Previewing the four council by-elections of 6th June 2024
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
It’s the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, whose success was a vital part of the reason why Europe is now a continent of democracies. So it’s appropriate that there are four by-elections taking place today, on 6th June 2024:
Axholme North; and
Brumby
North Lincolnshire council; caused respectively by the deaths of Conservative councillor John Briggs and Labour councillor Stephen Swift.
Our four polls today are split equally between Conservative and Labour defences, and that’s also the case in North Lincolnshire where we have two elections taking place. One of them is a repeat, because this column was in Brumby ward in June 2017 for a by-election which took place on the undercard of the last-but-one general election (Andrew’s Previews 2017, page 152). I described Brumby ward’s landscape then as flat and nondescript, which are words I would like to take back: in fact Brumby ward, which covers housing on the western edge of Scunthorpe, lies close to the bottom of a fairly steep slope running down to the Trent floodplain. Brumby is one of the most working-class corners of Scunthorpe, making the top 50 wards in England and Wales for residents employed in manufacturing (19.8%) and the top 40 wards for adults with 1–5 GCSEs or equivalent (14.7%).
The road and railway bridge west of Scunthorpe, at Keadby, was the last fixed crossing-point of the Trent until the Humber Bridge was built. Travelling over this bridge brings us to the Isle of Axholme, the only significant part of Lincolnshire which lies west of the Trent. This is not a true island, with the Isle name coming from the old sense of slightly raised ground surrounded by marshland and floodplain. Much of this area was drained in the seventeenth century by the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden, who drastically changed the area’s geography; the River Don, which now flows into the Ouse at Goole, originally ran much further south and entered the Trent at Adlingfleet. Even today the landscape here looks very Dutch. Axholme forms three wards of North Lincolnshire council, with North ward being based on the market town of Crowle and taking in five more parishes to the north-east — including Eastoft, which was once located on the River Don.
The main lines of communication here run east-west along the Doncaster-Scunthorpe railway line and the M180 motorway; but Axholme became part of the unloved county of Humberside in 1974, and this has complicated its parliamentary representation. Until now it has been part of the very awkwardly-drawn Brigg and Goole parliamentary seat; but a major redraw of the Humberside area’s constituencies has transferred Axholme into a new seat following the motorway which has the long name of “Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme”. This is the main successor to the old Don Valley seat, and the previous Don Valley Conservative MP Nick Fletcher is seeking re-election here; the boundary changes significantly improve his position, but our genial host’s Britain Predicts model has this seat pegged as a Labour gain at the time of writing.
The parliamentary boundary changes also shore up the Conservative majority in Scunthorpe, which has some Tory-villages to the north of the town moved into the seat. Scunthorpe was a Conservative gain in 2019 for Holly Mumby-Croft, who defeated the seat’s previous Labour MP Nic Dakin at her second attempt; the 2024 election here looks likely to be Round 3 of Mumby-Croft versus Sir Nic, who was knighted in 2020. Nominations for the 2024 general elections close at 4pm tomorrow.
Scunthorpe and a large hinterland, including Axholme and the market town of Brigg, are part of the North Lincolnshire council area which turned in a 27–16 lead for the Conservatives over Labour at the 2023 local elections — exactly the same score as four years previously. Other evidence that the Conservative might be holding up relatively well in this general area is that the Tories successfully defended the Humberside police and crime commissionership last month; the Humberside police area is marginal, and Labour will have had high hopes of gaining it.
There should be no drama in these by-elections, both of which fall in safe wards. In Axholme North the Conservatives had a 58–32 lead over Labour last year, while Brumby ward was a straight fight between the two parties with Labour prevailing by 71–29.
Both by-elections are to replace councillors who have recently died. Labour councillor Stephen Swift was suddenly taken ill while he was in the middle of a speech during the council’s budget meeting in February, and he subsequently died in March at the age of 62. Swift had started his political career on Humberside county council and he was on North Lincolnshire council from its commencement in 1996; he lost his seat in Bottesford in 2015, before returning in a by-election for Brumby ward in June 2017. He had also served in the past as mayor of Bottesford, which borders this ward and is essentially a southern extension of Scunthorpe. John Briggs of Axholme North ward, who passed away in March at the age of 77, was another veteran councillor who had represented the area in the Conservative interest since 1999; at the time of his death he was the deputy mayor of North Lincolnshire having previously served twice as mayor of the borough, and he would have enjoyed a third term as mayor this year had he lived. Briggs had also previously been deputy leader of the council and served as mayor of Crowle.
Defending Axholme North for the Conservatives is Ian Bint, a former South Yorkshire police officer who serves on Crowle and Ealand town council and runs a PR and marketing company. Labour have reselected Lara Chaplin, who was runner-up in this ward last year; Chaplin has moved to the area from Gloucestershire in the last few years, and she may be making some trips back down there over the next month because she is also Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Cheltenham at the coming general election. Also standing here is Alan Kelly for the Liberal Democrats.
