Previewing the five local by-elections of 27th July 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
There are five by-elections in England on 27th July 2023, with the Conservatives defending three and Labour defending two. Two of these take place in Plymouth, which is where we start:
Plymstock Dunstone; and
St Peter and the Waterfront
Plymouth council, Devon; caused respectively by the death of Conservative councillor Vivien Pengelly and the resignation of Labour councillor Sue McDonald.
On the night of 14th March 2023, contractors moved in on Armada Way in Plymouth. This is a pedestrian boulevard which runs in a straight line through Plymouth city centre: at the north end of Armada Way is Plymouth’s intercity railway station; at the south end is Plymouth Hoe. In the middle is the city’s main shopping district and some mature trees. But not nearly as many as there used to be.
Plymouth is a port and a naval city, and always has been. The Royal Navy have been in situ in nearby Devonport for centuries; the civilian port on the Tamar estuary saw the departure of the Mayflower pilgrims in 1620, and continues to be an important point of entry to the UK with regular international ferries to Roscoff in Brittany and to Santander in Spain.
The ferry port lies to the west of Plymouth Hoe, an open space which includes Smeaton’s Tower. This is the top part of the third Eddystone lighthouse, erected on some dangerous rocks to the south of Plymouth in 1759 by John Smeaton in the days before Smeaton used to handle baggage and assault terrorists at Glasgow Airport. Smeaton’s Tower was removed in 1877 because the rocks it was built on were being undermined by the sea; its stub is still there next to the fourth and present Eddystone lighthouse.
In 1588 the great Elizabethan naval commander/pirate Sir Francis Drake was in Plymouth when news of the approach of the Spanish Armada came in. Legend has it that when he heard the news Drake was playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe, and he calmly finished his game before setting sail to beat the Spanish fleet. Whatever the truth of this, Plymouth Hoe has become a slightly fabled place in naval lore as we can see from the existence of this piece of music by the British light music composer John Ansell. Here, his Plymouth Hoe overture is played by the Band of the Royal Marines Association.
The military have vacated the Royal William Victualling Yard to the west of the ferry port, but the Marines and the Royal Artillery are still in situ at the 17th-century Royal Citadel which overlooks the Hoe and Sutton Harbour to its east. Because of all this naval infrastructure, Plymouth was a major target for enemy bombing in the Second World War. By the time the war was over, large parts of the city centre had been destroyed. What was essentially a Coventry-style complete rebuilding of the city centre gave us Armada Way, a north-south tree-lined boulevard running through a brand-new central shopping district. Armada Way was subsequently pedestrianised. The 1950s buildings around it are now 70 years old, and there was a general feeling that the area needed some freshening up and making more attractive to city centre visitors. So the obvious answer was to send contractors in, under cover of darkness, to chop down all the trees.
The Devon Chainsaw Massacre was perhaps the lowest point of the unstable Conservative administration which attempted to run Plymouth from 2021 to 2023 while riven with party splits and lurching from self-inflicted crisis to self-inflicted crisis. It was the point at which it became clear to Plymouth’s electors that the plot had been well and truly lost. It says something for just how unstable politics in the city has been that these are the fourth and fifth Plymouth by-elections of the year, which come on top of huge seat changes in the May 2023 ordinary elections. Essentially, the public made their disgust known: the Tories lost all but one of the seats they were defending, and Labour gained seven seats to win an overall majority on the city council.
That Tory near-wipeout even extended to Plymstock Dunstone, one of the safest Tory wards in the city. This is the eastern of the two wards covering Plymstock, a commuter suburb on the far side of the Plym estuary from the city centre; Plymstock was incorporated into Plymouth in 1967, but remains sufficiently semi-detached from the city to be included within the South West Devon parliamentary seat. This is a Tory constituency, and Plymstock Dunstone normally votes very much in that vein in local elections. Labour had never come particularly close to winning here before — the 2022 Conservative lead of 49–40 was the ward’s most marginal result of recent years — so the May 2023 vote shares of 51% for Labour and 30% for the Conservatives are completely out of character for this ward.
