Previewing the ten local by-elections of 26th June 2025
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
Ten by-elections on 26th June 2025, Super Thursday:
Crediton Lawrence
Mid Devon council; caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Frank Letch.
There's a lot to get through today, so let's dive straight in. Of the ten seats up for election five are defended by the Labour Party, two by the Liberal Democrats, one by the Conservatives and one by a localist party, with the tenth seat being a free-for-all. We'll start with the two Lib Dem defences, both of which are in the south of England.
The town of Crediton lies in the interior of Devon, about eight-miles north-west of Exeter on the main road and railway line towards Barnstaple. Its economy was traditionally based on wool and textiles, but its two electoral wards are named after saints. Crediton Boniface ward, which covers the town centre and railway station, commemorates St Boniface who is traditionally held to have been born here around 675. Boniface spent his career doing missionary work in what is now Germany and the Netherlands, ending up as archbishop of Mainz, and he is recognised as the patron saint of Germany, Devon, the German city of Fulda where he is buried, and the Canadian city of Winnipeg.
Boniface was a martyr as was St Lawrence, who has a chapel in western Crediton and the electoral ward covering the western end of the town dedicated to him. Lawrence came from what is now Spain to become Archdeacon of Rome, where he was put to death in 258; the grisly tradition has it that he was roasted to death on a gridiron. Because of this legend and Lawrence's actions before his death to hide and protect the written documents of the Catholic Church, he is venerated as the patron saint of a number of occupations for which fire is bad news, including miners, the poor, librarians and archivists.
The Local Elections Archive Project run by this particular archivist is yet to get around to including the 2023 Mid Devon council elections. Sorry. I'm a busy man. These elections were generally a big win for the Liberal Democrats, who decisively took control of what had previously been a fragmented and unstable hung council. This built on work done by the party in 2022 to win the parliamentary by-election in Tiverton and Honiton, which covered most of Mid Devon district.
Crediton, however, was not part of that constituency. It is instead one of the main towns in the Central Devon constituency, which covers a far-flung area to the west of Exeter stretching west to Okehampton and south to Buckfastleigh. This seat turned in one of the closest results in the country at the 2024 general election, with the Work and Pensions Secretary Sir Mel Stride (as he now is) securing re-election for his fifth term of office by just 61 votes over Labour. He is now the Shadow Chancellor.
Quite where the Labour vote in this seat comes from is something of a mystery, because Labour has little presence here in local elections. Crediton is a Lib Dem-voting town at lower levels of government, and Lawrence ward (the "Crediton" prefix was added in 2019) has been in the hands of that party since 2007. In 2023, the only previous contest on the current boundaries, the Lib Dem slate had an easy win with 52% of the vote against 26% for Labour and 22% for the Conservatives.
Since 2015 that Lib Dem slate had included Frank Letch, a Londoner by birth who had retired to Crediton in the 1990s after a career teaching in both English and Welsh; in his spare time Letch was also a dog trainer with a number of Crufts wins to his name. His disability - he was born without arms - also led to a lot of charity work, and he was appointed MBE in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to people with disabilities and the community in Crediton. In local government Letch served for 13 years as mayor of Crediton, and he also took over as the town's Devon county councillor in 2021.
Frank Letch died in April at the age of 80, just before his county council term was due to expire. He wasn't seeking re-election to the county council so that poll went ahead as scheduled on 1st May, and his Lib Dem successor held the Crediton county division with an increased majority. Gains for the party elsewhere meant that the Lib Dems took minority control of Devon last month.
Having successfully defended Letch's county council seat in May, the Lib Dems now have to do the same trick at Mid Devon council level. Here their defending candidate is Tim Stanford, who has a long track record of volunteer community work ranging from youth football and Sea Cadets to local radio. Labour have selected Terence Edwards, a building engineer who comes here hotfoot from the last Mid Devon council by-election in Clare and Shuttern ward last month; Edwards was also a candidate for Devon county council in May, finishing fifth and last in Willand and Uffculme division. Very surprisingly the Conservatives haven't found anybody prepared to contest a local by-election in the Shadow Chancellor's constituency, so Reform UK's Andy Hankins is the only other candidate here.
Parliamentary constituency: Central Devon
Devon county council division: Crediton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Exeter
Postcode district: EX17
Terence Edwards (Lab)
Andy Hankins (RUK)
Tim Stanford (LD)
May 2023 result LD 611/556 Lab 307 C 254
Previous results in detail
Catsfield and Crowhurst
Rother council, East Sussex; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Chas Pearce.
Our other Lib Dem defence of the week is in one of those wards that looks like it was the awkward bit left over once everywhere else had been satisfactorily sorted out. Catsfield and Crowhurst ward covers five parishes of East Sussex, stretching in a north-westerly direction from the edge of Hastings all the way to Dallington.
Catsfield is the largest of these parishes by population, with 708 electors on the roll. Like Crediton in the previous section, its church is dedicated to St Laurence (although with a different spelling of his name). The source of the village's name is unclear, with suggestions from toponymists including references to the Germanic Catti tribe, to St Chad of Mercia or to his brother Cedd, who was bishop of London in the 7th century. Nobody seems to have seriously discussed the possibility that the Catsfield name might in fact mean what it says and be a reference to cats.
Slightly smaller is Crowhurst, which is the ward's railhead. Crowhurst railway station lies on the line from London to Hastings, with hourly trains in each direction. Nearby is Fore Wood, a steep-sided wooded valley run as a nature reserve by the RSPB. Most of this ward lies within the High Weald National Landscape (the newish name for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) including the whole of Ashburnham and Dallington parishes; but things were very different in centuries past when this area was a centre of the Weald's ironworking industry, and a blast furnace at Ashburnham was in operation into the 19th century. Ashburnham parish is named after Ashburnham Place, which was once the country house and estate of the Earls of Ashburnham; the house was mostly demolished in 1959, and the remaining buildings are run by a Christian trust as a conference and prayer centre.
In the 2021 census Catsfield and Crowhurst was in the top 10 wards in south-east England for small employers and own-account workers (21.4%) and for people employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing (5.3%). This is a fairly common pattern for remote and far-flung rural wards, of which there are not that many in the South East region.
