Previewing the four local by-elections of 11th January 2024

“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”

Welcome to Andrew’s Previews, the weekly longread from Britain Elects which has been going since 2010 and aims to put the context into Britain’s elections, wherever they are. And not just the big, set-piece events: nearly every week, voters go to the polls up and down the country to fill some vacancies in our local councils. There are four such local by-elections on 11th January 2024:

Quays

Salford council, Greater Manchester; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Alex Warren.

Out with the old, in with the new. We have ticked over to the new year of 2024, which means new by-elections for Andrew’s Previews to write about and, in time, a new Parliament to look forward to. You might even have got this far and still remember some of your new year’s resolutions. It’s very much in this spirit of renewal that we start the year by going to a place where everything is new.

The Quays ward of Salford consists entirely of land which was transformed by the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894. The Ship Canal terminated just short of the city of Manchester in a series of docks, the Pomona docks (nos 1 to 5) on the south side and the Salford docks (nos 6 to 9) on the north side. Dock 9, the largest of the docks, was built on a site previously occupied by Manchester racecourse; this was the home of the Manchester Liners shipping line, with cargo and passenger ships regularly departing from and arriving at dock 9 for Canada and other transatlantic destinations.

But in the 1970s Salford Docks declined: modern container ships were too large to make the trip up the canal from the Mersey estuary. In 1982 the docks closed. The following year, Salford council bought the site with the help of a derelict land grant. Regeneration started in 1986 according to the above plaque, and almost forty years of work has produced a massive economic success.

First, we have employment. Salford Quays has proven an ideal site for large office buildings, and your columnist has had a couple of job interviews there over the years. In 1999 and 2000 the Eccles tram line, the first extension of Manchester’s Metrolink tram network, opened giving Manchester and Eccles good transport links to the Quays.

The Eccles tram line has since been further extended with a short branch to MediaCityUK, which wasn’t a twinkle in the developers’ eye in 2000 but is now a very large TV and radio complex. Since its opening in 2011 MediaCity has been the home of the BBC Children’s department, BBC Sport, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Radio 5 Live. BBC Breakfast is broadcast from here each morning, bringing live scenes from Salford to your TV screens. The main “dock10” studio building is the home of programmes including Blue Peter, Match of the Day (whose virtual reality set hides that it is made in the same studio as Blue Peter), University Challenge and Countdown — the latter two being ITV programmes which transferred here from the old Granada studios. Your columnist appeared in Mastermind recordings here before production of that show moved to Belfast a few years ago, and I was back in the building last autumn as an audience member for two recordings of the radio quiz Brain of Britain — made in Studio 9, the BBC Philharmonic’s rehearsal room.

dock10 market MediaCity as having a total of twelve studios, of which “studio 11” is the large outdoor piazza in front of the studio building, next to the tram stop. This has some bollards dotted around the edge of it, which hide sockets that allow cameras to be plugged in and controlled from a gallery inside the building. As a result, it’s easy to do filming in the piazza or the Blue Peter garden when the weather is fit. (Which doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it never stops raining.)

Opposite Studio 11 across dock 9 we can find the Lowry centre, an arts complex named after the Salford artist L S Lowry and opened in 2000. Here can be found two theatres, including the Lyric Theatre which boasts the largest stage in the UK outside the West End, and a gallery with a collection of around 400 Lowrys. Most of these were transferred from the collection of Salford Museum and Art Gallery, which presumably means that the council is the ultimate owner.

Salford council is of course elected by Lowry’s matchstalk men and women (but not his matchstalk cats and dogs). Which brings us to the unique demographics of Quays ward, which was drawn up in 2021 in an attempt to combat population growth in this area which is through the roof. When the Lowry opened in 2000 there were still large areas of open space around dock 9; but these have now been filled in with more and more and more high-rise apartment blocks. With the docks essentially now full, the high-rise apartment builders have transferred their attention east to the canal and river bank facing Pomona Docks, which is a riot of new construction all the way up to the road bridge at Regent Road.

To leave room for all this new development, Quays ward was drawn so small that on the December 2018 electoral register it had just 3,704 electors — less than half the average for a Salford ward. By the May 2023 election this had risen to 7,456, giving population growth of 101% in less than five years. And there’s clearly more to come, which should push the ward up to the Salford average soon.

