Previewing the five council by-elections of 13th October 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Five by-elections on 13th October 2022, with Labour defending three and the Conservatives and Greens one each. Let’s start with the three Labour defences:
Throston
Hartlepool council, County Durham; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Amy Prince.
We’ll begin this week with the northernmost Labour defence, which is in Hartlepool. The settlement of Throston itself was originally on the Durham coast next to the Hartlepool headland, but the parish of that name extended quite some distance inland to include smaller hamlets like Throston Grange and High Throston. These were incorporated into West Hartlepool in 1936, and since the Second World War a lot of houses have been built here. The modern Throston Grange estate dates from the late 1960s, but housebuilding is still going on here; many of the houses in the Bishop Cuthbert estate north of Throston Grange Lane date from the 21st century, and the Jesmond area at the eastern end of this ward has seen some major regeneration work in the last decade. There are still a fair few council houses here, but not nearly as many as there used to be.
You might think this would be decent territory for the Conservatives given that they hold the town’s parliamentary seat following a by-election last year. Bishop Cuthbert does have some expensive housing by Hartlepool standards, but Throston Grange and particularly Jesmond are a long way down the social scale compared with West Park to the south, which is the only reliably Conservative area of the town in local elections. In this century the Conservatives have only won Throston ward once, in 2008.
That’s a bit of an unfair comparison however, because the ward ceased to exist in 2012 before being recreated in 2021 — and in 2021, the best Conservative year in Hartlepool this century, Throston had no Conservative candidate. In the intervening period most of this area was covered by Jesmond ward, which at its first election in 2012 returned two Labour councillors and one councillor for the localist group Putting Hartlepool First. Jesmond then voted UKIP in 2014 and 2016, on the latter occasion electing UKIP candidate John Tennant who subsequently served as a Brexit Party MEP from 2019 to 2020.
All three outgoing councillors for Jesmond ward sought re-election here in 2021: Tennant for Reform UK, Amy Prince for Labour, and former Labour councillor Paddy Brown as an independent. Brown topped the poll with 42% of the vote, independent candidate Peter Jackson won the second seat, and Prince beat the alphabet to hold the third seat for Labour; she had a majority of 34 votes over her running-mate Gary Allen. The Labour slate polled 36%, while Tennant finished last of the six candidates on 22%.
The Labour party performed well in Hartlepool at this year’s local elections, topping the poll across the borough and finishing with seven seats — the same number they were defending. Amy Prince, who was first elected in 2019 and was already seeking re-election for a third term, was easily re-elected in Throston ward with 49% of the vote, against 28% for an independent candidate and 23% for the Conservatives. Last month Labour gained an independent seat at a by-election in Hartlepool’s Foggy Furze ward.
Having fought and won three elections in four years, Amy Prince has now stood down from the council after taking up a new job with longer hours. The by-election to replace her features a field of four candidates. Defending for Labour is Cameron Sharp, who is a history teacher; he contested the neighbouring Hart ward in May, but this is his home turf. The independent from May has not returned but a new independent has come forward: Jaime Horton is a former servicewoman who does charity work for homeless veterans. The Conservatives have selected Jack Waterman, a former actor and theatre director who now does casework for the town’s Conservative MP. Completing the ballot paper is the Lib Dems’ Barry McKinstray, who will be hoping for better than his last-place finish in the Foggy Furze by-election last month.
Parliamentary constituency: Hartlepool
ONS Travel to Work Area: Hartlepool
Postcode districts: TS24, TS26
Jaime Horton (Ind)
Barry McKinstray (LD)
Cameron Sharp (Lab)
Jack Waterman (C)
May 2022 result Lab 765 Ind 406 C 339
May 2021 result Ind 1014/875 Lab 862/828/654 Reform UK 528
Previous results in detail
Edgeley and Cheadle Heath
Stockport council, Greater Manchester; caused by the death of Labour councillor Sheila Bailey.
