Previewing the four local by-elections of 29th May 2025 (Reissue)
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
I would like to apologise to subscribers for a serious error which I made in writing the preview for today’s by-election in Maldon, Essex. I have taken the view that the most prudent course of action is to withdraw the Preview which was sent out this morning and reissue it. This is the corrected version.
Before we start this week, a little advertisement is in order. If you're interested in quiz and you would like to improve your game, do please check out the new Substack from Jonathan Gibson. I described Jonathan in this column in 2019 as a quizzing "star of the future", and he delivered on that by becoming, in his words, the "youngest ever Mastermind champion in 2021, and perennial runner-up in pretty much every quiz I've done since". (Well, apart from the Quiz League of London's buzzer quiz at the weekend when we were on the same team and we actually won the whole thing!) Jonathan has made a promising start to his Substack and I'm looking forward to learning from him in the future. Your link is jgib1996.substack.com.
Whether you're interested in quiz or not, there are four by-elections on 29th May 2025:
Canvey Island Winter Gardens
Castle Point council, Essex; caused by the death of Canvey Island Independent Party councillor Peter Greig.
This is the second of Andrew's Previews' thematic weeks this month. Last week this column was concentrating on the Liberal Democrats, as they easily held three seats in nicer corners of London and the South East. This week all four seats up for election are vacated by independent councillors - although, as often happens in local elections, things are a bit more complicated than that. None of the outgoing councillors were actually elected with the “Independent” label: two of them were elected on a major party ticket and then walked out on their group; while the other two were elected for Essex localist groups which are registered as political parties with the Electoral Commission. And Essex is where we’ll start this week - although for our first poll today, we're going offshore.
Specifically, we have come to Canvey Island, an extremely low-lying island on the Essex side of the Thames estuary. This was first settled by the Romans who had a salt-making industry here, but flooding remained a regular problem on the island until 1622 when a sea wall was built and land was reclaimed. Most sources state this was the work of Cornelius Vermuyden, whose drainage projects changed the landscape in much of eastern England; a secondary school in Canvey Island Winter Gardens ward is named after Vermuyden. The island's flood defences were significantly beefed up in the late 20th century, after the North Sea flood of 1st February 1953 inundated the town with the loss of 58 lives.
The modern town of Canvey Island substantially dates from the early twentieth century when the island became a seaside resort. Canvey Island became an urban district in 1926. As well as the holidaymakers there was also industry: Canvey's first oil terminal opened in 1936, and the island took delivery of the UK's first load of liquified natural gas in 1959. And there could have been more industry here: Occidental Petroleum began construction of an oil refinery here in 1972, but the work was abandoned in 1975 and the half-built refinery site was taken over by nature. In 2003 the never-used plant at the Occidental site was removed and the area was designated as the Canvey Wick nature reserve.
There are only two roads onto Canvey, the original 1930s route via Benfleet railway station and the A130 Canvey Way, opened in 1972, which links the island directly to the A13 at Bowers Gifford. Both of these routes will deliver you into Winter Gardens ward, which takes in the Winter Gardens estate in the north of the town plus the undeveloped marshland in western Canvey. The ward also borders Canvey Lake, which appears to be in pretty poor condition given the number of candidates who are calling in their election addresses for something to be done to improve it.
In the 2021 census, when the boundaries were slightly different, Winter Gardens made a number of the top 100 lists for England and Wales which this column tracks. Specifically, it ranked 11th for Level 2 qualifications (5+ GCSE passes or equivalent) at 19.3%, 16th for Level 1 qualifications (1-4 GCSE passes or equivalent) at 15.5%, and 94th for part-time employment at 16.8%). Slightly more unusually, Winter Gardens also ranked 85th for Judaism at 4.4% of the population: in recent years Canvey Island has become an attractive destination for Orthodox Jewish families who have been priced out of more traditional Hasidic areas in London.
With the possible exception of the Jewish element, this all looks like a promising demographic for Reform UK in the current political climate. The Castle Point district and parliamentary seat is one of the most politically right-wing parts of the UK (despite the fact that it voted Labour in 1997), and in 2019 it returned the highest Conservative vote share of any constituency in the UK at 77%. In 2024 the Conservative MP Dame Rebecca Harris, who is now the Conservatives' chief whip, lost half of her vote share but was still successfully re-elected for her fifth term of office by seven points over Reform UK. Harris had taken the seat over in 2010 from Bob Spink, who was briefly the first-ever UKIP MP for a few months in 2008.
