, a hilltop public square which includes some public art. Here we find a statue of the Wigan rugby league legend Sir Billy Boston, and a sculpture called the Face of Wigan. Also here is a memorial to Gerrard Winstanley of the Diggers, who was born in Wigan in 1609.
Winstanley’s connection to Wigan has clearly not been forgotten. On my second research trip there was a free Diggers Festival going on here, with performances going on and stalls championing radical causes of the modern day like trade unions, proportional representation, the CND and the local branch of the Green Party. All they are saying is give peas a chance.
Wigan’s Roman fort probably occupied the area now covered by Believe Square, but its site has not yet been pinned down. Looking at the street map with street names like Wallgate is no help: “gate” in the Danelaw is a generic Norse word for an urban thoroughfare, not necessarily an indication of a former gate in a town wall. (Compare Deansgate in Manchester.) Wallgate is the main road going west out of the town centre towards Wigan Pier, and here can be found the town’s two main railway stations less than 100 metres apart. The name of North Western station, a stop for intercity trains on the West Coast main line, refers to its former ownership by the London and North Western Railway. Wallgate station, which is for local trains towards Bolton, Atherton, Kirkby and Southport, has this attractive Victorian canopy outside.
Wigan Pier is outside the boundary of Wigan Central ward, but we do have an George Orwell tribute here from those historians at JD Wetherspoon, who have named their Wigan town centre pub “The Moon Under Water” after Orwell’s fantasy of a perfect pub. For those prefer food rather than drink and who want to sample local culinary delicacies like the infamous Wigan Kebab (for the uninitiated, this is a pie barm), the town centre has large numbers of pie shops for all the meaty and pastry goodness you could ever want. And whoever designed the local takeaway app clearly has a sense of humour.
We should also of course mention Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls, which are still in the hands of the original family and are still made in a factory round the corner from Wigan Wallgate railway station, from where the smells of sugary goodness torment commuters waiting for their train.
This column can verify that these mints do indeed keep you all aglow, although some of the other claims made in Mike Harding’s song would not pass muster with Trading Standards.
Speaking of cultural icons, we should also remember that Wallace and Gromit are Wiganers.
Generally Wigan town centre is in good shape notwithstanding the armageddon of the High Street, but the cracks are starting to show. The Grand Arcade has lost all of its anchor tenants and still has signs outside advertising a Debenhams store which hasn’t traded for over four years. The Galleries, which was a large shopping arcade in the north of the town centre, has been almost completely demolished in the last couple of years and its site is now awaiting redevelopment.
A few minutes’ walk to the north of this void brings the visitor to the Victorian splendour of Mesnes Park (pronunciation guide: mains), which was opened in 1878 by the Mayor of Wigan Nathaniel Eckersley. It includes a statue of local politician Sir Francis Sharp Powell, 1st Baronet, which unusually was unveiled in 1910 while he was still alive. Rubbing Powell’s shoe is supposed to bring good luck, although in this column’s opinion the jury is still out on that: after your columnist duly rubbed Powell’s shoe on my first research visit to Wigan Central ward I went on to lose my mobile phone with the photos of Wigan intended for this piece on it, and I had to go back two weeks later and wander around the ward all over again. Let’s see if the effect works second time round, shall we?
Sir Francis Powell had a very long Parliamentary career, being first elected as a Conservative MP for Wigan in 1857: he served in the Commons for Wigan from 1857 to 1859, for Cambridge from an 1863 by-election to 1868, for the Northern Division of the West Riding from 1872 to 1874 and finally for Wigan again from 1885 until his retirement in January 1910. Powell had also won a by-election in Wigan in January 1881, after the previous Conservative MP James Lindsay (whose family were based in the nearby stately home of Haigh Hall) succeeded to his father’s titles and entered the Lords as the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres; but that win was voided by the Election Court, with the Powell campaign found to have committed bribery and provided free food and drink on election day - an offence known in election law as “treating”. On this occasion treating was a more effective tactic than usual, because the local miners were on strike at the time of the by-election and money and food was scarce: in the words of the judge, “the gift of a breakfast to a starving man was worth as much to him on that morning as the gift of a pound would have been, perhaps, at a more prosperous time”. Parliament was taking a hard line on electoral corruption at the time, and in the worst cases boroughs could be and were disenfranchised for behaviour like this: Wigan escaped that fate, but after Powell’s election was voided his seat was left vacant for well over a year before the Commons eventually agreed to hold another by-election.