The Tories now have to defend another seat in the Plymstock Dunstone by-election following the death last month of one of the city’s political veterans. Vivien Pengelly was first elected as a Plymouth councillor at a 1980s by-election, when Plymouth was still a district under Devon county council, and she had represented Plymstock Dunstone ward continuously since the city became a unitary council in 1997. Pengelly was leader of the council from 2007 to 2012, and served as Lord Mayor of the city as well as holding most of the city’s cabinet posts at various points. She had represented the city and county at netball and hockey before training to become a PE teacher. Pengelly’s passion for sport extended to holding a Plymouth Argyle season ticket for decades, and during her tenure as leader she saved that club from administration by arranging for the council to buy their Home Park stadium and lease it back to the club.
The other Plymouth by-election today is defended by Labour in St Peter and the Waterfront, which is Plymouth’s city-centre ward and includes the scene of the Devon Chainsaw Massacre. This has been Labour throughout the last two decades with the sole exception of a Conservative win in 2008; the Tories have got close on a number of other occasions and Labour have been lucky with freak vote splits a few times, but May’s vote shares — 48% for Labour, 18% for the Conservatives, 11% for the Green Party — suggest the Labour party should have little trouble holding this by-election. The ward is part of the Plymouth Sutton and Devonport parliamentary seat, which Labour frontbencher Luke Pollard gained from the Conservatives in 2017 and held in 2019; that was despite a celebrity candidature in December 2019 from Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe, who just about saved her deposit. Labour councillor Sue McDonald, a services veteran who has lived in the area for over forty years and has represented St Peter and the Waterfront ward continuously since 2006, is standing down for family health reasons.
Both of these by-elections have a large field of seven candidates. I’ll start in St Peter and the Waterfront with a high-profile defending candidate for Labour. Alison Raynsford was the Labour MP for Plymouth Devonport from 2005 to 2010 and then for Plymouth Moor View from 2010 to 2015, when she was known by her previous surname of Seabeck; she is the daughter of the former Peterborough MP Michael Ward, and her new surname comes from her marriage to Nick Raynsford in 2012 while Nick and Alison were both Labour MPs. The Conservatives have reselected Ian Fleming, a local businessmen who fought the ward in May and polled a low score of 00641 votes. Also returning from May’s election is Green candidate Shayna Newham-Joynes, who works in the TV and video industry. The other four candidates for St Peter and the Waterfront are Lib Dem Hugh Janes who is fighting this ward for the fourteenth time, independent and former city councillor Chaz Singh, Andy Gibbons of Reform UK and Ryan Aldred for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
In Plymstock Dunstone the defending Conservative candidate is again Julie Hunt, who was their losing candidate in May. Labour have selected Stefan Krizanac, who works for Royal Mail and has local government experience, but not for Labour and not in the South West: Krizanac was elected as a Liberal Democrat member of Warrington council in 2016 and served on that council for five years. He has stood for Parliament twice as Lib Dem candidate for Warrington North and was also a Lib Dem candidate for Chorley council in 2019, but he’s now in the Labour column and is a Labour candidate for Plymouth council today. Also standing here are independent candidate Grace Stickland who stood here in May and polled 7%, Peter Edwards for the Lib Dems, Bruce Robinson for the Greens, Jackie Hilton for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, and Darryl Ingram for the Heritage Party.
This column sends best wishes to all involved in these elections, particularly the returning officer and her staff who have had a huge amount of work to do so far this year. I hope that the city’s electoral services team have some well-deserved holidays booked for once these polls are over.