However, looking at the Parliamentary results will tell you nothing whatsoever about Canvey Island's local politics, where things are very different. Since 2004 the island's representation on Castle Point council has been dominated by the Canvey Island Independent Party, which wants Canvey to become its own local government district again. Good luck persuading the current Westminster government of the merits of that idea.
For many years after 2004 the Canvey Island Independent Party were outvoted on the council by the Conservatives, who had a similar lock on all of the mainland seats on Castle Point council. But then in recent years the Tory vote in Benfleet, Hadleigh and Thundersley has collapsed in favour of another localist party, the People's Independent Party. Since 2022 the PIP and the CIIP have run Castle Point council in coalition, with the Canvey Island Independent Party leader Dave Blackwell serving as leader of the council.
In 2024 the whole of Castle Point council was up for election on new ward boundaries, with the People's Independent Party winning all 24 seats on the mainland and the Canvey Island Independent Party winning all 15 seats on the island. The Conservatives - whose campaign got off to a bad start when 13 of their intended 36 candidates were disqualified after their nominations were ruled invalid - were completely wiped out. Winter Gardens ward gave 38% of the vote and all three seats to the Canvey Island Independent Party, 23% to a new localist slate called the Canvey Residents' Alliance, 16% to the two non-disqualified Conservative candidates and 13% to the two-person Labour slate. The Canvey Island Independent Party also hold the island's two seats on Essex county council, with Canvey Island West (the division which includes this ward) voting 50% CIIP and 38% Conservative when it was last contested in 2021.
This by-election is to replace a long-serving councillor who passed away in March. Peter Greig had represented Winter Gardens ward since 2006, when he gained his seat from the Conservatives. He was also a veteran Canvey Island town councillor, and he had served a term as chair of that council.
Defending this seat for the Canvey Island Independent Party is Steve Sach, who is the leader of Canvey Island town council. The Canvey Residents' Alliance has now been wound up, so Sach should have the localist vote all to himself this time. Standing for the Conservatives is Paul Harbord, a semi-retired handyman who contested St George's ward on the mainland last year. Labour have reselected Moreblessing Chasiya who stood here last year: she had previously been a regular candidate in Cedar Hall ward on the mainland. Bob Chapman is the Green Party nominee, while Reform UK changed their candidate to Reece Langley at the last minute after they found out that their original choice Peter Barber had previously stood for Castle Point council as a BNP candidate some years ago. Barber put in nomination papers as an independent candidate but then withdrew them and he will not be on the ballot, so we have a field of five candidates.
Parliamentary constituency: Castle Point
Essex county council division: Canvey Island West
ONS Travel to Work Area: Southend
Postcode district: SS8
Bob Chapman (Grn)
Moreblessing Chasiya (Lab)
Paul Harbord (C)
Reece Langley (RUK)
Steve Sach (Canvey Island Independent Party)
May 2024 result Canvey Island Ind 551/548/491 Canvey Residents' Alliance 335/285/277 C 235/157 Lab 184/178 Grn 162
Previous results in detail
Maldon West
Maldon council, Essex; caused by the death of Maldon District Independent Group councillor Flo Shaughnessy.
Further along the Essex coast we come to a town which featured in this column just two months ago. This is Maldon, which anchors a local government district with a very small population of around 68,000 - less than twice the size of Canvey Island. Maybe those islanders have a point in calling for independence.
However, Maldon does have the weight of history on its side. It is the second-oldest town in Essex (after England's oldest and newest city, Colchester) and its history includes being sacked by the Vikings twice in the tenth century. Maldon has also been on the parliamentary map since 1322, whereas Canvey Island has only been a town since 1926.