The May 2021 census return found a population of 8,829, which will include children, foreign residents and those who haven’t bothered to fill in the voter registration form. The census makes it clear that this is the yuppie capital of the North West. Quays had the highest proportion of privately-rented households of any ward in the whole of England and Wales (78.4%), ranked second for full-time employment (61.9%, behind only the similarly-new Lavender ward in Wandsworth), 17th for adults with degree-level qualifications (70.5%), 20th for flats or apartments (94.9%), 29th for lower managerial/professional occupations (28.9%), 34th for those working in information and communication (13.8%, the highest figure in the North West), 36th for the 18–29 age bracket (53.8%) and 75th for the 30–44 age bracket (30.7%, the highest figure in the North West). If the BBC ever want to do a vox pop of how young professionals vote, they could do worse than send a reporter from their North West newsroom out into Studio 11 with a camera crew in tow.

This area is part of the Salford and Eccles parliamentary seat represented since 2015 by Labour backbencher Rebecca Long-Bailey, whose father worked on the Salford docks before they closed. Long-Bailey served in the Shadow Cabinet from 2016 to 2020, and she was runner-up to Sir Keir Starmer in the 2020 Labour leadership contest; he sacked her from the Shadow Cabinet after less than three months as shadow education secretary.

Long-Bailey has a safe Labour seat, which will be cut down to just Salford at the next general election as a result of the population growth already referred to. Salford council is a very strong Labour unit run by Labour elected mayor Paul Dennett, who is up for re-election in May; Labour also hold 49 of the 60 seats on the council.

Since its creation in 2021 Quays ward has turned into a rather close battle between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Labour won all three seats here in 2021, but the Lib Dems’ Alex Warren won here in May 2022 rather easily, at the same time as his party colleague Christopher Twells was elected for the neighbouring Ordsall ward. That brought Lib Dem representation back to Salford council after the party were wiped out in the coalition years, but it hasn’t stuck. Twells was suspended from the Salford Lib Dems in 2023 amid controversy over his standing for election to Cotswold council in faraway Gloucestershire: he won, and still holds both council seats. Warren resigned from Salford council in November 2023 to take up a new politically-restricted job as an adviser to the Mayor of Watford. He was the last official Lib Dem on Salford council, and the party need to hold this by-election to avoid wipeout. The Lib Dems drew a blank in the 2023 Salford elections, with Labour winning Quays ward by 45–37, so this by-election may be an uphill struggle for them.

Defending for the Liberal Democrats is Paul Heilbron, who lives in this ward and contested Ordsall ward last year. The Labour candidate is Elizabeth McCoy, on whom I have no information. Also standing is Andrea Romero O’Brien for the Green Party. Surprisingly, given that they are the main opposition group on Salford council, the Conservatives haven’t managed to rustle up a candidate; that breaks a streak going back to December 2022 where every local by-election (outside the City of London and the Isles of Scilly, which are non-partisan) had a Conservative candidate.

Parliamentary constituency: Salford and Eccles
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Salford
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode districts: M5, M50

Paul Heilbron (LD)
Elizabeth McCoy (Lab)
Andrea Romero O’Brien (Grn)

May 2023 result Lab 741 LD 613 Grn 150 C 135
May 2022 result LD 976 Lab 503 Grn 135
May 2021 result Lab 959/723/639 LD 531/347/338 Grn 376/246 C 168/167/162
Previous results in detail

Bluehouse

Tendring council, Essex; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Ian Lennard.

And now for something completely different, as we leave behind the yuppie heaven of Salford Quays and transfer to a town with one of the oldest demographics in the country. Although that caricature isn’t quite true of Bluehouse ward, which covers housing (mostly ex-council housing) on the western edge of Clacton-on-Sea along the road towards St Osyth. This is a rather young ward by Clacton standards, and also a rather working-class one: Bluehouse makes the top 50 wards in England and Wales for people in semi-routine occupations (19.1%), with caring and accommodation being major employers.