We now come to two wards which have appeared in this column before. Edgeley and Cheadle Heath was fully previewed four years ago, after the Conservative candidate for the ward in the May 2018 Stockport local elections died during the campaign; the poll had to be postponed by three weeks. To quote from what I wrote then (Andrew’s Previews 2018, page 187):
Edgeley and Cheadle Heath ward is essentially the western ward of Stockport proper, bounded by the River Mersey to the north, the Manchester-Crewe railway line to the east and (mostly) the Stockport-Altrincham railway line to the south. Edgeley itself lies in the eastern half of the ward, close to the railway station; it’s a relatively well-preserved example of a Manchester-area suburb from the Industrial Revolution era, with closely-packed Victorian terracing and miniature Coronation Streets in abundance. Here can be found the home ground of Stockport County FC, whose relegation from the Football League a few years ago ruined one of your columnist’s favourite quiz questions (which league football team plays closest to the River Mersey?).
Don’t be fooled by the regular grid nature of Edgeley’s road network; the land drops away very sharply towards the Mersey in the north. To overcome this the Victorian railway builders constructed the landmark Stockport Viaduct, which lies on the ward boundary and consumed 11 million bricks. Transport is important to the economy of this area: as well as the major intercity hub of Stockport railway station, there is a large Stagecoach bus garage here. With the ward’s easy access to Stockport town centre and central Manchester, employment levels are high.
To the west is Cheadle Heath, a suburb along the Stockport-Cheadle road. Much of the housing here is of interwar vintage, although it wasn’t always successful. In particular the Gorsey Bank estate, on the banks of the Mersey, turned into one of the most notorious areas in Greater Manchester for crime and anti-social behaviour. Stockport council eventually got rid of those problems by pressing the nuclear button: the Gorsey Bank estate was completely demolished in 1999 and (after a delay) replaced by industrial units.
All of that is basically still true today, except that Stockport County are now back in the EFL after winning the National League in 2021–22. The political context has also changed over the last four years. Stockport borough is the only Greater Manchester borough which has never had a Labour majority: this is because it includes strongly middle-class areas in the Cheadle and Hazel Grove parliamentary seats, where Labour are very weak. Since 2018 the Liberal Democrats have made strong gains in those areas from the Conservatives, and they are now the largest party on Stockport council. Following the May 2022 local elections the Lib Dems deposed Stockport Labour’s minority administration, and they now run the council as a minority of their own.
Left to their own devices in opposition, Stockport Labour appear to have descended into some infighting. Matt Wynne, one of the two remaining Labour councillors for Edgeley and Cheadle Heath ward, has been deselected for the 2023 elections; his response was to quit the party in the middle of Stockport’s full council meeting earlier this month.
Edgeley and Cheadle Heath is a very safe Labour ward where the party is not under serious threat in current political conditions. In May Labour polled 72% of the vote here against opposition from the Conservatives, Lib Dems, Greens and Reform UK.
This by-election is to replace a veteran of local government. Sheila Bailey, who passed away in August at the age of 74, was first elected to Stockport council in 1990; she represented Edgeley ward until 2004, transferring to Edgeley and Cheadle Heath following boundary changes then. Bailey had been a member of the Stockport council cabinet from 2016 until Labour lost power in 2022.
Big shoes to fill for the defending Labour candidate Georgia Lynott, who has experience in answering difficult questions: she was a member of the Manchester team which reached the quarter-finals of University Challenge in 2018–19. Lynott, who has now completed her PhD and is working as a software engineer, contested Hazel Grove ward in May’s local elections, and this time she has a shot at a much more winnable ward for Labour. Very unusually for an English local by-election there is no Conservative candidate, so the opposition to Labour will come from Robbie Cowbury for the Lib Dems and Philip Handscomb for the Green Party.
Whoever wins may well have to work fast to secure reselection for next year’s local elections, at which Stockport will get new ward boundaries and this ward will be broken up. Most of this area will end up in a recreated Edgeley ward, but Cheadle Heath itself moves into Cheadle Hulme North ward (which is renamed as the unwieldy “Cheadle East and Cheadle Hulme North”). The latter ward is a Lib Dem-Labour marginal at present, so the Lib Dems might be tempted to put some work into the Cheadle Heath end of the present ward this time round.
