Andrew Teale’s council by-election previews for 10 Mar 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
There are four intriguing by-elections on 10th March 2021, with one seat defended by the Conservatives, one open seat, and two Liberal Democrat defences. With which we start:
Hitchin South
Hertfordshire county council; and
Hitchin Highbury
North Hertfordshire council; both caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Clark.
For our four polls today we are concentrating on England's small- to medium-sized towns and villages. The medium-sized town is Hitchin, a market town on the northern border of Hertfordshire. This has been a prosperous place since mediaeval times, benefiting from its location on the Icknield Way to become a major wool-trading centre: the large size of the town's fourteenth-century parish church, dedicated to St Mary, bears witness to Hitchin's riches in days gone by.
That church was the venue for the 1944 funeral of Sir Henry Wood, the celebrated orchestral conductor who founded what are still officially called the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, held each summer in the Royal Albert Hall. Other noted people associated with Hitchin include the Olympic gold medal-winning hockey player Helen Richardson-Walsh, the former England midfielder Jack Wilshere, the flamboyant golfer Ian Poulter, the journalist and TV presenter Jennie Bond and the social media influencer and former Love Island contestant Molly-Mae Hague.
Modern Hitchin had a rather stuttering start to its local democracy. The first local elections here were held in 1850 for members of the Hitchin Local Board, a body which was charged with improving the town's infrastructure. At the time, all of Hitchin's sewage went straight into the River Hiz which flows through the town centre: clearly not a satisfactory state of affairs. The Board put in sewers and constructed a waterworks, but then got into legal difficulties with a local millowner. No solution to the dispute could be negotiated, and eventually all the members of the Hitchin Local Board resigned and the town's local democracy became defunct. It took until 1873 for Hitchin to become self-governing again, with the formation of the Hitchin Urban Sanitary District.
Today Hitchin is the largest of the four towns in the North Hertfordshire district, whose council meets in Letchworth Garden City to the east. This is currently a hung council. The Conservatives are the largest party with 23 seats, but this is two short of a majority and the council is run by a coalition of Labour (14) and the Liberal Democrats (10). Both Labour and the Lib Dems have a vacant seat on their benches at the moment. Labour's Sue Ngwala, who resigned her seat last year, was up for re-election in May and nobody bothered to call a by-election for the last few months of her term. However, the Lib Dems' Paul Clark had only just been re-elected to the district council for another three years, so there will be two polls today to replace him following his death last year.
Clark's ward was Hitchin Highbury, which covers the town centre and the south-east of the town. Hitchin railway station, a major junction on the East Coast Main Line with trains south to Stevenage and London, north to Peterborough and north-east to Cambridge, lies at the ward's north-east corner. Perhaps because of those good connections, Highbury ward has a commuter demographic with large numbers of residents holding degrees and being in managerial or professional occupations. Hitchin Highbury ward combines with Hitchin Priory ward in the town's south and west, and small corners of two other wards, to form the Hitchin South division of Hertfordshire county council.
Both of these areas are longstanding Lib Dem-Conservative fights, with the exception of the Coalition era when the Lib Dem vote here fell away. Highbury ward is the weaker part of the South county division for the Conservatives: the Tories gained all three seats here in the period 2012-15, but the Lib Dems took them all back in 2016-19 and have now built a big lead in the ward. Last year Highbury gave 48% to the Lib Dems, 28% to the Conservatives and 12% to Labour.
That big Lib Dem lead finally got the party over the line in the Hitchin South county division last year. This had a 114-vote Conservative majority in 2017, the first contest on the current boundaries, which was overturned in 2021 to give a Lib Dem majority of 42 votes. The percentages were 38% for the Lib Dems, 37% for the Conservatives and 15% for Labour.
Both 2021 contests here were won by Paul Clark, who was in his first term on the county council but had been a North Hertfordshire councillor for Hitchin Highbury since 1995, with two breaks in service. He was the leader of North Hertfordshire's Lib Dem group and deputy leader of the district council. Away from politics he had recently retired as a traffic officer for National Highways, formerly the Highways Agency; and he had represented the UK in Latin American formation dancing. He passed away in December, aged 65, another victim of COVID-19.
Defending Clark's very marginal county council seat is Keith Hoskins, who has been a district councillor for Hitchin Highbury ward since 2019. Hoskins retired that year after 22 years of work as the Hitchin town centre manager, for which he was appointed MBE in 2014. The Conservatives have a strong candidate: Claire Strong, the leader of the opposition Conservative group on North Hertfordshire district council. Strong has sat on that council continuously since 1995 and presently represents Hitchwood, Offa and Hoo ward, a series of villages to the south of Hitchin. Surprisingly given their decent third-place runs last time Labour have not nominated a candidate for either the county or the district by-election, so the county ballot paper is completed by Deolinda Eltringham for the Greens and Leigh Smith for the Christian Peoples Alliance.
The Hitchin Highbury by-election is much safer on paper but could more crucial for the future direction of the council. The Conservatives need to make two gains in May to take control of North Hertfordshire; a repeat of last year's results would only deliver one gain, so if the Conservatives can win the district by-election it will make their task easier in eight weeks' time.