This area between Bexhill to the south and Battle to the north is part of the Bexhill and Battle parliamentary seat, which has been in Conservative hands since its creation in 1983. Its first MP was Charles Wardle, who fell out with his local party in 2001 after they selected Greg Barker, who was then working for Roman Abramovich's oil firm, as his successor. Wardle endorsed the UKIP candidate, one Nigel Farage, in the 2001 election; but Farage finished fourth and last with 7.8% of the vote and Barker won easily. Greg Barker was also challenged in the 2010 election by the spread-betting businessman Stuart Wheeler, who stood for his own Trust party and polled 4.9% - finishing 31 votes short of saving his deposit. Barker retired to the Lords in 2015 and was replaced by Conservative MP Huw Merriman, who stood down at the 2024 election; at that point Merriman was the junior minister responsible for railways and HS2, and he has continued to build on that work since leaving the Commons as chair of the Liverpool Manchester Railway board. In 2024 Bexhill and Battle remained in Conservative hands, with new MP Kieran Mullan successfully doing the chicken run from his previous seat of Crewe and Nantwich; Mullan is now on the Conservative frontbench as a shadow justice minister.
The local authority here is Rother council, which covers the countryside surrounding Hastings plus the town of Bexhill-on-Sea. This has been a hung council since 2019, with the 2023 elections returning 10 Conservatives, 8 members of the Rother Association of Independent Councillors, 8 Labour, 7 Lib Dems, 3 Greens and 2 independents. An anti-Conservative rainbow coalition is running the show, under a leader from RAOIC.
In the 2023 election Catsfield and Crowhurst ward was gained by the Liberal Democrats' Chas Pearce, who polled 48% against 33% for the previous Conservative councillor Gary Curtis and 19% for Labour. Most of the ward is part of the Battle and Crowhurst division of East Sussex county council, which also voted Lib Dem when it was last contested in 2021.
So the Lib Dems are defending this by-election, after Chas Pearce resigned last month on health grounds. Their defending candidate Nicola McLaren is a Battle town councillor. The Conservatives have selected Joe Carter, a young man who grew up in Catsfield. Labour's Timothy Macpherson is back for another go after his third- and last-placed finish in 2023; he is a regular candidate in Rother local elections, and he also has a Parliamentary campaign under his belt having been the Labour candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham in 2015. Reform UK's Bernard Brown, another Battle town councillor, completes the candidate list.
Parliamentary constituency: Bexhill and Battle
East Sussex county council division: Battle and Crowhurst (part: Ashburnham, Catsfield, Crowhurst and Penshurst parishes), Rother North West (part: Dallington parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Hastings (part: Ashburnham, Catsfield, Crowhurst and Penshurst parishes), Tunbridge Wells (part: Dallington parish)
Postcode districts: TN21, TN33, TN38, TN39
Bernard Brown (RUK)
Joe Carter (C)
Timothy Macpherson (Lab)
Nicola McLaren (LD)
May 2023 result LD 403 C 275 Lab 154 May 2019 result C 280 LD 198 Grn 172 UKIP 79
Previous results in detail
Shooters Hill
Greenwich council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Ivis Williams.
Our London poll today is in a ward which this column last visited just seven months ago. Shooters Hill is one of the highest parts of Greater London and it is the last piece of high ground traversed by the old Roman road from the Kent ports to London, topping out at 132 metres above sea level. As such it was expected to be London's last line of defence if Operation Sealion, the proposed Second World War German invasion of Britain, had ever come to pass. Shooters Hill was heavily defended with anti-aircraft guns in the 1940s.
The military have, in fact, been here for a long time. Shooters Hill ward includes the former site of the Royal Military Academy, which opened in 1806 to train and educate prospective Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers officers. Education for this purpose involved a lot of science and mathematics, and professors here included a number of notable nineteenth-century British mathematicians including Sir George Greenhill, who was knighted for his work at the Academy: in 1879 Greenhill derived a formula for the optimal twist rate for rifled bullets, which is still used today in designing arms and ammunition. The Royal Military Academy merged with the Royal Military College at Sandhurst after the Second World War and the cadets were moved there, after which the Academy buildings became part of the large Woolwich garrison. The government finally sold the site off in the 21st century, and the Academy has been converted into new housing. Another military link with Shooters Hill is the Memorial Hospital, opened in 1927 as a First World War memorial.
The name of Shooters Hill harks back to an earlier era, when archery was practised here and criminals' bodies hung from the local gibbet. Going further into prehistory, a Bronze Age tumulus can still be found here in the open space of Shrewsbury Park: this is the only survivor of a group of ancient tumuli which were mostly destroyed when the area was developed for housing in the inter-war years.
One young boy who grew up in those houses and played on the Shrewsbury Tumulus as a child was Douglas Jay, who would grow up to become a long-serving Labour MP and served in Harold Wilson's first Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Modern residents here are also likely to be of a Labour persuasion. Shooters Hill is a safe Labour ward of Greenwich council, with a much larger majority than the two Greenwich wards which Labour have previously lost to the Conservatives in by-elections this year; at the last London council elections in 2022, Labour enjoyed a 59-15 lead over the Green Party here. This year's Parliamentary boundary changes moved most of the ward from the marginal Eltham seat into the safe-Labour Erith and Thamesmead constituency, which re-elected its Labour MP Abena Oppong-Asare in July; the Academy estate is part of the equally-safe Greenwich and Woolwich constituency, represented by junior housing minister Matthew Pennycook. In the 2021 census Shooters Hill made the top 25 wards in England and Wales for residents born in Africa (14.6%), the top 60 for black residents (29.0%) and the top 80 for Buddhism (1.7%).
Top of the poll here in 2022 was Labour councillor Danny Thorpe, who had served Shooters Hill ward since winning a by-election in July 2004. Thorpe was leader of Greenwich council in the 2018-22 term, and he came to national prominence in December 2020 by unilaterally closing the borough's schools in response to a rise in coronavirus cases - a move which caught both the borough's teachers and the Department for Education somewhat off-guard. In late 2024 Thorpe left the council to concentrate on his job with the Clarion housing association, and Labour easily held the resulting by-election with a 58-13 lead over the Conservatives.
The voters of Shooters Hill are now being called out for their second by-election of this term to find a replacement for the ward's other councillor Ivis Williams, who had publicly raised concerns over the proposed sale by the council of both the Greenwich Equestrian Centre - an Olympic legacy project which closed last year - and a house in Shooters Hill ward called Green Garth, which an adjacent community centre had hoped to take over. This action got Williams on the wrong side of Greenwich council's ruling Labour group. Williams quit both the council and the Labour party after a disciplinary investigation recommended that she be suspended from the Labour group for six weeks, and she has endorsed the Green Party candidate for this by-election.