In Brumby ward the defending Labour candidate is Daniel Hart, who contested the neighbouring Burringham and Gunness ward last year. The Conservatives’ Alan Cook is a Bottesford town councillor who runs a property management firm. Robin Abram for the Lib Dems and Peter Dennington for the Greens also stand.
Axholme North
Parliamentary constituency: Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme
ONS Travel to Work Area: Scunthorpe
Postcode districts: DN8, DN14, DN17
Ian Bint (C)
Lara Chaplin (Lab)
Alan Kelly (LD)
May 2023 result C 1207/1187 Lab 663/589 Grn 203
Previous results in detail
Brumby
Parliamentary constituency: Scunthorpe
ONS Travel to Work Area: Scunthorpe
Postcode district: DN17
Robin Abram (LD)
Alan Cook (C)
Peter Dennington (Grn)
Daniel Hart (Lab)
May 2023 result Lab 993/920/909 C 397/369/366
Previous results in detail
The Nedge
Telford and Wrekin council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Leanne Powers.
Our second Labour defence of the week comes in the New Town of Telford. The Nedge ward is based on three residential areas: Hollinswood immediately to the east of Telford town centre, Stirchley to the south and Randlay in between. There was a pre-existing village at Stirchley, but essentially this is all New Town development — as is the massive industrial estate of Stafford Park, to the south of the M54 motorway. The ward name refers to Nedge Hill, a summit which lies on the eastern boundary of the ward and the borough.
Appropriately given the presence of Stafford Park, this is a ward dominated by manufacturing — which is a surprisingly large part of Telford New Town’s economy. The Nedge ward sneaks into the top 100 in England and Wales for residents employed in manufacturing, at 17.8% of adults.
This is one of those areas where local and parliamentary results have been telling different stories in recent years. The Telford constituency is being defended by the Conservatives next month: the seat’s previous MP Lucy Allan won photofinishes here in 2015 and 2017 before securing her third and final term with a large majority in December 2019. However, Telford and Wrekin council was a Labour gain in the May 2019 local elections and Labour increased their majority in 2023. At the general election next month the Labour council leader Shaun Davies will take on defending Conservative candidate Hannah Campbell, a former Malvern Hills councillor who stood in Birmingham Selly Oak in December 2019, for the Telford constituency.
Frequent ward boundary changes in Telford and Wrekin confuse the issue a bit, but the Conservatives are capable of winning a seat in The Nedge in a good year. 2023 was not a good year, and the Labour slate won here with 52% against 20% for the Conservatives and 12% for independent candidates.
This by-election is to replace Labour councillor Leanne Powers, who submitted her resignation in April just before the end of her first year in office. Powers had previously been granted leave of absence by February’s full council meeting due to caring responsibilities.
Defending for Labour is Corrine Chikandamina, who works for the NHS and is a Great Dawley town councillor. The Conservative candidate is Richard Tyrrell, who is a parish councillor for Hollinswood and Randlay and works in the IT industry. Another Hollinswood and Randlay parish councillor on the ballot is independent candidate Sophia Vaughan-Hodkinson, a teacher, who finished last here in 2023. The Lib Dems’ Paul Bryant completes the ballot paper.
Parliamentary constituency: Telford
ONS Travel to Work Area: Telford
Postcode districts: TF3, TF7, TF11
Paul Bryant (LD)
Corrine Chikandamina (Lab)
Richard Tyrrell (C)
Sophia Vaughan-Hodkinson (Ind)
May 2023 result Lab 1375/1280/1224 C 532/513/423 Ind 318/286/270/147 Grn 224 LD 215
Previous results in detail
Wellswood
Torbay council, Devon; caused by the death of councillor Patrick Joyce.
We finish for the week with a ward that juts out into the English Channel a bit. Wellswood is Torquay’s eastern ward, running from the edge of the town centre to a peninsula that terminates in the beauty spots of Hope’s Nose and Thatcher Point (whose name is not a reference to the former Prime Minister). Visitors to this corner of the English Riviera can take in the rays at Meadfoot Beach; or, if it hasn’t stopped raining yet, take shelter from the Great British Weather in the showcave of Kent’s Cavern from which all sorts of ancient human and animal bones have been excavated.
The local population here is almost as ancient. Wellswood ward makes the top 50 wards in England and Wales for people aged 65 to 84 (34.6%) and the top 30 wards for people aged 85 or over (7.6%). A full 43% of adults living in Wellswood are retired.
The full map of this ward shows something you might not have expected to see in Torquay: the whole of the borough’s seaward extent has been included in Wellswood ward. This is for historical reasons. Torbay was the very last new county borough to be created before the 1974 local government reorganisation, coming into operation in 1968 as a merger of the borough of Torquay with the urban districts of Paignton and Brixham. All three of the predecessor councils were also harbour authorities, and in its six years of existence the Torbay county borough council promoted the Tor Bay Harbour Act 1970 to merge the three harbours into one. Section 5 of the 1970 Act provided that:
“So much of the land within the limits of the harbour … as is not within the borough shall for all purposes be deemed to be within the borough, the parish of Torquay and the petty sessional division of Torquay and to be within the Torwood Ward.”