Since 2010 Clacton has given its name to a parliamentary seat which was the only constituency ever to return a UKIP candidate at a general election: Douglas Carswell, in 2015. Carswell didn’t seek re-election in 2017 and his seat reverted to the Conservative candidate: Tory backbencher Giles Watling, a former actor who played Oswald the vicar in Bread, has represented the seat since.

The Clacton seat is somewhat smaller than the Tendring local government district, which also takes in the ferry port of Harwich. Harwich has a substantial Labour vote these days, and Tendring is a district which tends to elect a lot of independent and localist councillors; add UKIP into this mix and you have a rather volatile council. In 2015 UKIP won 22 council seats on Douglas Carswell’s coat-tails, finishing just one seat behind the Conservatives and carrying both of the predecessors to Bluehouse ward. Large UKIP groups back in the day were noted for their instability, and the Tendring Conservatives had the inspired idea of lighting the blue touchpaper straight away: they offered UKIP a coalition deal to run the council, and the UKIP council group immediately split over whether to accept it.

There was enough residual UKIP strength in Clacton that the party could win both seats in Bluehouse ward when it was created in 2019, but by 2023 the ward councillors Mary Newton and James Codling had joined the Conservatives and they stood for re-election under that banner. The Conservatives had easily won both of the Essex county council divisions covering the ward in 2021.

In a very fragmented 2023 result, Labour candidate Ian Lennard topped the poll with 213 votes; the Conservatives’ James Codling was re-elected, winning the other seat with 212 votes; independent candidate Bernie Goldman finished as runner-up with 195 votes; the second Labour and Conservative candidate and four more independent candidates then all finished ahead of the rump UKIP candidate who polled 98 and finished tenth (from a ballot paper of 12). In percentage terms that’s 26% each for Labour and the Conservatives, 24% for Goldman and 12% for UKIP. Overall the 2023 Tendring elections returned a hung council, with 19 Conservatives, 16 independents, 8 Labour, 4 Lib Dems and 1 Tendring First councillor; a coalition of everybody except the Conservatives is running the show.

Newly-elected Labour councillor Ian Lennard resigned in November for personal reasons, and the by-election to replace him looks like a complete lottery with a massive ballot paper of ten candidates. I have been through my records, and the most recent previous by-election I can find with ten or more candidates for one vacancy was in April 2019, when there were eleven candidates for Leith Walk ward in Edinburgh; but Scottish local elections use the Alternative Vote to ensure that winning candidates have the broadest possible support. That won’t happen in Bluehouse, and the record for the lowest winning percentage in a local by-election (currently held by Ian Geldard, whose first place in Spennymoor, County Durham in May 2019 was with 18.7% of the vote) could be under threat.

Defending for Labour is John Carrington, who lives in the village of Kirby-le-Soken and contested Homelands ward in Frinton last year. The Conservatives have selected Alex Porter, a former UKIP councillor for the neighbouring Coppins ward who stood for re-election as a Conservative last year and lost his seat. As happened last year, five independent candidates are standing: Bernard Goldman (3rd), Danny Mayzes (6th) and Josie Holland (9th) return from the 2023 election, while Gareth Bayford was an independent candidate for Clacton’s Burrsville ward last year and John Chittock is a former Conservative councillor who lost his seat in Cann Hall ward in 2023. UKIP’s Andrew Pemberton, who was their candidate here last year, is back for another go. Completing the ballot are Kane Silver for the Lib Dems and Tony Mack for Reform UK. If you can pick a winner out of that lot, you’re doing better than me.

Parliamentary constituency: Clacton
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Clacton
Essex county council division: Clacton North (part), Clacton West (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Clacton
Postcode district: CO16

Gareth Bayford (Ind)
John Carrington (Lab)
John Chittock (Ind)
Bernard Goldman (Ind)
Josie Holland (Ind)
Tony Mack (Reform UK)
Danny Mayzes (Ind)
Andrew Pemberton (UKIP)
Alex Porter (C‌)
Kane Silver (LD)

May 2023 result Lab 213 C 212/185 Ind 195/129/115/107/101 UKIP 98 Grn 56 LD 45
May 2019 result UKIP 316/264 Ind 231/188/165 C 199/181 Lab 141 LD 72
Previous results in detail

South Portslade

Brighton and Hove council, East Sussex; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Les Hamilton.