Defending this seat for Labour is Jummy Dawodu; she works in the NHS as a senior manager. The Conservative candidate Tim Waters is retired from a career in marketing. Also standing are the Greens' Tamasin Rhymes who was runner-up here in 2022, Paul Banks for Reform UK, Kirstie Shedden for the Liberal Democrats and independent candidates Arnold Tarling and Nazia Tingay.
Parliamentary constituency: Erith and Thamesmead (most), Greenwich and Woolwich (Academy estate)
London Assembly constituency: Greenwich and Lewisham
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: DA16, SE18
Paul Banks (RUK)
Jummy Dawodu (Lab)
Tamasin Rhymes (Grn)
Kirstie Shedden (LD)
Arnold Tarling (Ind)
Nazia Tingay (Ind)
Tim Waters (C)
November 2024 by-election Lab 1043 C 237 Grn 185 RUK 179 LD 158
May 2022 result Lab 1878/1757 Grn 475 C 440/413 LD 275 RUK 89
Previous results in detail
Wickford Park
Basildon council, Essex; caused by the death of Wickford Independent councillor David Harrison.
We now travel east from London for the first of today's two by-elections involving localism. The town of Wickford lies in Essex to the north-east of Basildon new town, on the railway line from London to Southend Victoria; Wickford railway station is also the junction for the Crouch Valley line to Southminster. The London to Southend railway is the north-eastern boundary of Wickford Park ward, which covers most of the town centre together with housing in the south of the town. In the 2021 census, when Wickford Park was a smaller ward, it made the top 60 wards in England and Wales for adults with level 2 qualifications (5 or more GCSEs or equivalent) and the top 100 for people working in "intermediate" occupations (16.1%).
Wickford lost its civic identity in 1934 with the creation of Billericay Urban District, which was renamed as Basildon Urban District in 1955 following the designation of Basildon New Town and became the modern Basildon council in 1974 with minor boundary changes. Basildon has always been more politically left-wing than Wickford, which safely returned Conservative councillors to Basildon council until 2014. In that year's Basildon council elections UKIP did very well by winning 11 seats out of a possible 15, including Wickford Park ward which was gained by UKIP candidate David Harrison by 53 votes over the Conservatives.
The late David Harrison was a very long-serving councillor who had been first elected to the old Basildon Urban District council in 1971 - although his electoral record was by no means continuous. Harrison had served as chairman of Basildon council in 1986, welcoming Muhammad Ali to the district; many years later he was in the civic chair again with the new title of mayor of Basildon in 2016-18, greeting the Princess of Wales (as she now is) on her visit to the borough. Such was Harrison's commitment to local government that he turned up to his final overview and scrutiny committee meeting and moved an amendment on car parking despite having suffered a suspected stroke that morning. In the words of the council leader Gavin Callaghan's tribute, "if there's a council in heaven, Dave's already read the agenda." He passed away in April at the age of 86, following a long period of poor health.
At the first election to the modern Basildon council in 1973 Harrison was elected as a Labour councillor for Central ward, transferring to Fryerns East ward following boundary changes in 1979. In 1988 he sought re-election as a Social and Liberal Democrats candidate for Wickford North but was not successful; by 1991 he was in the Conservatives and he stood for them in Wickford South ward, without success. David Harrison next turns up on a Basildon council ballot paper in 2004, when he contested Wickford North ward for the Senior Citizens Party; he then performed better in the same ward as an independent candidate in 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2012 with second-place finishes on all four occasions. Harrison then finally made it back to Basildon council in 2014 as a UKIP candidate for Wickford Park ward.
By 2016 Wickford's UKIP councillors had all quit the party and formed a localist group called the Wickford Independents (for those who haven't been keeping count, that's David Harrison's sixth political party and seventh ballot paper label), and since then Wickford Park ward has been closely fought between the Wickford Independents and the Conservatives. Harrison lost his seat here in 2018 as a candidate for the Wickford Independents, got it back in 2019, tried to seek re-election in 2023 in Wickford Castledon ward without success, and then got his seat back here for the second time in 2024. Wickford Park's ward boundaries were expanded for the 2024 elections with an increase from two councillors to three, and an all-out election gave 32% of the vote to the Wickford Independents slate, 31% to the Conservatives and 23% to the Labour candidate. The Wickford Independents had only stood two candidates, and they were both elected with the Conservatives winning the other seat. David Harrison finished in third place 84 votes ahead of the second Conservative candidate, so the winner of this by-election will take over his old seat and will need to seek re-election next May - unless things change before then.
The Wickford Independents have never made much impact in the large Wickford Crouch division of Essex county council, which is normally safe Conservative although UKIP did win one of the two seats here in 2013. The town is part of the Rayleigh and Wickford parliamentary seat which has been represented since its creation in 2010 by Conservative MP Mark Francois, who is himself a former Basildon councillor. Francois joined the Conservatives' frontbench team last year as a shadow defence minister, following a number of years on the backbenches.
This column will not cover whatever elections David Harrison might be contesting in heaven, but we are qualified to talk about the poll in this world which will elect his successor. The defending Wickford Independents candidate is Andrew Carter. The Conservatives' Lewis Hooper is standing for Basildon council for the first time, but he has previous local government experience in Wales as a Conservative member of Rhondda Cynon Taf council from 2017 (when he was elected for Ton-teg ward) to 2022 (when he lost re-election in Pontyclun East by one vote). Labour have selected Wayne Milne, who runs a housing business supporting vulnerable families. Also standing are Stewart Mott for the Lib Dems, Sarah-Jane Shields for Reform UK and Penny Wright for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Rayleigh and Wickford
Essex county council division: Wickford Crouch
ONS Travel to Work Area: Southend
Postcode districts: SS6, SS12
Andrew Carter (Wickford Ind)
Lewis Hooper (C)
Wayne Milne (Lab)
Stewart Mott (LD)
Sarah-Jane Shields (RUK)
Penny Wright (Grn)
May 2024 result Wickford Ind 881/831 C 853/747/666 Lab 629 LD 395
Previous results in detail
Bedwell
Stevenage council, Hertfordshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Conor McGrath.
We now travel from a satellite of a New Town to an actual New Town. Indeed, in 1946 Stevenage was the very first New Town to be designated, making it the testbed for everything that followed. Stevenage's new town centre, when it was completed in 1959, was the UK's first shopping zone designed from the start to be traffic-free. Most of this traffic-free shopping zone, together with the Town Centre Gardens to the east, is covered by Bedwell ward which is based on 1950s and 1960s New Town housing - much of which is still socially rented - to the east of the town centre.