Plymstock Dunstone
Parliamentary constituency: South West Devon
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): South West Devon
ONS Travel to Work Area: Plymouth
Postcode districts: PL7, PL9
Peter Edwards (LD)
Jackie Hilton (TUSC)
Julie Hunt (C)
Darryl Ingram (Heritage Party)
Stefan Krizanac (Lab)
Bruce Robinson (Grn)
Grace Stickland (Ind)
May 2023 result Lab 2210 C 1315 Ind 309 LD 211 Grn 160 RfmUK 117 TUSC 21 Heritage Party 19
May 2022 result C 1907 Lab 1540 LD 243 Grn 190
May 2021 result C 2420 Lab 1317 LD 460 TUSC 55
May 2019 result C 1947 Lab 795 LD 636
May 2018 result C 2411 Lab 905 LD 424
May 2016 result C 1594 UKIP 1037 Lab 585 LD 253 TUSC 63
May 2015 result C 3424 UKIP 1730 Lab 1154 LD 433 Grn 260 TUSC 35
May 2014 result C 1746 UKIP 1464 Lab 688 TUSC 77
May 2012 result C 1542 UKIP 1138 Lab 828
May 2011 result C 2201 Lab 955 UKIP 781 LD 515
May 2010 result C 3363 LD 1578 Lab 1235 UKIP 763
May 2008 result C 2300 LD 636 Lab 477 UKIP 417 Ind 53
May 2007 result C 2666 Lab 666 LD 507 Grn 213
May 2006 result C 2434 Lab 543 LD 539 UKIP 366
June 2004 result C 1961 UKIP 935 Lab 715 LD 579
May 2003 result C 1866/1769/1681 Lab 975/842/808 LD 482/481/478
Previous results in detail
St Peter and the Waterfront
Parliamentary constituency: Plymouth Sutton and Devonport
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Plymouth Sutton and Devonport
ONS Travel to Work Area: Plymouth
Postcode districts: PL1, PL4
Ryan Aldred (TUSC)
Ian Fleming (C)
Andy Gibbons (Reform UK)
Hugh Janes (LD)
Shayna Newham-Joynes (Grn)
Alison Raynsford (Lab)
Chaz Singh (Ind)
May 2023 result Lab 1689 C 641 Grn 373 LD 244 Ind 160 Change for Plymouth 157 RfmUK 152 TUSC 104
May 2022 result Lab 1990 C 1049 LD 211 Change for Plymouth 189 TUSC 106
May 2021 result Lab 1584 C 1446 Grn 376 LD 181 Ind 140 TUSC 73
May 2019 result Lab 1528 C 697 UKIP 530 Grn 355 LD 219 Ind 139
May 2018 result Lab 1981 C 1232 LD 221 Grn 157 TUSC 41
May 2016 result Lab 1263 C 844 UKIP 503 Grn 209 LD 174 TUSC 66
May 2015 result Lab 2239 C 1801 UKIP 981 Grn 730 LD 329 TUSC 80 Ind 72 Ind 57
May 2014 result Lab 1199 UKIP 831 C 755 Grn 317 LD 172 TUSC 79
May 2012 result Lab 1445 C 805 UKIP 444 LD 215
May 2011 double vacancy Lab 1607/1383 C 1204/1165 LD 415 UKIP 400 Grn 396
May 2010 result Lab 1689 C 1525 LD 1096 UKIP 398 Grn 190 Ind 102
May 2008 result C 1064 Lab 995 LD 264 BNP 233 UKIP 216 Ind 134
May 2007 result Lab 1138 C 1060 LD 395 UKIP 312 Grn 166 Ind 79
May 2006 result Lab 1058 C 928 LD 460 Grn 205 Ind 159
June 2004 result Lab 1010 C 857 LD 548 Ind 206 Grn 201 Ind 156
May 2003 result Lab 1040/963/958 C 728/670/588 LD 535/475/434 Plymouth Party 365/264/242 Grn 172 Ind 118
Previous results in detail
Heathfield and Mayfield
East Sussex county council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Rupert Simmons.
Our second Conservative defence of the week takes place in a very rural ward which lies entirely within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Heathfield is a small market town which lies roughly midway between Tunbridge Wells to the north and Eastbourne to the south, while Mayfield is a village a little to the north of Heathfield. This is a rugged upland area which was prosperous in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thanks to the Wealden iron industry; but by the time the Industrial Revolution came around ironworking here had died out, and this area is now a rural backwater. There are still plenty of trees here.