Parliamentary constituency: Stockport
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode district: SK3
Robbie Cowbury (LD)
Philip Handscomb (Grn)
Georgia Lynott (Lab)
May 2022 result Lab 2172 C 309 LD 250 Grn 234 Reform UK 60
May 2021 result Lab 2561 C 460 Grn 302 LD 210
May 2019 result Lab 1797 UKIP 327 Grn 286 C 256 LD 199
24 May 2018 postponed poll Lab 1709 LD 203 C 187 Grn 144 UKIP 71
May 2016 result Lab 2214 UKIP 393 C 252 Grn 198 LD 192
May 2015 result Lab 3466 C 945 UKIP 857 LD 549 Grn 506
May 2014 result Lab 1884 UKIP 579 Grn 297 C 267 LD 240
May 2012 result Lab 2205 C 284 LD 250 Grn 217
May 2011 result Lab 2428 C 547 LD 406 Grn 256
May 2010 result Lab 3137 LD 1532 C 1177 BNP 258 Grn 221 Ind 111
May 2008 result Lab 1447 LD 972 C 481 Grn 199
May 2007 result Lab 1558 LD 1139 C 444 BNP 285
May 2006 result Lab 1486 C 548 C 439 Ind 344 Grn 280
June 2004 result Lab 2098/2021/1794 LD 853/835/765 C 565/542/533 BNP 384
Previous results in detail
North Evington
Leicester council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Vandevi Pandya.
Our second repeat ward of the week is in Leicester. North Evington is an almost entirely built-up area a couple of miles to the east of Leicester city centre, along the main road towards Uppingham. This area was incorporated into Leicester in 1892 and shortly afterwards developed by Arthur Wakerley, an important architect of Victorian Leicester who served as mayor of the city in 1897 and was twice a Liberal parliamentary candidate.
North Evington today is a majority-Asian area, overwhelmingly of Gujarati heritage, with all the major Indian religions well represented. At the time of the 2011 census the North Evington area proper was in Coleman ward, which was in the top 20 wards in England and Wales for those employed in manufacturing (26.5%, mostly textiles), in the top 30 for Asian ethnicity (66.3%) and Hinduism (21.8%), in the top 40 for population born outside the UK or EU (45.8%), in the top 70 for part-time employment (18.5%), in the top 80 for Islam (39.7%) and in the top 90 for Sikhism (8.8%) and those looking after home or family (9.0%). Charnwood ward, which in 2011 covered what is now the northern part of this ward, had a similar demographic. This religious mix isn’t always a harmonious one, and this by-election campaign has been marred by violence between the ward’s Hindu and Muslim communities. Dozens of arrests have been made.
The current ward was created in 2015 and its two ordinary elections to date have resulted in big wins for the Labour slate. In May 2019 Labour led the Conservatives here 72–17, on a massive turnout (by local election standards) of nearly 51%.
This is the fourth by-election to Leicester city council since then, and all of those polls were for wards in the Leicester East constituency which in May 2019 was represented by Keith Vaz. (Apologies to any readers who may have been playing the Keith Vaz game.) Vaz was effectively forced to retire from Parliament at the December 2019 general election, and the Leicester East branch of Labour selected Claudia Webbe as his successor, a decision taken in haste which the party is now repenting at leisure. Webbe was expelled from the Labour party last year after being found guilty of harassment; she was initially sentenced to a 10-week suspended prison sentence, which would have triggered a recall petition, but this was reduced on appeal to community service. Keith Vaz is still very much involved with the local Labour party, currently chairing the party’s Leicester East branch.
Whether the local Labour party have been distracted by this saga or something else has been going on is hard to tell, but the by-election results in Leicester since 2019 have not been good for Labour. The first of those by-elections came right here in North Evington ward when Labour councillor Jean Khote died in February 2020 after a short illness. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shortly afterwards meant that no by-election could be held for over a year. Leicester never properly came out of the first COVID lockdown, and North Evington was one of the worst-hit areas during the summer of 2020; cases were rife among people working in the local textile factories.
The North Evington by-election was eventually held in May 2021 (Andrew’s Previews 2021, page 104), and resulted in a sharp swing to the Conservatives who cut the Labour majority to 49–38. Two months later, the Conservatives gained the neighbouring Humberstone and Hamilton ward from Labour at a by-election (Andrew’s Previews 2021, page 292). Labour did hold a by-election in Evington ward last February, but it was a close call against another sharp swing to the Conservatives.
North Evington ward is now having its second by-election in as many years, after the winner of the last one Vandevi Pandya resigned in August. She had been in office for just over 15 months.