The two towns do share a political history of being true blue in Westminster elections - Sir John Whittingdale has been Maldon's Conservative MP since 1992, and only five members of the Commons have longer continuous service than that - while local elections are more complicated. Maldon council had a Conservative majority up until 2020, when the party's council group fell apart and independent councillors took control for a while. The 2023 elections then returned a hung council with ten Conservatives, seven members of the Maldon District Independent Group, seven other independent councillors, six Lib Dems and one Green. The Maldon District Independent Group currently run the council as a minority. A by-election in Maldon North ward in March was rather impressively held by the Conservatives against a strong Lib Dem challenge.
The neighbouring Maldon West ward, which covers the south-west corner of the town's built-up area, is set to grow rapidly in population in the near future thanks to the South Maldon Garden Suburb, which is currently under construction and most of which is part of this ward. The current ward boundaries date from 2003. Originally Maldon West elected two Conservatives (who were unopposed in 2007), but they lost their seats to independent candidates Mark Heard in 2011 and Flo Shaughnessy in a December 2016 by-election. Heard stood down in 2023 and his seat was gained by the Liberal Democrats, who were contesting Maldon West for the first time in 12 years; while Shaughnessy, who had previously stood as an independent, was re-elected for her third term on the ticket of the Maldon District Independent Group. Shares of the vote were 35% each for the Lib Dems and the Maldon District Independent Group, with the Conservatives trailing some way behind on 17%.
This by-election is to replace Maldon District Independent Group councillor Flo Shaughnessy, who had served since winning the 2016 by-election and was also mayor of Maldon town in 2019-20. Shaughnessy passed away in February at the age of 75 after a short illness, so this by-election has taken some time to organise.
Defending for the Maldon District Independent Group is Maldon town councillor Carlie Mayes. The Liberal Democrats may fancy chances given that they were top of the poll here two years ago (although that also applied in the Maldon North by-election two months ago, which they lost); they have selected Sarah Dodsley who is a former Metropolitan Police constable now working as an executive and life coach. The Conservatives have reselected Jhual Hafiz, who previously stood here in 2019 and 2023 without success: he is a restaurateur, town councillor and former mayor of Maldon. Completing the candidate list are Janet Band for the Greens and Gary Power for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Maldon
Essex county council division: Maldon
ONS Travel to Work Area: Chelmsford
Postcode district: CM9
Janet Band (Grn)
Sarah Dodsley (LD)
Jhual Hafiz (C)
Carlie Mayes (Maldon District Ind Group)
Gary Power (RUK)
May 2023 result LD 552/432 Maldon District Ind Group 550/271 C 277 Lab 124 Ind 89
May 2019 result Ind 1039/894 C 233
December 2016 by-election Ind 279 C 172 UKIP 114 Grn 69 BNP 51 Lab 47
May 2015 result Ind 1303 C 767/692 Grn 498
May 2011 result Ind 573/397 C 565/460 Grn 185 LD 154/129
May 2007 result 2 C unopposed
November 2005 by-election C 212 Maldon and District Independent Democratic Alliance 107 Lab 94
May 2003 result C 521/435 Lab 309 Grn 254
Previous results in detail
Newhaven North
Lewes council, East Sussex; caused by the resignation of councillor Sean Macleod.
We now travel to the south coast in half-term week, but it's not bucket and spade time. Newhaven is one of the more industrial towns in Sussex by the sea, because it was developed specifically as a port. The original port here had been at nearby Seaford, which in the Middle Ages was located at the mouth of the Sussex Ouse; but large shingle banks obstructed both the river's flow and access to Seaford harbour. This was eventually solved by cutting a channel through the shingle to create a more sheltered harbour on the Ouse, which became known as Newhaven.
Prosperity came to Newhaven in 1847 after the railway line to Lewes opened. The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway wanted a slice of the lucrative cross-Channel market, and in combination with the French Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest they started up a passenger ferry service between Newhaven and Dieppe in 1863. Now operated by DFDS, the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry runs two or three times a day depending on the time of year.
The Newhaven North ward spans the River Ouse and is centred on an industrial area next to the river. Here can be found Denton Island in the middle of the river, the factory of the fine art printers King and McCaw, the children's indoor theme park Paradise Park, and a large building described on OpenStreetMap as the "North Quay Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility", which appears to be the current euphemism for a waste incinerator. To the east of the river is Denton, an old village which has been swallowed up by Newhaven's growth, while there is also some housing to the west of Denton Island. Most of the undeveloped areas of the ward are part of the South Downs National Park.