Modern residents of Heathfield include the England rugby player Joe Lawler and the singer Rory Graham, who has won Brit Awards under his professional name of Rag’n’Bone Man. We should also mention the long-running Heathfield Silver Band, who have been bringing brass music to the local area and further afield since 1888. Here we see them at a regular engagement, the Lewes Bonfire Marches, playing Sussex By The Sea.
These are normally Conservative-voting areas. County councillor Rupert Simmons represented this area for almost 26 years until his death in April at the age of 70, starting his political career in 1997 on Heathfield and Waldron parish council; he had served continuously on East Sussex county council since 2001, and was also a Wealden district councillor from 1999 to 2003. His sixth and last re-election to the county council came in 2021 with a big lead of 59–19 over the Green Party.
The Heathfield and Mayfield county division is currently split between two safe-Conservative parliamentary seats. Heathfield is covered by the Bexhill and Battle constituency represented by Huw Merriman, Mayfield is part of Nus Ghani’s Wealden constituency. Merriman and Ghani are both currently junior ministers: Ghani holds the industry brief, while Merriman is responsible for the government’s railways and High Speed 2 policy. Boundary changes for the next general election will transfer Heathfield into the Wealden seat, which will take on the new name of “Sussex Weald”.
The name of the outgoing Wealden constituency refers to Wealden district council, where the Conservatives put in a very poor result in the 2023 local elections. From an overall majority, they crashed to just nine seats and became the third-largest party: the council composition after the May elections stood at 13 Lib Dems, 11 Greens, 10 independents (who are divided into two groups on the council), 9 Conservatives and two Labour councillors. The Lib Dems and Greens have formed a coalition, and the Tories are now out of power on Wealden council for the first time since the council was formed 49 years ago. Of the three wards covering this division, in May the Conservatives lost both Heathfield wards to independent candidates and held only Mayfield and Five Ashes ward.
This by-election is also crucial for control of East Sussex county council, where the Conservatives have a small majority with 27 out of 50 seats. Two of those Conservative seats are currently vacant, and if the Tories fail to hold both this by-election and another by-election next week in Eastbourne then the county council will fall into No Overall Control.
So, defending this seat for the Conservatives is Neil Waller, an NHS finance manager and former Wealden councillor who lost his seat two months ago in Crowborough South West ward. The Greens have selected Anne Cross, an interfaith minister who lives in Heathfield. The Lib Dems also put a nomination in, but their candidate has withdrawn and will not be on the ballot; that leaves this by-election as a straight fight between Waller and Cross.
Parliamentary constituency: Bexhill and Battle (Heathfield North and Heathfield South wards), Wealden (Mayfield and Five Ashes ward)
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Sussex Weald
Wealden council wards: Heathfield North, Heathfield South, Mayfield and Five Ashes
ONS Travel to Work Area: Tunbridge Wells
Postcode districts: TN6, TN20, TN21
Anne Cross (Grn)
Neil Waller (C)
May 2021 result C 1954 Grn 612 Lab 383 LD 354
May 2017 result C 2217 LD 374 Lab 347 Grn 202
Previous results in detail
Denham
Buckinghamshire council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Paul Bass.
Last week this column was in Uxbridge covering the parliamentary by-election. I mentioned in that piece that Uxbridge was located at a crossing-point of the River Colne, and that this bridge used to be busy with stagecoaches going from London to Oxford. Let’s now cross that bridge west from Uxbridge town centre into Buckinghamshire, and see what’s there.