There has been a Stevenage parliamentary seat since 1983 and it is a bellwether, having voted for the government at all eleven general elections since then. Indeed, as Lewis Baston noted this week when describing the subject of bellwethers in his own (recommended) Substack (link), "the seat with Stevenage in it has also voted for the national winner since 1951 other than when Shirley Williams kept Hitchin Labour in 1970." Perhaps it was this history that led a 2023 Labour Together report to coin the term "Stevenage woman" - a stereotypical suburban mother in her early 40s - as one of those tiresome political labels which are invented from time to time to describe target demographics for the political parties. Whether this had any effect on Stevenage's election result in July 2024 is an open question, but the constituency was a Labour gain in that general election with a convincing majority of 6,618 votes.
In consequence the town has a new Labour MP who is coming to the end of his first year in office. Kevin Bonavia was born in Malta and has lived in England since the age of 8; he has previously served three terms on Lewisham council, he has two previous Parliamentary campaigns in Essex under his belt, and before entering the Commons he was a solicitor specialising in (among other things) electoral law and electoral boundary-drawing issues. Bonavia's previous employers, Edwards Duthie Shamash, have acted for the Labour Party for decades in Election Court and other legal cases; the eponymous Gerald Shamash was honoured with a peerage last year.
The Stevenage constituency has always included some rural and commuter territory from outside the town, notably Knebworth. This makes it rather more right-wing than Stevenage New Town, whose council has had an impregnable Labour majority since the 1974 reorganisation. Stevenage council was led for many years by Sharon Taylor until she was promoted to the House of Lords in 2022 as Baroness Taylor of Stevenage; she then got a job in the Starmer administration last year as the government's Lords spokesperson on housing and local government. In consequence of this Baroness Taylor resigned her seat on Hertfordshire county council, where she represented Bedwell division - which covers all of this ward apart from the town centre shopping area. The resulting Bedwell county by-election in August last year was easily held by Labour.
The Bedwell ward of Stevenage council is also safely in the Labour column. It was redrawn for the 2024 election, at which the Labour slate won with 46% of the vote against 19% for the Conservatives and 15% for the Lib Dems, who narrowly beat the Greens into fourth place. The new ward is slightly smaller than the old one, losing most of the town centre and an industrial estate around the railway station to the west together with the Fairlands Valley Park to the east, but this won't have had much effect on the ward's headcount.
Andrew's Previews visited the old Bedwell ward for a Stevenage council by-election in January 2023 which was won by Conor McGrath, a pub landlord who was the youth officer for the local Labour party branch. McGrath was re-elected at the top of the poll here in May 2024, beating the alphabet: this is either a sign of a large personal vote, or a reaction by some voters to the fact that the Labour candidate above him on the ballot paper was called Nazmin Chowdhury. Anyway, McGrath got the four-year term and his successor in this by-election will next need to seek re-election in 2028.
Conor McGrath submitted his resignation from Stevenage council just after polls closed in May's county council elections, having quit the council's Labour group and his cabinet position a week previously. So Labour are defending the third Bedwell by-election in as many years with their candidate Dermot Kehoe, who is described as a public servant who has previously worked for both the BBC and the NHS; his CV includes working on GMTV's coverage of the 1997 general election. Marcel Houps, a Dutch-born businessman who has lived in Stevenage for 25 years, is the Conservative candidate. Standing for the Liberal Democrats is Jill Brinkworth, a "recovering translator" according to her social media, who has been a frequent candidate in recent Stevenage local elections: her record includes a run at the Bedwell county division in 2021. Also standing are John Duncan for Reform UK and Stephani Mok for the Greens.
Parliamentary constituency: Stevenage
Hertfordshire county council division: Bedwell (nearly all), Broadwater (part of town centre)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City
Postcode districts: SG1, SG2
Jill Brinkworth (LD)
John Duncan (RUK)
Marcel Houps (C)
Dermot Kehoe (Lab)
Stephani Mok (Grn)
May 2024 result Lab 887/830/786 C 367 LD 296 Grn 282 TUSC 109
Previous results in detail
Great Wyrley Landywood
South Staffordshire council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Kath Williams.
Our Midlands poll today comes just to the north of the Black Country. We're in Great Wyrley, whose name was added to the Parliamentary map last year despite the fact that few people could reliably point to its location. This column is, of course, here to help you with matters like that.
Great Wyrley is a former pit village immediately to the south of Cannock, of which it is effectively a southern extension beyond the M6 Toll motorway, and it lies on the main road and railway line between Cannock and Walsall. The village is served by Landywood railway station, which was opened on the Chase Line in 1989 and now sees half-hourly electric trains north to Cannock and Rugeley and south to Walsall and Birmingham. Landywood ward is effectively the southern half of Great Wyrley parish, and it is nearly all residential.
In 1876 a new vicar of St Mark's church in Great Wyrley, which lies just outside the boundary of this ward, was appointed. This was Shapurji Edalji, who had been born into a Parsi family in Bombay before converting to Christianity; he may have been the first South Asian to become an English parish priest. He served the parish until his death in 1918, despite a number of incidents of racial harassment which often took the form of anonymous poison-pen letters and run-ins with the Staffordshire chief constable Captain Anson. Matters came to a head in 1903 with a series of animal mutilations in the Great Wyrley area, for one of which the vicar's son George Edalji, a solicitor, was prosecuted and served three years' hard labour. The case against George Edalji was widely thought to be flawed - in 2013 the Solicitor-General went so far as to say that his trial had been a farce - and an investigation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle led in 1907 to Edalji being pardoned and to the creation of the Court of Criminal Appeal. This story has been dramatised on a few occasions since, most recently in Julian Barnes' 2005 novel Arthur and George which was nominated for the Booker Prize and was turned into a three-part TV series by ITV in 2015, with Arsher Ali playing Edalji and Martin Clunes as Doyle.
As stated, Great Wyrley joined the parliamentary map in 2024 with the creation of the Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge constituency which was clearly the awkward bit of Staffordshire that was left over after everything else had been satisfactorily sorted out. This was comfortably won in 2024 by Sir Gavin Williamson, the former Cabinet minister and outgoing MP for South Staffordshire, who has never been far away from controversy and his 2024 win was no exception: the seat's Reform UK candidate withdrew and joined the Conservatives with less than an hour to go before the nominations deadline, amid allegations of dirty tricks from the Williamson campaign. Williamson's 46.5% of the vote was one of the highest Conservative scores in the 2024 election; Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge was also the only seat where UKIP saved their deposit or came close to doing so. Reform UK got their revenge for this in the 2025 Staffordshire elections when they won a large majority on the county council, including comfortably winning the Great Wyrley and Essington county division which covers this ward.