Defending the Highbury district by-election for the Lib Dems is Raj Bhakar, who works in human resources for the NHS; she is also involved with the local Girl Guides. The Conservative candidate is Sam Forsyth, and again the other candidates are Eltringham (Grn) and Smith (CPA). The Local Democracy Reporting Service have interviewed the four district council candidates, and you can find out more here (link).
Hitchin South
Parliamentary constituency: Hitchin and Harpenden
North Hertfordshire wards: Hitchin Highbury, Hitchin Priory, Hitchin Bearton (small part), Hitchin Walsworth (small part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City
Postcode districts: SG4, SG5
Deolinda Eltringham (Grn)
Keith Hoskins (LD)
Leigh Smith (CPA)
Claire Strong (C)
May 2021 result LD 1930 C 1888 Lab 765 Grn 455 CPA 54 TUSC 22
May 2017 result C 1884 LD 1770 Lab 618 Grn 274
Hitchin Highbury
Parliamentary constituency: Hitchin and Harpenden
Hertfordshire county council division: Hitchin South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City
Postcode districts: SG4, SG5
Raj Bhakar (LD)
Deolinda Eltringham (Grn)
Samuel Forsyth (C)
Leigh Smith (CPA)
Previous results in detail
May 2021 result LD 1416 C 820 Lab 412 Grn 242 CPA 33
May 2019 result LD 1606 C 534 Lab 244 Grn 181
May 2018 result LD 1266 C 801 Lab 433 Grn 148
May 2016 result LD 1144 C 836 Lab 401 Grn 151
May 2015 result C 1791 LD 1409 Lab 687 UKIP 350 Grn 326
May 2014 result C 945 LD 757 UKIP 395 Lab 366 Grn 198
May 2012 result C 906 LD 877 Lab 301 Grn 187
May 2011 result LD 1239 C 1075 Lab 338 UKIP 257 Grn 179
May 2010 result LD 1889 C 1779 Grn 480 Grn 236
May 2008 result LD 1186 C 1056 Lab 141 Grn 118
May 2007 result LD 1423/1260/1250 C 1026/895 Grn 265/174/142 Lab 178
Bromyard West
Herefordshire council; caused by the resignation of It's Our County councillor Alan Seldon.
We now turn to the week's two rural by-elections, starting in the beautiful Welsh Marches. Bromyard is the largest town in north-eastern Herefordshire, lying on the main A44 road roughly halfway between Worcester and Leominster. This is an old town, with a Norman parish church and a town centre which retains a number of chocolate-box half-timbered buildings. It would be stretching it to describe Bromyard as an urban centre: its population is comfortably under 5,000, and that includes the rural area of Winslow to the west which is part of Bromyard parish and this ward. The town is far enough out of the way that Westminster School was evacuated here for most of the Second World War, and the 2011 census return for the former Bromyard ward shows high levels of self-employment: this is something often seen in remote rural areas.
The Bromyard ward of 2011 took in a large number of villages to the south-west of the town, and has since been replaced. Bromyard West ward, drawn up for the 2015 local elections, takes in the western part of the town together with Winslow: all the other parishes are now in other wards.
Herefordshire council saw some rather dramatic changes in the 2019 local elections, as an unpopular Conservative administration in the county crashed and burned. Overall eighteen seats went to independent candidates in that election, thirteen to the Conservatives, seven each to the Greens and Lib Dems and eight to It's Our County, an anti-Conservative localist group. The ruling administration consists of the "Independents for Herefordshire" group, which It's Our County joined last year, plus the Green Party.
The Tories gained a seat in a by-election to Herefordshire council last May following the death of independent councillor Bernard Hunt, who from 2003 to 2011 had represented the former Bromyard ward on the council. From 2007 his ward colleague was independent councillor Alan Seldon, a former military musician who served for 22 years in the Band of the Scots Guards before moving to a new role in the education sector. Following the 2015 boundary changes Seldon sought and won re-election in the new Bromyard West ward with the It's Our County nomination, and he increased his majority to 60-40 in a straight fight with the Conservatives in 2019. He has resigned from the council as he is moving away from the area.
Unlike last time, this by-election is a three-cornered contest, and it is an open seat with no defending It's Our County candidate. However, this is not a free-for-all as there is a clear defending candidate: the Independents for Herefordshire group (which It's Our County are now part of) have endorsed independent candidate Nick Ferguson, a former policeman and former Bromyard and Winslow town councillor. The council's other independent group, the "True Independents", are supporting independent candidate Clare Davies, who is a former mayor of Bromyard and Winslow and still sits on the town council as well as running the local chamber of commerce. Another town councillor on the ballot is the Conservatives' Mark Franklin, who completes the ballot paper.
At least we have candidates for this election. There is also a vacant seat on the town council for this ward, and ten electors had written in to the Herefordshire returning officer asking for a poll to be held. However, nobody has expressed any interest in actually standing to fill the vacancy. Herefordshire council have now attempted to hold that town council by-election eight times, with 24th February pencilled in as the most recent polling date. As happened on the seven previous occasions, no candidates came forward. The returning officer has now had enough, and he has announced that he will not be making any more attempts to fill that vacancy.