Well, there’s quite a lot going on here just outside the Greater London boundary, and you might well have seen some of it on your screens. This is one of the centres of the British film industry: Pinewood Studios are just outside the ward boundary, and Denham used to be the home of Denham Film Studios. These were founded in 1936 by the great Hungarian-British film director Sir Alexander Korda, and Denham was the filming base for such notable films as HG Wells’ Things to Come, The Thief of Baghdad, Brief Encounter (the station tearoom was a studio set here), and the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, Laurence Olivier’s 1948 version of Hamlet. Films stopped being made at Denham in the 1950s, but Denham Studios came back into use in the 1960s and 1970s as a base for musicians recording film scores: the soundtracks for Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the first two Star Wars films were made here. As was the music for a film which features some fine shots of a windmill elsewhere in the Buckinghamshire countryside, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Denham Studios was sold for redevelopment in the 1980s, and it’s fair to say that the countryside around it doesn’t look quite as nice as in the film above. One corner of this ward is currently a building site, with the construction firms hard at work on the Colne Valley Viaduct for High Speed 2. Other communication links for London criss-cross Denham ward: going east-west we have the old A40 road towards Oxford, its modern M40 replacement and the Chiltern railway line with its stations at Denham and Denham Golf Club; going north-south we have the M25 motorway; and going into the vertical dimension we have the private airfield of Denham Aerodrome. Mind, there’s still a lot of greenery here in the Green Belt.
Perhaps because of its proximity to the Pinewood and Denham studios and its good road links to London, the list of former residents of Denham is a veritable roll-call of the gods and goddesses of light entertainment. And Oswald Mosley, whose house within this ward at Savay Farm was raided when he was interned under Defence Regulation 18B on 23rd May 1940. This date was significant, because the previous day Mosley’s British Union of Fascists had contested a parliamentary by-election in Middleton and Prestwich; the defending Conservatives, who were given a clear run by all the other parties under the wartime political truce, crushed the Fascist candidate by 32,036 votes to 418. That 98.7% vote share for the Conservatives is a record for any party in a contested parliamentary by-election which still stands today.
Denham is Conservative-voting, but not quite that strongly. Its local government is run from Aylesbury by the unitary Buckinghamshire council, which has had only one local election to date in May 2021: on that occasion the Conservatives won all three seats with 47% of the vote, against 21% for an independent slate and 18% for the Green Party. That independent slate consisted of two former Conservative councillors for the area. Roger Reed had previously represented exactly the same area on Buckinghamshire county council until its abolition in 2020, with larger majorities; while both Reed and Barry Harding were formerly South Bucks councillors representing the former Denham ward. The current Denham ward of Buckinghamshire is larger than the old one, as it additionally takes in the parish of Fulmer and a corner of Gerrards Cross.
We should note here that the Conservatives have often put in particularly poor by-election performances in recent years along the High Speed 2 route, a record which includes the Chesham and Amersham parliamentary by-election two years ago. The Gerrards Cross part of this ward will transfer into Chesham and Amersham at the next general election; for now, Denham is wholly part of the Beaconsfield parliamentary seat which is safely Conservative. As one Tony Blair found out when he stood there as a Labour candidate in a 1982 by-election; in those days you needed 12.5% of the vote to save your deposit, and he didn’t manage that.
This Denham by-election arises from the resignation of the Conservatives’ Paul Bass, who had served on Buckinghamshire council for just over two years. Defending for the Conservatives is local resident Jaspal Chhokar, a solicitor who already represents a corner of this ward as a Gerrards Cross town councillor; he is hoping to join his father Santokh, a long-serving Conservative councillor for this area, on the unitary council. Independent candidate and former Tory district councillor Barry Harding is back for another go. The Greens haven’t nominated a candidate this time, so completing the ballot paper are Nadeem Siddiqui for Labour and Julie Cook for the Lib Dems.