There had been no RUK candidate in the 2023 South Staffordshire council elections, in which the Conservatives narrowly held both seats in Great Wyrley Landywood ward with 40% of the vote against 38% for Labour and 14% for an independent candidate. The re-elected Conservative councillors Ray Perry and Kath Williams had both served the ward continuously since 2007, when they gained their seats from Labour. Overall South Staffordshire is one of the few districts which has resisted the massive losses of the last few years and still has a large Conservative council majority.
Great Wyrley Landywood, which in the 2021 census made the top 60 wards in England and Wales for people who identify as English only (28.2%), is the only Conservative defence this week following the resignation of Kath Williams last month. Defending for the party is Joe Hill, who gives an address in the ward and works to support small- and medium-sized businesses as they face financial challenges. The Labour candidate Jan Jeffries is a parish councillor in Brewood and Coven some distance away. The independent from last time has not returned, so completing the ballot paper are Danni Braine for the Greens and Craig Humphreyson, the newly-elected Staffordshire county councillor for Penkridge, for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge
Staffordshire county council division: Great Wyrley and Essington
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wolverhampton and Walsall
Postcode district: WS6
Danni Braine (Grn)
Joe Hill (C)
Craig Humphreyson (RUK)
Jan Jeffries (Lab)
May 2023 result C 366/361 Lab 349/275 Ind 126 Grn 83
Previous results in detail
Stocksbridge and Upper Don
Sheffield council, South Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Julie Grocutt.
We now come to two wards which lie deep inside Pennine valleys. On the Yorkshire side the Little Don flows quietly eastwards towards its confluence with the main River Don at Deepcar, through a Peak District valley which wasn't seriously developed until the 19th century. Indeed, in the mid-18th century pretty much the only thing here was a fulling mill run by a local farmer and landowner called John Stocks. He threw a wooden footbridge over the Little Don so that his employees living on the north side of the river could get to work without getting their feet wet. This was the original Stocks' Bridge.
In 1794 Stocks' mill was replaced by a large cotton mill, which was taken over in 1842 by Samuel Fox. Fox converted the mill to manufacture those essential items for the Great British Summer: umbrellas, which of course require not just fabric but also steel wire. In 1851 the Fox Umbrella Frames company developed the "Paragon" umbrella frame, a form of U-shaped steel wire which was far better than any competing product on the market. Paragon frames were quickly being made as fast as possible, not just for umbrellas but also for crinolines.
As Fox' business boomed, his company started to look not just for new products but also for more control over its supply chain. In the early 1860s Fox decided it would cheaper to make his own steel rather than buy it in from elsewhere, and ever since then the bottom of the Little Don valley has been filled with furnaces and mills making high-quality steel - originally for umbrellas and springs, latterly for the aerospace industry.
The modern town of Stocksbridge on the south side of the valley was spawned by the steel mill, and this is reflected in its cultural landmarks. The local non-league football team Stocksbridge Park Steels, who have recently been promoted to the Northern Premier League Premier Division three levels below the EFL, are descended from the old steelworks works team. In 2003 Stocksbridge Park Steels took on a 16-year-old who had just been released from Sheffield Wednesday's youth system: whatever happened to that young lad called Jamie Vardy? This being Yorkshire there was also a brass band: the Stocksbridge Band are heard here performing a Disney medley. (Following a change in sponsorship, they are now based in Sheffield and known as the Unite the Union Brass Band.)
The Stocksbridge steelworks are still in production today and remain a major local employer, but there are dark clouds on the near horizon. The plant's owners Liberty Steel put the Stocksbridge site up for sale in 2021 but they have failed to find a buyer, and recent reports suggest that the company is in severe financial trouble. In recent years some spare steelworks land has been redeveloped for retail and office use as the Fox Valley Shopping Park, with a direct link from the A616 bypass.
The Stocksbridge Bypass is part of the only trunk road across the Pennines between Sheffield and Manchester, forming a fast link between the M1 motorway and the Woodhead Pass. Perhaps too fast: this road is a scaled-down version of plans to construct a motorway on the same line, and building it as a single carriageway with climbing lanes has led to the road having an appalling accident record ever since it opened in 1988. And as if that weren't enough, the Stocksbridge Bypass is also reputed to be haunted.
Before the A616 was built, Manchester to Sheffield traffic originally turned south after Stocksbridge and followed the Don valley south towards the city. Here can be found the Wharncliffe Side and that pronunciation trap for the non-local, Oughtibridge, both of which are now Sheffield commuter villages. (Don't fall into the trap: the first syllable in Oughtibridge rhymes with "boot".) In April this year the boundary here between the Sheffield and Barnsley council areas was adjusted in order to transfer a new housing development at Oughtibridge Mill into the city of Sheffield, and into Stocksbridge and Upper Don ward.
To the west of this is a large expanse of moorland, most of which is within the Peak District National Park. The lower reaches of this moorland are crisscrossed by tiny country lanes connecting tiny hamlets with wonderful names like Wigtwizzle. High Stones, a summit of 550 metres, is the ward's highest point.
Stocksbridge was incorporated into Sheffield in 1974, with the present Stocksbridge and Upper Don ward dating from 2004 subject to the above boundary change. This was a strong Liberal Democrat ward until the Coalition years, when their vote faded away: of the three Lib Dem seats, two went to Labour in 2011 and 2012 with the other being gained by UKIP in 2014. UKIP went on to gain one of the Labour seats in 2015, and came within three votes of a full slate in 2016, but then their vote fell away here.
The UKIP seats were next up for election in 2019 - gained by Labour's Julie Grocutt - and in 2021 - when the outgoing UKIP councillor stood for re-election as an independent and Stocksbridge and Upper Don ward voted for the Conservatives. That is the only seat the Conservatives have won on Sheffield city council in the last 20 years. Labour gained the Conservative seat in May 2024, polling 50% against 28% for the Conservatives and 13% for the Greens.
Stocksbridge entered the Parliamentary map in 2010 with the creation of the Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency. This has voted Labour at all contests except for a Conservative win in 2019, but the 2010-19 Labour MP Angela Smith was one of the MPs who formed the short-lived Change UK party during the Brexit debates and she eventually ended up in the Lib Dems. The MP here since 2024 has been Labour's Marie Tidball, a disability rights campaigner.