Wigan was one of six towns in Lancashire which were entitled to send two MPs to Parliament before the Great Reform Act: the others were Clitheroe, Lancaster, Liverpool, Newton-le-Willows and Preston. The franchise in Wigan was vested in the freemen of the borough, and the process of actually becoming a freeman was based on a municipal constitution which was rather complicated and very much subject to interpretation - either by the mayor or by the courts. In 1802 the borough corporation managed to admit enough new freemen to oust the candidates of the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Bradford, who had previously controlled the borough, and local squire Robert Leigh and cotton manufacturer John Hodson were returned. Their retirements in 1820 led to a complicated struggle for control of Wigan’s MPs, which culminated in 1831 with a wholesale riot on polling day by pro-Reform Act campaigners. One of the Tory candidates was lucky to escape with his life. The Reform Act increased the town’s electorate from around 100 to 483, and the 1832 general election saw pro-Reform candidates returned comfortably.
The Third Redistribution of 1885 reduced Wigan to one MP, which it has had ever since. The retirement of Francis Powell in January 1910 led to Wigan returning its first Labour MP, and the parliamentary seat has been continuously in Labour hands since 1918. It has seen a number of parliamentary by-elections over the years - most recently in 1999 - because the local Labour party had a habit in the 20th century of selecting mineworkers who went on to serve until their deaths, and four of the five Labour MPs for Wigan between 1918 and 1999 died in office. In a break with this pattern the present incumbent is Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, who has served since 2010 and has one thing in column with your columnist: we both took our A-levels at Holy Cross College in Bury.
The Labour party have also controlled the modern Wigan council, which covers a large swathe of the Lancashire coalfield, since its inception in 1974. The latest composition has 62 Labour councillors plus this vacancy against 11 independents and a single Conservative councillor.
Wigan Central ward covers the town centre and points north and east, including part of Whelley on the road towards Aspull and the town’s main general hospital, the Royal Albert Edward infirmary (opened in 1873 by, and named after, the future Edward VII). It has some high-status terraced housing and is probably the most upmarket of Wigan town’s wards, and Central ward voted Conservative up to and including 2008. However, when the current ward boundaries were introduced in 2023 Labour were guaranteed one of the three seats thanks to insufficient opposition candidates, and in 2024 the Tories fell to third place in the ward behind independent candidate Catherine Croston. Vote shares here last year were 48% for Labour, 27% for Croston and 15% for the Conservatives. Historically, Wigan hasn’t had much truck with far-right candidates.
This by-election is to replace Labour councillor George Davies, who died suddenly at the end of July at the age of 76. Davies was a very long-serving councillor who was first elected to Wigan council all the way back in 1987 - as a Liberal/SDP Alliance councillor for Aspull-Standish ward. He lost that seat to Labour in 1995, but was back on the council a year later - this time with the Labour nomination. Davies then lost Aspull-Standish to the Liberal Democrats in 2003, but returned in 2004 for the redrawn ward of Standish with Langtree. After losing his seat for the third time in 2008 - this time to the Conservatives - Davies was finally elected for Wigan Central ward in 2010, gaining the seat from the Conservatives, and he had unbroken service since then. Outside politics Davies had worked a porter at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary, while in his spare time he had written a number of pamphlets on Wigan’s history. In 2009 Wigan council voted him the title of honorary alderman.
A hard act to follow for the defending Labour candidate Adam Boon, who works as a truck driver and is active in the Unite union. Catherine Croston has not returned following her second-place finish in 2024, but hoping to pick up the independent challenge is Gareth Fairhurst who was previously a Conservative councillor for this ward from 2004 to 2010 and then an independent councillor for Standish with Langtree ward from 2012 to 2016. By 2010 Fairhurst had fallen out with the Conservative party, and he and other members of his family have since sought election to Wigan council under a variety of localist labels: he once managed to get the party name “Wigan Independent Conservatives” past the Electoral Commission, and he is currently on the party register as leader of both the Standish Independents and the group which has nominated him in this by-election, the Wigan Independents. The official Conservative candidate Paul Martin has previously been a regular candidate for Ashton-in-Makerfield South ward and its predecessors, and he finished in third place there in 2024. Simeon Rowlands for the Green Party, John Burley for the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK’s Lee Moffitt (who was their Parliamentary candidate for Gorton and Denton last year) complete yet another all-male ballot paper. We don’t know if the count is going to go on until daybreak, but if it does perhaps the returning officer will play the 3 before 8 - the traditional final three songs of a Wigan Casino all-nighter - to close the proceedings.
Parliamentary constituency: Wigan
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode districts: WN1, WN2, WN3, WN4, WN6
Adam Boon (Lab)
John Burley (LD)
Gareth Fairhurst (Wigan Ind)
Paul Martin (C)
Lee Moffitt (RUK)
Simeon Rowlands (Grn)
May 2024 result Lab 1398 Ind 790 C 420 Grn 190 LD 100
May 2023 result Lab 1711/1578/1419 C 832 LD 666
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