We now travel from Clacton to another seaside town, but this time one with a rather more different vibe. Sussex by the Sea is a series of towns which have merged together into a single urban area: there’s now very little to distinguish Brighton, Hove, Portslade and Shoreham from each other except for lines on a map and/or local knowledge. And possibly the railway stations on the West Coastway line. We’ve come to the area between Portslade and Fishersgate stations, both of which lie just outside the boundary of South Portslade ward.

Portslade can be found at the western end of the city of Brighton and Hove, and was once an urban district of its own. The South Portslade ward runs down to the shoreline, but you can’t actually reach the beach without going through a neighbouring ward: in between is the East Arm of Shoreham Harbour, open water cutting the beach off from the land. The area next to the sea was once industrial, as we can see from its former name of Copperas Gap: copperas has nothing to do with copper, instead being an iron compound with the alternative name of green vitriol.

Something which will be familiar to modern residents in the local politics of Brighton and Hove, which was a hung council for many years up to 2023 with sizeable Conservative, Green and Labour groups; usually the largest party would form a minority administration, resulting in two periods where the Green Party was running the show. This merry-go-round stopped in May 2023, when Labour won an overall majority on Brighton and Hove city council.

South Portslade ward is safe for Labour under current political circumstances, and the Labour slate won here last year with a 61–13 lead over the Conservatives. A rather better majority than that enjoyed by Hove’s Labour MP Peter Kyle, who gained the Hove constituency from the Conservatives in 2015 and has suddenly turned Hove into a safe Labour seat; Kyle has sat in the Shadow Cabinet since 2021, and he currently holds the science, innovation and technology portfolio. The Boundary Commission have left the boundaries of his seat alone for the next election, but Kyle’s constituency will be renamed from Hove Actually to Hove and Portslade Actually.

This by-election is to replace one of the veterans of our local politics. Retired teacher Les Hamilton had been a councillor in this area for 52 years, being first elected in 1971 to Portslade urban district council; his council career continued on the former Hove council and the current Brighton and Hove council, and he served a year as mayor of Hove in the 1990s. There are very few councillors left now with service from before the 1974 reorganisation. Hamilton is now 82, and he stood down in November on the grounds that “age has now caught up with me and tells me it’s time to slow down and give up being a councillor”. He’ll be a hard act to follow.

Defending for Labour is Josh Guilmant, who teaches law at BHASVIC — the Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College. The Conservatives have selected Benjamin Franks, an English language teacher who fought Wish ward in last year’s city council elections. Also standing are Danny Booth for the Greens, Kenneth Rist for the Liberal Democrats, independent candidate Jamie Gillespie (who has previously stood here on the Conservative and UKIP tickets), David Maples of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, and Georgia McKinley Fitch who is standing for a party which your columnist has not previously heard of, the Democratic Liberation Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Hove Actually
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Hove and Portslade Actually
ONS Travel to Work Area: Brighton
Postcode district: BN41

Danny Booth (Grn)
Benjamin Franks (C‌)
Jamie Gillespie (Ind)
Josh Guilmant (Lab)
David Maples (TUSC‌)
Georgia McKinley Fitch (Democratic Liberation Party)
Kenneth Rist (LD)

May 2023 result Lab 1767/1589 C 365/291 Grn 330/216 LD 251 Ind 204
Previous results in detail

Littlemoor and Preston

Dorset council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Tony Ferrari.

As I said at the start of this Previews, out with the old, in with the new. The final entry in this week’s list marks the end of an old era, because this will be the last by-election to replace a local councillor elected during Theresa May’s time in 10 Downing Street — five years and three Prime Ministers ago.

We’ve come further along the south coast to the edge of Weymouth. If you are entering Weymouth then the chances are you will pass through either Littlemoor or Preston: Preston lies north-east of Weymouth on the road towards Wareham and Purbeck, while Littlemoor is off the main road going north towards Dorchester. Other villages within the ward include Overcombe next to the coast, and Sutton Poyntz to the north of Preston. Large parts of the ward, including Sutton Poyntz and the northern half of Preston, lie within the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Bibby Stockholm migrant barge is in a different part of the town; while immigrants of an avian kind are catered for at Lodmoor, an area of wetland run by the RSPB as a nature reserve.