The Labour seat gain from the Conservatives in 2024 still did not give the party a full slate of Stocksbridge and Upper Don ward councillors. This is because Sheffield Labour had split in 2023, with several councillors being suspended from the party for voting against the Local Plan and subsequently founding the Sheffield Community Councillors Group. Sheffield council is hung, with the latest composition giving 36 Labour councillors, 27 Lib Dems, 14 Greens, 4 Sheffield Community Councillors and 2 independents plus this vacancy.
One of the Labour councillors who jumped ship was the outgoing councillor here Julie Grocutt, a former South Yorkshire Police officer who had served on Sheffield council since she gained her seat from UKIP in 2019. Long-term readers of Andrew's Previews may remember that Grocutt had previously been the Labour candidate for a city council by-election in the faraway Mosborough ward in September 2016, a seat which she embarrassingly lost to the Lib Dems.
Labour will want their seat back and they have selected Josiah Lenton, who lives in Wharncliffe Side and is a governor at Stocksbridge High School. The Conservatives' Matt Dixon, who lives in Oughtibridge and was runner-up here last year, is seeking to return to the city council chamber after many years away: he represented Netherthorpe ward from 1999 to 2003, originally as a Lib Dem before he defected to the Conservatives. The Greens' Andy Davies returns from the 2024 general election in which he contested Penistone and Stocksbridge; he is a teacher and contractor in countryside management. Also standing are Stuart Shepherd for the Lib Dems, Claire Wraith for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Adam Allcroft for the Yorkshire Party and John Booker, a former UKIP and Brexit Party parliamentary candidate and former UKIP city councillor for West Ecclesfield ward who is seeking to become Sheffield's first elected Reform UK councillor.
Parliamentary constituency: Penistone and Stocksbridge
ONS Travel to Work Area: Sheffield
Postcode districts: S6, S35, S36
Adam Allcroft (Yorkshire Party)
John Booker (RUK)
Andy Davies (Grn)
Matt Dixon (C)
Josiah Lenton (Lab)
Stuart Shepherd (LD)
Claire Wraith (TUSC)
May 2024 result Lab 2399 C 1341 Grn 607 LD 398 TUSC 95
May 2023 result Lab 2678 C 1791 Grn 390 LD 295 TUSC 48
May 2022 result Lab 1952 C 1801 Grn 733 LD 567
May 2021 result C 1822 Lab 1325 LD 1317 Grn 596 Ind 522 RUK 78
May 2019 result Lab 1727 UKIP 1077 C 662 Grn 596 LD 557 Yorkshire Party 330
May 2018 result Lab 1814 C 1103 LD 591 UKIP 547 Grn 409 Yorkshire Party 405
May 2016 result UKIP 2097/1952/1685 Lab 1688/1668/1534 C 669 LD 574/376/355 Grn 448/430/197 TUSC 59
Previous results in detail
Whitworth
Rossendale council, Lancashire; caused by the death of Community First councillor Michael Royds.
From Stocksbridge we now cross over the Woodhead Pass to the right side of the Pennine watershed, but our first Lancashire by-election today is still in a strange landscape of high, bleak moors and deep, steep-sided valleys. The Forest of Rossendale may be just outside the boundary of metropolitan Greater Manchester, but it is surprisingly little-known to the outside world. In the case of B*cup - a town which the League of Gentlemen thought was too disturbing to act as Royston Vasey - perhaps that's for the best.
But it's somewhat surprising that the town of Whitworth didn't end up in Greater Manchester when nearby places like Wardle, Littleborough and even Saddleworth did. Particularly so given that Whitworth, unlike the rest of Rossendale district, is not part of the upper Irwell valley at all. It's located in the valley of the River Spodden, which flows south towards Rochdale. This is a town with one road in and one road out; all travellers from Whitworth have to either go south down the valley to Rochdale or north over the pass to B*cup. There is no way east or west unless you fancy hiking over the moors.
If you want to study political swing voters, it would be difficult to find a better place to do so than Rozzendale. It's full of swing voters, and it has very volatile elections to match. Nearly all the wards are both marginal and very politically similar to each other, so a good election for the Labour or Conservative parties can result in near-wipeout for the other side on majorities of handfuls of votes. The 2024 Rossendale elections, held on new ward boundaries, was a good election for Labour who won 20 seats against 5 Conservatives, 3 Greens and 2 seats for Community First.
For those who have not heard of Community First, this is effectively a Whitworth localist party. It was founded in 2009 by Alan Neal, who has represented Whitworth on Rossendale council since 1988 and was originally a Labour figure; he has a large personal vote in the town. Community First held both seats in the old Healey and Whitworth ward, which was merged with Facit and Shawforth ward last year to create the present Whitworth ward with a cut from a total of four councillors to three.
Facit and Shawforth, which covered the upper end of the Spodden valley, was covered in this column in September 2022. It was a volatile ward which was capable of voting either Conservative, Labour or independent, and the 2022 by-election was eventually held by the Conservatives. This poll was held during the short time that Liz Truss was prime minister, and many of the postal votes will have been cast just before her mini-budget the previous week had started to fall apart.
In the 2024 Rossendale elections Community First's Alan Neal topped the poll with 30% of the vote, with the second seat going to Scott Smith who was the outgoing Conservative councillor for Facit and Shawforth and was also - at the time - the Lancashire county councillor for Whitworth and B*cup. The third seat went to Alan Neal's Community First running-mate Michael Royds, a former bus conductor and bus and coach driver who was at the time the mayor of Whitworth. He won his seat by 76 votes over independent candidate Janet Whitehead, the other outgoing councillor for Facit and Shawforth, who polled 20% with Labour trailing behind on 17%.
Two months later the parliamentary seat of Rossendale and Darwen went to the polls. This is a seat with appalling internal communications which only really exists because of the Greater Manchester boundary and to make the seats around it look better, and it has voted for the winner in every election since its creation in 1983 with the exception of a Labour win in 1992. In 2024 the outgoing Conservative MP Sir Jake Berry - who had been party chairman during the Liz Truss weeks - lost his seat to Labour candidate and former Rossendale councillor Andy MacNae.