Torwood ward was renamed in 2003 as Wellswood ward. And ever since, Wellswood ward has contained the whole of Torbay harbour as well as the peninsula on which its residents actually live.
Torbay council got its independence back from Devon county council in 1998, a year after the Torbay parliamentary seat (which was, and still is, only Torquay and Paignton) was gained by the Liberal Democrats’ Adrian Sanders at the 1997 general election. Sanders defeated the Conservative MP and part-time espionage author Rupert Allason by just twelve votes. Legend has it that Allason had been to a restaurant in the constituency on the night before the poll and he pissed off the staff so much that they all resolved to vote against him. It took until 2015 for the Conservatives to get the Torbay seat back; their representative Kevin Foster, who now has a safe seat, is to seek re-election in July for a fourth term of office as the seat’s MP. Britain Predicts’ modelling currently has Foster holding his seat, although with a vote share that’s nothing to write home about.
In local government Torbay is clearly a challenging borough to run, with a long history of wild swings in local elections often accompanied by political instability within the council. This includes a failed experiment with the elected mayoral system. The Conservatives’ Nick Bye won the inaugural mayoral election in October 2005, at a time when the council had a large Lib Dem majority. The Tories then won the 2007 council election, but Bye subsequently ran into trouble over a conflict of interest relating to the development of land owned by Churston golf club for housing. He was deselected by the Conservatives for the 2011 mayoral election, stood for re-election as an independent and finished in a strong second place. Bye and the Conservatives subsequently patched up their quarrel, and he has been a Conservative councillor for Wellswood ward since 2015; Nick Bye now sits in the Torbay council cabinet, with the children’s services portfolio.
The new Conservative mayor of Torbay was Gordon Oliver, who was re-elected in 2015 by a narrow margin over the Liberal Democrats. A 2016 referendum then resolved to abolish his post, and accordingly control went back to the council from 2019. The 2019 elections returned a hung council with the Conservatives as the largest party, but the Lib Dems took over the leadership in coalition with independent councillors.
In May 2023 the Conservatives took back overall control of Torbay, against the national trend, with a small majority of 19 seats against 15 Lib Dems and 2 independents; this was one of only two councils which the Conservatives gained that year, the other being Wyre Forest. However, the Conservative majority in Torbay was short-lived, with two of their councillors walking off in October 2023 to form a splinter group called “Prosper Torbay”. One of them was Wellswood ward councillor Patrick Joyce, who subsequently passed away in April just before the end of his first year in office.
Joyce was elected in 2023 on the Conservative slate, which won Wellswood ward then by the wide margin of 61–28 over the Lib Dems. Prosper Torbay are not registered as a party with the Electoral Commission, and with only one councillor left (Katya Maddison) they have lost group status on the council as a result of Joyce’ death. So the Conservatives should probably be favoured to get back the seat which they lost to defection, which would be very helpful for them in running the borough: a Conservative win here would give them 18 out of 36 seats, or half the council. The casting vote of the mayor would then be crucial, and shenanigans have been going on regarding this. Torbay’s mayormaking meeting last month — which is usually a formality — had to be adjourned after the Conservative group unexpectedly voted down the expected appointment of Lib Dem councillor Swithin Long. This means that Mark Spacagna, a Conservative councillor, will remain in the civic chair for the time being.
The Conservative candidate for the Wellswood by-election is Hazel Foster, who is the wife of the outgoing Torbay MP and Conservative parliamentary candidate Kevin Foster. Hazel represented St Marychurch ward from 2019 until she lost her seat in 2023; under her former name of Hazel Noonan she also has previous local government experience as a long-serving councillor in Coventry, where she represented Cheylesmore ward from 2000 to 2016 alongside her husband and served as Lord Mayor of Coventry in 2014–15. The Lib Dems have selected Peter Fenton — Jesus Christ, Fenton! — who gives an address in the ward and works as a management consultant. Also standing are Jenny Giel for the Green Party, Jonathan Chant-Stevens for Labour, Mike Lister for Reform UK and independent candidate Paul Moor, who also intends to stand in the general election next month as the Workers Party candidate for Torbay.
Parliamentary constituency: Torbay
ONS Travel to Work Area: Torquay and Paignton
Postcode district: TQ1
Jonathan Chant-Stevens (Lab)
Peter Fenton (LD)
Hazel Foster (C)
Jenny Giel (Grn)
Mike Lister (Reform UK)
Paul Moor (Ind)
May 2023 result C 1482/1303 LD 582/554 Grn 272
May 2019 result C 1387/1209 LD 512/238 Ind 509 Grn 353 UKIP 318
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