Parliamentary constituency: Beaconsfield
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Beaconsfield (Denham and Fulmer parishes); Chesham and Amersham (Gerrards Cross East parish ward of Gerrards Cross parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow (Denham and Fulmer parishes), High Wycombe and Aylesbury (Gerrards Cross East parish ward of Gerrards Cross parish)
Postcode districts: SL3, SL9, SL0, UB8, UB9
Jaspal Singh Chhokar (C)
Julie Cook (LD)
Barry Harding (Ind)
Nadeem Siddiqui (Lab)
May 2021 result C 1354/1308/1125 Ind 586/551 Grn 515/469 Lab 370/331
May 2017 Buckinghamshire county council result C 1208 LD 292 UKIP 267 Lab 156 Grn 151
May 2013 Buckinghamshire county council result C 942 UKIP 657 LD 166
Previous results in detail
Poulton North
Warrington council, Cheshire; caused by the death of Labour councillor Diana Friend.
Let’s finish with something completely different, by coming to one of the New Town areas of Warrington. Poulton North ward is located in the north-east of the town: the ward’s northern boundary is the M62 motorway, the eastern boundary is the M6 motorway and the southern boundary is the Manchester to Warrington Central railway line; here can be found Padgate railway station. Padgate itself is mostly in Poulton South ward; this ward instead takes in the Fearnhead and Cinnamon Brow residential areas from the parish of Poulton-with-Fearnhead, together with Houghton Green which is part of the parish of Winwick. The parish boundary originally followed a stream before its course was diverted by the New Town development, and nobody has yet seen fit to update the line on the map to follow the stream’s new course.
This used to be a major centre for education because the ward contained what is still shown on the map as the Warrington campus of the University of Chester; but that’s out of date now. The University moved their Warrington operations to the town centre a couple of years ago, and the campus site is now earmarked for more residential development. Other educational institutions in Poulton North ward include Padgate Academy, a secondary school whose notable former pupils include two TV personalities: the DJ Chris Evans and the singer Kerry Katona were educated here. Since I’ve put music videos on all the other Previews this week, I suppose it would be rude not to give you some Atomic Kitten: here’s the original version of Whole Again, recorded just before Katona left the group in 2000.
In the 2021 census Poulton North made the top 50 wards in England and Wales for those working in the water, sewerage or waste management sector. Warrington is the home of North West England’s water company United Utilities, and one wonders whether the census enumerators might have got a bit confused by that; UU do have their fingers in a number of other pies.
Poulton North used to be a closely-fought ward between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but the Lib Dem vote here disappeared when the Coalition was formed and the ward has been safe Labour since. The most recent Warrington local elections were in 2021, with Labour winning all three seats against a rather fragmented opposition: 34% for Labour, 23% for the Conservatives, 21% for the Green Party and 16% for an independent candidate. The ward is part of the Warrington North parliamentary seat, which has been Labour since its creation in 1983 but was close between Labour and the Conservatives in December 2019; that seat’s first MP was Doug Hoyle, the father of the current Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle. Today’s Plymouth Labour by-election candidate Stefan Krizanac didn’t make much of an impact when he was the Lib Dem candidate for Warrington North in 2015 and 2017, losing his deposit on both occasions.
Labour are defending this by-election following the death of Labour councillor Diana Friend, a retired teacher who passed away in May at the age of 72. She was the serving deputy mayoress of Warrington, as her husband and fellow ward councillor Graham Friend was the borough’s deputy mayor for 2022–23. They married in 2017 within the ward, at the Church of the Resurrection in Cinnamon Brow; Diana was already a ward councillor then, having been first elected in 2016 under her previous surname of Bennett, and she and Graham had met through their political work.
Defending this by-election for Labour is Una Gillham, who is described as a former lecturer, charity worker and community volunteer. The Conservatives have selected Howard Klein, a chartered surveyor who represents most of the ward on Poulton-with-Fearnhead parish council. The Greens and the independent candidate from last time are not trying again, so the Lib Dems’ Timothy Harwood completes the ballot paper.
Parliamentary constituency: Warrington North
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Warrington North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode districts: WA1, WA2
Una Gillham (Lab)
Timothy Harwood (LD)
Howard Klein (C)
May 2021 result Lab 1172/1126/956 C 804/799/709 Grn 727 Ind 544 LD 203/152
May 2016 result Lab 1413/1411/1222 LD 726 C 696
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