Then last month Rossendale swung, decisively as usual, in a new political direction with Reform UK winning four of the district's five seats on Lancashire county council. (The one that got away was Rossendale West, which is based on Haslingden and includes possibly the most affluent part of the district, Helmshore: this seat was held by Labour.) The Whitworth and Bacup county division was swept away by the turquoise wave, with the seat voting 44% for Reform UK, 37% for the defending Conservatives and 13% for Labour.
Which sets up an interesting by-election to replace Community First councillor Michael Royds after he died in May at the age of 69, from bowel cancer. There is no defending Community First candidate so we have a free-for-all! The Conservatives, who currently hold one seat here, have selected Matthew Carr who is currently studying law with the goal of becoming a barrister. Labour's Caitlin Chippendale, a housing officer who was the party's only candidate here in 2024, is back for another go. Also returning from 2024 is the Green candidate Vivienne Hall, while Reform UK have selected Mackenzie Ritson who is the newly-elected county councillor for Rossendale East.
Parliamentary constituency: Rossendale and Darwen
Lancashire county council division: Whitworth and B*cup
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode districts: OL12, OL13
Matthew Carr (C)
Caitlin Chippendale (Lab)
Vivienne Hall (Grn)
Mackenzie Ritson (RUK)
May 2024 result Community First 866/661 C 679 Ind 585 Lab 481 Grn 254/168/79
Previous results in detail
Buckshaw and Whittle
Chorley council, Lancashire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Samantha Martin.
Today's two Northern by-elections so far have been in old industrial towns in the Pennine Valleys. But our third Northern by-election is not like that all: while there is still a fair amount of industry here, we are in the flatter landscape of central Lancashire; and Buckshaw is not an old town at all.
The Central Lancashire New Town was designated in 1970. Unlike other New Towns dotted around the country, population growth here was achieved by expansions of the existing towns of Preston, Leyland and Chorley and by development of much of the land in between them. Leyland in particular saw major population growth. There is a persistent, if apocryphal, story that the planners had pencilled in for the new town centre an empty space on the map between Leyland and Chorley, either side of the railway line between them; but then the penny dropped as to what was actually going on there.
Since the 1940s, this empty space on the Ordnance Survey map had in fact hidden the presence of Royal Ordnance Factory Chorley, an enormous munitions factory owned and run by the Ministry of Defence. Filling Factory No 1, as it was officially known during the Second World War, was so large it even had its own private railway station with four platforms. The site continued to run into the 1990s, and when Royal Ordnance plc was privatised its head office was located here. In the early 2000s the whole site was flattened, decontaminated and extensively redeveloped for housing, and the result of this is the 21st-century New Town of Buckshaw Village. A new railway station, called Buckshaw Parkway, was opened in 2011 to serve all this new development.
The local government boundaries have yet to be adjusted to take account of this new reality, and this has left Buckshaw Village divided between the Chorley and South Ribble districts. Not only that, but the Chorley part of Buckshaw Village, which is the Buckshaw part of this ward, is divided between the parishes of Euxton and Whittle-le-Woods. Whittle lies to the north of Chorley on the A6 road towards Preston, and it has seen some significant housing development of its own in this century. Its traditional industry was quarrying for sandstone, and Whittle Hall Quarry is one of the deepest quarries in the North West region.
All this is part of the Chorley parliamentary seat, where Normal Rules Do Not Apply. The MP here since 1997 has been Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who has been Speaker of the House of Commons since 2019; accordingly, in 2019 and 2024 he was re-elected as an independent candidate without opposition from any of the main Westminster parties except for the Greens. Even Reform UK thought better of taking Hoyle on last year.
Perhaps because of this, elections to Chorley council have been somewhat overlooked in recent years and this is a bit of a shame. Over the last decade Chorley Labour had quietly but effectively turned a traditional swing council into a Labour fortress: the last three ordinary elections to Chorley council have all resulted in Labour winning 13 out of Chorley's 14 wards, with only Croston, Mawdesley and Euxton South remaining in Conservative hands. Buckshaw and Whittle ward voted Conservative when it was first contested in 2021, but Labour gained all three seats here over the following three years. In 2024 the Labour lead over the Conservatives was 48-42.
Chorley Labour were even able to hold back the Reform UK tide to some extent in the 2025 Lancashire county council elections, in which the Faragists took control of the county. Labour held only five seats on the county council last month, but three of them were in Chorley including Clayton with Whittle division, which covers the Whittle-le-Woods half of this ward. The Euxton parish half of Buckshaw and Whittle is covered by the Euxton, Buckshaw and Astley county division, which was the only division in Chorley that the Conservatives hung onto. Reform UK did however break through onto Chorley council by gaining a by-election in Chorley East ward from Labour, and a second gain here would give them group status on the council.
This by-election is to replace Labour councillor Samantha Martin, who gained her seat from Labour in 2023. Martin has been in poor health in recent months and she had not attended a council meeting in person since September last year. Chorley council had voted to give Martin leave of absence until May to stop her being disqualified under the six-month non-attendance rule, but she submitted her resignation from the council in May shortly before her extended deadline was due to expire.
The candidate list here includes all of the the top three candidates from the Euxton, Buckshaw and Astley division in last month's county council elections. Third on that occasion and defending this seat for Labour is Gillian Sharples, who is chair of Astley Village parish council to the south of the ward; Sharples works at a further education college in East Lancashire and she is a former Chorley councillor who represented Euxton South ward from 2018 to 2021. Another former Chorley councillor on the ballot is the Conservatives' Aidy Riggott, who previously represented this ward from 2021 until he lost his seat in 2024 and was successfully re-elected to the county council in May. Last time the Greens were the only other party to stand here, and they have selected Amy Coxley; this time Reform UK have intervened with their candidate Jonathan Close, who finished second in Euxton, Buckshaw and Astley at last month's county elections.
Parliamentary constituency: Chorley
Lancashire county council divisions: Euxton, Buckshaw and Astley (part: part of Euxton parish), Clayton with Whittle (part: part of Whittle-le-Woods parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Preston
Postcode districts: PR6, PR7
Jonathan Close (RUK)
Amy Coxley (Grn)
Aidy Riggott (C)
Gillian Sharples (Lab)
May 2024 result Lab 995 C 870 Grn 214
May 2023 result Lab 1205 C 652 Grn 161
May 2022 result Lab 1036 C 715 Grn 156
May 2021 result C 1039/941/869 Lab 837/753/677 Grn 256 Ind 255/50 LD 139/112/56
Previous results in detail
Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart
Edinburgh council, Scotland; caused by the death of Labour councillor Val Walker.