Defending for Labour this time is Rajul Tejura, a selection which has not gone down well with some elements of the left given the recent Hindu v Muslim disturbances in the ward and the fact that she is a supporter of the BJP government in India. The Conservative candidate is Sanjay Modhwadia, a businessman who is campaigning for support for Leicester’s textile industry. Also standing are Aasiya Bora for the Green Party who was the runner-up in last year’s by-election, Jitesh Dave for the Lib Dems and Tessa Warrington for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
Parliamentary constituency: Leicester East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Leicester
Postcode district: LE5
Aasiya Bora (Grn)
Jitesh Dave (LD)
Sanjay Modhwadia (C)
Rajul Tejura (Lab)
Tessa Warrington (TUSC)
May 2021 by-election Lab 3306 C 2565 Grn 241 LD 240 TUSC 117 Reform UK 89 For Britain Movement 69 Ind 61 Communist 33
May 2019 result Lab 5201/5076/4797 C 1213/1106/1092 Grn 418 LD 353
May 2015 result Lab 5800/4942/4834 C 1414/1301/1199 Grn 419 UKIP 327/291/280 TUSC 291
Previous results in detail
Tuffley
Gloucester council; caused by the the death of Conservative councillor Colin Organ.
This week’s Conservative defence falls in the suburbs of Gloucester. Underneath the western slopes of Robinswood Hill — a landmark in the Severn Valley with excellent views of the city — lies Tuffley. The name of Tuffley goes back to Domesday, but the housing here is mostly from the twentieth-century expansion of Gloucester. Tuffley ward includes the St Peter’s High School, which has educated a number of recent Glocuester rugby union players. As with Hartlepool Throston there’s a fair amount of social housing here, but the housing stock in Tuffley tends to be older.
Unlike Hartlepool Throston, Tuffley has been a reliably Conservative ward in recent years. Labour haven’t won a seat in this ward since 2002, and the most recent city elections in 2021 had a 48–34 Conservative lead over Labour.
Some of that Conservative score will have been a personal vote for Colin Organ, who topped the poll in 2021 by beating the alphabet — his running-mate Paula Dee was higher up the ballot paper, which is usually an advantage. Organ had served this ward since 2010, and he was Mayor of Gloucester in 2019–20. He passed away from cancer in August, aged 72. Organ’s legacy to Gloucester is the Retro Festival, a celebration of all things vintage and nostalgic which takes place in the city centre on the August bank holiday weekend.
So this might make the Conservative defence a bit trickier than it looks, particularly with the way the national polls have taken a turn in recent weeks. Their defending candidate is Lorraine Campbell, who has lived in the ward for 53 years and is plugged into a lot of its voluntary networks. Standing for Labour is Tracy Millard, who was runner-up in this ward at the three most recent elections in 2014, 2016 and 2021; she was the Gloucestershire county councillor for the Tuffley division, which covers a larger area, from 2013 to 2017. Completing a rare all-female ballot paper is Caroline Courtney for the Lib Dems.
Parliamentary constituency: Gloucester
Gloucestershire county council division: Tuffley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Gloucester
Postcode districts: GL1, GL4
Lorraine Campbell (C)
Caroline Courtney (LD)
Tracy Millard (Lab)
May 2021 result C 760/678 Lab 534/499 Ind 190/135 LD 86
May 2016 result C 670/652 Lab 486/366 UKIP 276 Grn 116
Previous results in detail
Waltham Abbey South West
Epping Forest council, Essex; caused by the resignation of Green Party councillor Dave Plummer.
Let’s finish for the week with the wildcard. We’re travelling to Waltham Abbey, as many pilgrims have done over the years. This was the home of the Holy Cross, a black crucifix which was found in the eleventh century buried on a hill in Somerset. That hill was part of the land of the Danish thegn Tovi the Proud, who also had a hunting lodge in the Lea Valley in what is now Essex; legend has it that Tovi loaded the cross onto a cart, but the oxen hauling the cart wouldn’t go anywhere other than Waltham.
Tovi rebuilt Waltham’s church to hold the Holy Cross, which became a place of pilgrimage. King Harold Godwinson, who as a child had been cured of paralysis by the Holy Cross, was buried in the church here following his death at the Battle of Hastings.