Until 2019 Littlemoor and Preston were part of the Weymouth and Portland local government district: they were then separate wards, with Littlemoor being Labour and Preston voting Conservative. Weymouth and Portland council disappeared in 2019 as part of a reorganisation of Dorset’s local government into just two councils: an urban district with the unwieldy name of “Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole” and with even more unwieldy local politics, and a rural district which took the name of “Dorset” apparently for want of any better ideas.

There has only been one election to date to Dorset council, which took place in May 2019. Dorset’s elections are transitioning onto the county council cycle, so the 2019 councillors had a five-year term and the Dorset council to be elected in May 2024 will also have a five-year term. That makes Dorset the only remaining council whose members were last elected in May 2019, before Brexit and the pandemic.

The current Littlemoor and Preston ward was created for the 2019 Dorset elections when it turned in a rather fragmented result. The Conservative slate of Tony Ferrari and Louie O’Leary won both seats with just 29% of the vote, independent candidate Michael Wilkinson and the Labour slate polled 20% each, and the Lib Dems finished on 17%. Ferrari and O’Leary were the only Conservative councillors elected for a ward wholly within the former Weymouth and Portland district.

Overall the Conservatives won a majority on Dorset council, but not a particularly comfortable one with 43 out of 82 seats; they have since lost a by-election to the Green Party in Lyme and Charmouth ward (Andrew’s Previews 2022, page 127), but a defection gain means that the Tory majority is not at risk in this by-election. Which is just as well, for reasons which will I come to in a moment.

The local MP is Richard Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, who has represented the South Dorset constituency since he gained the seat from Labour in 2010. The Boundary Commission have made very few changes to his safe seat going forwards.

This by-election is to replace the late Conservative councillor Tony Ferrari, who had made a success of his life in both business and politics. He spent many years as managing director of a FTSE 100 company; in politics, he sat on Harrow council in London (2006–14), on Dorset county council (2017–19) and on the modern Dorset council, serving in council cabinets in both Harrow and Dorset. Away from work and the council, Ferrari’s passions were his community work and ultra-long distance running. He suddenly collapsed and died while on a training run on the evening of Monday 6th November, aged 70. Ferrari’s death came just hours before the six-month rule went into effect for the 2024 local elections, meaning that there was just time to call a by-election to fill his seat before May.

Which makes it even more of a shame that the defending Conservatives have made such a pig’s ear of their candidate selection. They have ended up with Peter Dickenson, who already represents Preston on Weymouth town council. His town council register of interests lists his employment as — well, watch the video. (Or, if you’re at work, here’s the register entry.)

The problem with this is that Dickenson’s employer is Dorset council — which means he’s not eligible to be a Dorset councillor. Local government law says you can’t stand for election to a council you’re drawing a wage from. Unfortunately, by the time this was realised it was too late to take Dickenson off the ballot paper and he has gone forward to the election as the official Conservative candidate.

If Dickenson wins this by-election, then he will be unable to take up his seat, Dorset council will remain a man down until May, the returning officer will have spent a five-figure sum in council taxpayers’ money organising this by-election with nothing to show for it, and Dorset Police (who have already received a complaint about the matter) will have to investigate why Dickenson signed the declaration on his nomination papers that he was not disqualified from office. Lying about that is electoral fraud, and in November last year Councillors Behaving Badly favourite Jeff Milburn of South Tyneside (Andrew’s Previews 2021, page 358) was sent to prison for ten months for falsely making that declaration.

Voters in Littlemoor and Preston who actually want somebody to represent them are advised to vote for one of the two other candidates on the ballot paper, Labour’s Steve Brown or the Liberal Democrats’ Simon Clifford.

Parliamentary constituency: South Dorset
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): South Dorset
ONS Travel to Work Area: Dorchester and Weymouth
Postcode district: DT3

Steve Brown (Lab)
Simon Clifford (LD)
Peter Dickenson (C‌)

May 2019 result C 1078/988 Ind 741/347 Lab 719/527 LD 629 Grn 505
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