Newhaven is part of the Lewes parliamentary seat, which was one of the top Liberal Democrat targets at the last general election: in the end that party's candidate James MacCleary polled over half of the vote and defeated the outgoing Conservative MP Maria Caulfield by nearly 13,000 votes. MacCleary's previous local powerbase was in Newhaven, and he still sits on Lewes council for Newhaven South ward and on East Sussex county council for Newhaven and Bishopstone division. He was leader of Lewes council for two non-consecutive years between 2020 and 2023, alternating with a Green leader as part of a coalition agreement.
However, the Liberal Democrats are now in opposition on Lewes council following an astonishing result in the 2023 elections which saw the Conservatives - who had previously been the largest party on the council - completely wiped out. The 2023 Lewes elections returned 17 Green Party councillors, 15 Lib Dems and 9 Labour, and the outcome of this hung council was a Green-Labour coalition.
Newhaven North ward ended up giving both of its seats to the Lib Dems fairly comfortably, with the Liberal Democrat slate polling 48% of the vote against 26% for outgoing independent councillor Steve Saunders and 19% for the Conservatives. Saunders lost his seat to Lib Dem candidate Sean Macleod, who has been on quite the political journey.
Sean Macleod was first elected to Lewes council in 2019 as a Green Party councillor for the neighbouring Ouse Valley and Ringmer ward, but he soon quit the Greens and he ended up joining the Liberal Democrats the following year. In 2023 Macleod successfully transferred to Newhaven North ward, but he then walked out of the Lib Dems in November 2024 before tendering his resignation from Lewes council in March due to taking up a new job. Macloed had a consistent focus on mental health during his council career, and after finding that angling helped him to relieve stress during a difficult time for his family he has now started up a fishing group for young people in the Newhaven area.
The Liberal Democrats will want their seat back in this by-election, and they have selected Newhaven town councillor Corina Watts. Former independent councillor Steve Saunders also wants his seat back after losing re-election in 2023: Saunders was previously a long-serving councillor who had been elected for the Lib Dems in Newhaven Valley ward in 2007, 2011 and 2015 and as an independent here in 2019. The Conservative candidate Richard Turner is a former councillor for the neighbouring Ouse Valley and Ringmer ward, which he represented on Lewes council from 2015 to 2019. Also standing are David Hoare for the Green Party, Linda Drabble for Labour and Bill Payne (who was a Conservative candidate in Seaford in 2023) for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Lewes
East Sussex county council division: Ouse Valley West and Downs (west of river), Newhaven and Bishopstone (east of river)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Brighton
Postcode district: BN9
Linda Drabble (Lab)
David Hoare (Grn)
Bill Payne (RUK)
Steve Saunders (Ind)
Richard Turner (C)
Corina Watts (LD)
May 2023 result LD 628/589 Ind 348/171 C 245 Grn 96/64
May 2019 result Ind 393/305 LD 311/280 C 269/239 Grn 118/110 Lab 107
Previous results in detail
Lliedi
Carmarthenshire council, West Wales; caused by the death of Anthony Leyshon.
We finish for the week in the southern end of Wales. The Afon Lliedi is a river which flows southwards through a series of reservoirs towards and through the town of Llanelli, where we find the Lliedi electoral ward. This covers the eastern end of Llanelli town centre together with housing to the north and north-east, along the river and the Felinfoel Road.
Much of Lliedi ward is built up, but its western end is laid out as the open space of Parc Howard. This was originally the grounds of an Italianate country house built for the Stepney family, who were major landowners in the town up to the twentieth century. In 1909 this estate was inherited by Catherine Stepney, who married the former Liberal MP Sir Stafford Howard two years later; Lady Howard then leased the house and grounds to Llanelli urban district council on condition that the house be turned into a local museum and that the new park be ready for opening to the public on her first wedding anniversary, 21st September 1912. Llanelli council bought the freehold in 1965, and their successors Carmarthenshire county council now run Parc Howard house as a museum and art gallery. The park itself includes a stone circle, installed for the National Eisteddfod in 1962.