It's not that unusual for parish councils to run short of their full complement of members, but eight failed by-elections is pretty embarrassing for everyone involved. There are 2,477 electors on the roll in Bromyard West; any one of them could have put their name forward and ended up doing some good work for the town. None of them did so, and they had plenty of opportunities.
As recent events have shown us, democracy is a precious thing. But it has to be worked at. If you don't like what your council or your government or your elected representatives are doing, don't be apathetic; if on the other hand you support them, don't be complacent. Do something. Because if nobody gets involved to keep your - our - democracy going, you might find at some point in the future that it won't be there.
Parliamentary constituency: North Herefordshire
ONS Travel to Work Area: Hereford
Postcode district: HR7
Clare Davies (Ind)
Nick Ferguson (Ind)
Mark Franklin (C)
May 2019 result It’s Our County 395 C 262
May 2015 result It’s Our County 751 C 623
Ryhall and Casterton
Rutland council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Richard Coleman.
It's time for a repeat to finish the week off as we return to the eastern side of England. A couple of weeks back Andrew's Previews covered two by-elections in the Lincolnshire countryside along the A1 between Grantham and Stamford; this week it's more of the same, but we cross over the border from Lincolnshire into England's "smallest" "county", Rutland.
The five Rutland parishes to the north of Stamford form the Ryhall and Casterton ward. The ward is dominated by the village of Ryhall, which has 1,320 electors on the roll according to the Notice of Poll - practically a metropolis by Rutland standards. In second place is Essendine on the East Coast Main Line, through which the steam locomotive Mallard passed through on its record-breaking 126mph run in July 1938. LNER's modern expresses go through here several times an hour just 1 mile per hour slower than that, which demonstrates how much technology has moved on. The ward's other polling station is in the church hall at Great Casterton, on the Great North Road at the northern end of the Stamford bypass: the church here was the scene for the 1820 wedding of John Clare, the Northamptonshire peasant poet. Great Casterton's good road links mean that one of Rutland's three secondary schools is located here.
This is not the most exciting of areas politically. Since its creation in 2003 Ryhall and Casterton ward has normally split its representation between a Conservative and independent councillor Chris Parsons, with the exception of 2011 when Parsons was elected with the Conservative nomination. From 2007 to 2015 his ward colleague was Charlotte Jones, now Charlotte Vernon, whom we met two weeks ago as winner of the Lincolnshire county council by-election in Colsterworth Rural division, just to the north of here. Vernon lost her seat in 2015 to her running-mate David Wilby, and Parsons and Wilby were re-elected in May 2019 without a contest after no other candidates came forward.
Chris Parsons had represented Ryhall on Rutland council since 1995, when it was still a district under Leicestershire county council. He seems to have had second thoughts about taking up his seventh term of office after his re-election in 2019, and in the event he chose not to sign his declaration of acceptance of office before the deadline for doing so. This vacated his seat. The resulting by-election in September 2019 (Andrew's Previews 2019, page 282) did result in a poll being held, with the Conservatives challenged by a Lib Dem and a Green candidate. It was an easy win for the Tories, who enjoyed a 56-25 lead over the Lib Dems.
The winner of that by-election, the Conservatives' Richard Coleman, has now resigned in his turn. He was opposed to plans to build a giant solar farm across over three square miles of land in Essendine, with the capacity to generate renewable power for up to 92,000 homes (or about 5.4 Rutlands).
Coleman's resignation has not helped the ruling Conservative group on Rutland council, which has now fallen into a minority following a split late last year. The latest composition has 12 Conservatives plus this vacancy, against 8 independent councillors (a number of whom were elected on the Conservative ticket), 4 Lib Dems, a Green and, for the first time in some years following a by-election gain in November, a Rutland Labour councillor.
So we have the second Ryhall and Casterton by-election of this Rutland council's term. Outgoing councillor Richard Coleman was a former military man, and the Conservatives have gone for more of the same by selecting Richard Foster, who spent 35 years as an RAF helicopter pilot before becoming a senior figure in the Royal British Legion. Foster was elected to Rutland council in 2015 for Cottesmore ward and became the council's cabinet member for children's services, but he didn't seek re-election in 2019. Despite their second-place finish last time the Lib Dems have not returned, so Foster's opposition comes from the Green corner: the Green Party have selected Rick Wilson, a journalist and photographer from Essendine.
Parliamentary constituency: Rutland and Melton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Peterborough
Postcode district: PE9
Richard Foster (C)
Rick Wilson (Grn)
September 2019 by-election C 357 LD 156 Grn 121
May 2019 result C/Ind unopposed
May 2015 result C 868/703 Ind 739
May 2011 result C 592/524 Ind 509
May 2007 result C/Ind unopposed
November 2005 by-election C unopposed
May 2003 result Ind 493/272 C 370
For the first time since the Christmas break and only the second time since June 2021 there are no council by-elections next week, so Andrew's Previews is now going on a short but well-earned break. Normal service will be resumed on Thursday 24th March.
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