We finish for the week north of the Border in one of the nicer parts of the city of Edinburgh. Craiglockhart is a comfortable middle-class suburb in the south-west of the city, located on the western slopes of two hills (Easter Craiglockhart Hill and Wester Craiglockhart Hill) running down to the Water of Leith. It is home to one of the three campuses of Edinburgh Napier University, which is built around the ruins of the fifteenth-century Craiglockhart Castle and based on the Craiglockhart Hydropathic, a former hospital where the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were treated for shellshock during the First World War. Napier University now uses its Craiglockhart Campus as the home of its business school. The University also formerly occupied Craig House, a former psychiatric hospital on the top of Easter Craiglockhart Hill, but this was converted into housing in the last decade.
Craiglockhart is divided from Kingsknowe to the west by the Water of Leith and from Slateford to the north by the Union Canal, which crosses the Water of Leith and the A70 Slateford Road on an aqueduct on the way to its eastern terminus at Lochrin Basin. Both Kingsknowe and Slateford have their own railway stations, on the line from Edinburgh to Glasgow via Shotts. This line now goes into Waverley via Haymarket, but until the 1960s trains went straight on after Slateford into the Caledonian Railway's terminus at Edinburgh Princes Street; the closed railway line has now mostly been converted into the West Approach Road, a relatively fast link into the city centre for light vehicle traffic.
The West Approach Road and the Union Canal form the edges of a narrow finger of this ward pointing northeast towards the city centre. At the end of this finger is Fountainbridge, which was once a heavily overcrowded and industrial area not too far from the Old Town: the McEwan's brewery and the North British Rubber Company, which still makes Wellington boots today under the Hunter name, were major employers here. But all this has been swept away by extensive redevelopment in recent years: the old brewery site is now occupied by a high school, located opposite the Fountain Park leisure centre which includes a cinema complex. One wonders whether Sean Connery, who grew up in this area, would have approved.
Edinburgh's Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart ward was created for the 2007 elections, with boundary changes for the 2017 election adding Kingsknowe to the ward. It is a politically fragmented area, and all five of the Holyrood political parties have held one of the ward's three seats at some point in the last twenty years. The most recent Edinburgh elections in 2022 saw the Conservatives top the poll here with 27% of the vote, with the SNP on 23%, Labour on 22% and the Greens on 20%. Scottish local elections use proportional representation, so the top three parties won one seat each with the Greens narrowly missing out.
If we re-count the votes cast here in 2022 for a single vacancy, then the Conservatives don't even make the top two despite their first-place start. Green transfers mean that the SNP and Labour both overtake the Conservatives in the penultimate count (SNP 36% Lab 34% C 31%), and Conservative transfers then mean that Labour would beat the SNP by 56-44 in the final reckoning.
And this is reflected in the area's representation in the two Parliaments. At the 2021 Holyrood election most of Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart ward was in the Edinburgh Southern constituency which re-elected its Labour MSP Daniel Johnson, while Fountainbridge proper is in the SNP-held Edinburgh Central. In last year's Westminster election the ward was entirely within the Edinburgh South West constituency, which was once represented by Alistair Darling and was gained for Labour last year by Edinburgh city councillor Scott Arthur, who defeated the SNP's Joanna Cherry.
Arthur subsequently resigned his Edinburgh council seat, forcing a by-election in November 2024 in the neighbouring Colinton/Fairmilehead ward. This was gained by the Liberal Democrats, whose campaign had strongly promoted the local credentials of their local candidate as a local champion who would be a local councillor for local people. On winning that by-election the said Lib Dem local champion put her house on the market the very next day, tendered her resignation from Edinburgh council and upped sticks to Dubai. It's fair to say that the electors of Colinton/Fairmilehead were not impressed, and Labour got their seat back in the resulting by-election last January.
Which might have cone as a bit of relief to Edinburgh Labour, who run the city council as a very precarious minority administration. The 2022 city elections returned 19 SNP councillors, 13 Labour, 12 Lib Dems, 10 Greens and 9 Conservatives, but defection and by-election gains and losses over the last three years mean that Labour have now fallen behind the Lib Dems to become the third-largest party on the council.
And Labour are on the defensive here following the death of their councillor Val Walker in April at the age of 76. Walker, who was a retired librarian and Unison figure, was in her first term on the council on which she held the role of culture convenor.
We have an extremely long ballot paper for the resulting by-election, with 13 candidates standing in total. Defending for Labour is Catriona Munro, a solicitor who specialises in contentious competition law cases. The Conservative candidate Mark Hooley is coming to the end of his masters' degree in journalism at Edinburgh Napier University; he fought the neighbouring Sighthill/Gorgie ward at the 2022 Edinburgh elections. The SNP have selected Murray Visentin, who lives within the ward in Hutchison. Standing for the Scottish Greens is Q Manivannan, an Indian-born Tamil who has lived in Scotland since 2021. Also on the candidate list are Kevin McKay for the Lib Dems, Richard Lucas for the Scottish Family Party, Lukasz Furmaniak for the Scottish Libertarian Party, independent candidate Bonnie Prince Bob who is a regular feature in Edinburgh elections, independent candidates Derrick Emms, Mark Rowbotham and Marc Wilkinson who all appear to be associated with Wilkinson's "Edinburgh People Party" (which is not registered with the Electoral Commission), Gary Neill for Reform UK and independent candidate Steve West who is associated with the Socialist Workers Party. This is a Scottish local by-election, so Votes at 16 apply and please rank the candidates on your ballot paper in order of preference - because those transfers, if your first preference doesn't win, could make all the difference in a ward as politically fragmented as this.
Westminster constituency: Edinburgh South West
Holyrood constituency: Edinburgh Southern (nearly all), Edinburgh Central (part of Fountainbridge)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Edinburgh
Postcode districts: EH3, EH10, EH11, EH14
Bonnie Prince Bob (Ind)
Derrick Emms (Ind)
Lukasz Furmaniak (Scottish Libertarian Party)
Mark Hooley (C)
Richard Lucas (Scottish Family Party)
Q Manivannan (Grn)
Kevin McKay (LD)
Catriona Munro (Lab)
Gary Neill (RUK)
Mark Rowbotham (Ind)
Murray Visentin (SNP)
Steve West (Ind)
Marc Wilkinson (Ind)
May 2022 first preferences C 2399 SNP 2051 Lab 2026 Grn 1800 LD 642 Scottish Family Party 69 Libertarian 41
May 2017 first preferences C 2908 Grn 2525 SNP 1924 Lab 1266 LD 461 Ind 62
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