Waltham Abbey, as a religious institution, reached its peak form in the late twelfth century when it was refounded by Henry II, as part of his penance following the murder of Thomas Becket. By the time the building work was finished in 1242, the abbey was larger than Winchester Cathedral. In 1540 it was the last English abbey to be dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII, and the Holy Cross has not been seen or heard of since. One of the people who lost their livelihoods as a result of the dissolution was a young “singing-man” called Thomas Tallis, who didn’t have enough service to qualify for a pension; he received a termination payment of 20 shillings, and developed his musical career elsewhere. Godwinson’s grave is now outside in the churchyard, but part of the abbey nave has survived and is used today as the parish church.
A century later, this area became an industrial centre with the founding of a gunpowder factory next to the river. This was bought by the government in 1787 and became the Royal Gunpowder Mills, making explosives for the armed forces all the way up to the Second World War. The site stayed in Ministry of Defence hands as an explosives research centre all the way up to 1991, when it was sold. The buildings are now open to the public as the Royal Gunpowder Mills museum, while the valley countryside around it is now a wildlife sanctuary. Much of the countryside in this ward north of the Gunpowder Mills is under water, a legacy of gravel extraction.
This ward has a short border with Greater London, and since 1984 part of it has been within the M25 motorway. This corner of the ward is a more modern industrial area dominated by a huge distribution centre for Sainsbury’s.
As a town, it took a surprisingly long time for Waltham Abbey’s name to settle down into its current form: all the way up until the reorganisation of 1974 the local authority was still called Waltham Holy Cross Urban District. This should not be confused with Waltham Cross, a Hertfordshire town on the far side of the River Lea (or Lee; like the river, the spelling is a little bit fluid).
South West is Waltham Abbey’s town-centre ward, and in this century it has generally been a safely Conservative area. Since the current boundaries were introduced in May 2002 the ward has only failed to vote Conservative twice: the Liberal Democrats won a by-election in November 2002, and the Green Party won a straight fight with the Conservatives in 2019 by a 62–38 margin.
Judging from the result the last time this ward went to the polls in 2021, that Green win might have been a fluke. The Conservatives beat Labour 69–20 here seventeen months ago, with the Greens polling just 5% and finishing in fourth and last place behind the far-right For Britain Movement. There was also a large Conservative majority that year in the Waltham Abbey division of Essex county council. The local MP Dame Eleanor Laing is one of the two longest-serving female Conservative MPs in the current Parliament, having served continuously since 1997 along with Theresa May; Laing has served since 2020 as Chairman of Ways and Means and Deputy Speaker of the Commons.
It’s the Green seat which is up for re-election in this by-election. The Green councillor Dave Plummer was elected here at the third attempt after contesting the ward in 2015 and 2016. Plummer has been spending a fair amount of time in Thanet recently for family reasons, and he has now been disqualified from Epping Forest council under the six-month non-attendance rule. As Plummer found out to his and every Epping Forest taxpayer’s cost, dialling into council meetings using your networking suite of choice à la Handforth doesn’t count as attendance any more — that was a temporary rule to get our councils through the pandemic.
Dave Plummer is seeking re-election for the Green Party in the by-election caused by his own disqualification. Councillors who try this (and there have been a few cases over the years) do have a fairly good track record of getting back in, but Plummer will clearly have to rely on whatever personal vote he has given what happened to the Green vote in 2021 when he wasn’t on the ballot. Anyway, he is opposed in a straight fight by Conservative candidate Joseph Parsons, who is a 21-year-old trainee accountant.
Parliamentary constituency: Epping Forest
Essex county council division: Waltham Abbey
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EN8, EN9
Joseph Parsons (C)
Dave Plummer (Grn)
May 2021 result C 569 Lab 163 For Britain Movement 48 Grn 43
May 2019 reuslt Grn 493 C 302
May 2016 result C 309 UKIP 259 Grn 175
May 2015 result C 837 UKIP 574 Grn 243 LD 164
May 2012 result C 373 Lab 160 LD 59
May 2011 result C 592 Grn 180 LD 110
May 2008 result C 474 LD 155 UKIP 91
May 2007 result C 468 LD 269
June 2004 result C 423 LD 356
May 2003 result C 324 LD 294
November 2002 by-election LD 287 C 172 Lab 49
May 2002 result C 398/389 LD 169
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