Llanelli is the westernmost of the large industrial towns of south Wales, and it traditionally specialised in tinplate production which resulted in the town gaining the nickname of "Tinopolis". Lliedi ward is mostly a residential area, but it also includes the head office and main studios of Tinopolis, a TV production company which describes itself as the UK's largest producer of Welsh-language programmes. Heno, S4C's evening magazine programme, is broadcast live from here at 7pm on weekdays. Tinopolis is also the ultimate owner of a number of other TV production companies, including Mentorn which makes the long-running political discussion programme Question Time for the BBC - although Question Time, of course, tours the country and its production offices are in Glasgow.
Tinopolis Cymru's operations for S4C are probably helped by the fact that Llanelli is the most Welsh-speaking of South Wales' industrial towns. This, together with the fact that the Llanelli parliamentary seat includes rural areas outside the town, means that Plaid Cymru can be competitive here at election time. In Senedd elections Llanelli has often been very closely fought between Labour and Plaid, with Labour wins by just 21 votes in the 2003 Assembly election and by 80 votes in 2011. The current MS, Labour's Lee Waters, enjoys a rather more comfortable majority of 5,675. Plaid have never broken through here in Westminster elections, where Llanelli has been a Labour seat continuously since 1922; indeed Dame Nia Griffith, who has represented the town since 2005, is only the fourth MP for Llanelli in the last century. However, Griffith only narrowly secured re-election for her sixth term in 2024, prevailing by 1,504 votes over Reform UK.
Plaid Cymru have more support in the areas of Carmarthenshire council outside the current Llanelli seat, and in the 2022 local elections they won an overall majority of one seat in the county: 38 seats against 23 Labour and 14 independent councillors. But in Carmarthenshire county elections Lliedi ward has been in the Labour column since 2012, and the Labour slate of Rob James and Anthony Leyshon enjoyed a 58-26 lead over independent candidates at the last election in 2022. The only other party candidate to stand was outgoing Labour councillor Shahana Najmi, who had fallen out with the party and unsuccessfully sought re-election with the Conservative nomination.
Rob James was the leader of the Labour group on Carmarthenshire council, and he had applied for the Labour nomination for Carmarthen at the last general election. However, in January 2024 he was suspended from the party over an alleged data breach relating to the electoral register for Swansea West. The Information Commissioner's Office quickly determined that James had no case to answer over the data breach; however, it appears that Labour sat on that information and kept James suspended for long enough to ensure that the party's nomination for the general election would go to somebody else. Once James found out what had happened via a subject access request to the Information Commissioner's Office, he resigned from the Labour party in June 2024. Anthony Leyshon, who was James' father-in-law, quietly followed James out of Labour and he was an unaffiliated independent Carmarthenshire county councillor when he died in March after slightly less than three years in office.
The electorate may well get the chance here to make their views known on that particular dispute, because Anthony Leyshon's widow Alison is standing for her husband's old seat as an independent candidate with Rob James as her election agent. Alison Leyshon's nomination papers reveal that she was a Labour party member up to the end of July last year: candidates who have been members of different parties in the last year have to declare that when standing in Welsh local elections, in a recent innovation which is yet to be taken up elsewhere in the UK. Labour will want their seat back and they have selected Andrew Bragoli, who is the current mayor of Llanelli and already represents this ward on Llanelli town council. Sharon Burdess, who was runner-up here in 2022 as an independent candidate, is returning for another go and she will be hoping for a better return than the 23 votes she polled in last year's by-election for the neighbouring Elli ward. Also on a long ballot paper are Richard Williams for the Conservatives, Michelle Beer for Reform UK (her husband was the Reform UK parliamentary candidate for Llanelli last year and finished in a close second place), Jonathan Burree for the Lib Dems, Wayne Erasmus for the pro-Welsh independence party Gwlad and Taylor Reynolds for Plaid Cymru.
Westminster constituency: Llanelli
Senedd constituency: Llanelli
ONS Travel to Work Area: Llanelli
Postcode districts: SA14, SA15
Michelle Beer (RUK)
Andrew Bragoli (Lab)
Sharon Burdess (Ind)
Jonathan Burree (LD)
Wayne Erasmus (Gwlad)
Alison Leyshon (Ind)
Taylor Reynolds (PC)
Richard Williams (C)
May 2022 result Lab 838/652 Ind 374/373 C 226
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