Previewing the Laleham and Shepperton Green council by-election (25th May)

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

Before we start this week, there is one thing your columnist would like to make clear. The Teal Independents, who did well in last weekend’s Australian general election, are nothing to do with me.

With that clarification out of the way, we have one by-election on Wednesday 25th May 2022:

Laleham and Shepperton Green

Spelthorne council, Surrey; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Mary Madams.

Let’s put a film on. If you’re watching an independent British film made at any point in the last 90 years, there’s a good chance that Shepperton had some involvement in it. Shepperton Studios has been going in some form or another since 1931, and its credits include Best Picture Academy Award-winning films from Oliver! to Gladiator, science fiction from Dr Strangelove to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a lot more besides.

And it’s not just film that comes out of the 15 sound stages here. In television Shepperton Studios has been the venue for a number of series of Red Dwarf, the original Crystal Maze and the 2011 edition of Dancing on Ice, as well as being the home of the Thomas the Tank Engine TV series from the 1980s until Thomas and his friends went CGI in 2008. Shepperton has been part of the Pinewood Studios group since 2001, and deals announced in the last six months with Netflix (who intend to build two more sound stages) and Amazon Prime suggest that the place has a secure future for some time to come.

All this studio space is squeezed onto 20 acres of land on the south bank of the Queen Mary Reservoir, roughly halfway between Shepperton proper and the Thames-side village of Laleham. The reservoir was opened in 1925 by Queen Mary’s husband, King George V, and with a surface area of 707 acres it is one of the largest reservoirs in the London area. When the reservoir is taken together with the associated water treatment works at Ashford Common, other bodies of water to the south, and the River Thames to the west, we can see that a large proportion of this ward is under water.

Of the parts not under water (at least when the Thames is behaving itself), Laleham is a riverside village which was the birthplace of the poet Matthew Arnold. The Lords of the Manor here for many years were the Earls of Lucan, who lived at the manor house of Laleham Abbey; other residents of the Abbey include the exiled Queen Maria II of Portugal in the nineteenth century, and the Labour MP and NCB administrator Alfred Robens who retired to an apartment here in the 1980s. The ward’s other main population centre is the village of Littleton, which lies immediately south of the studios on the banks of the River Ash.

All this lies within the M25 motorway as part of the Borough of Spelthorne, which is one of the few parts of Middlesex which escaped incorporation into Greater London in the 1960s. Despite its location north of the Thames Spelthorne has been part of Surrey since then. At parliamentary level it is a safe Conservative seat which is currently represented by a Cabinet minister, the Business secretary and University Challenge champion Kwasi Kwarteng.

Spelthorne’s local government tells a rather different story over the last few years. The council has returned a majority of Conservative councillors at every election this century, including the last election in 2019 which was a notably poor year for the Surrey Conservatives. Seat totals across the borough that year were 23 Conservatives, 8 Lib Dems, 4 Labour, 2 Greens and 2 independents. However, the Conservative group here has since split costing the party control of the council; a Lib Dem-led adminstration including some independent councillors is now running the show. The Conservatives lost further ground on the council when Labour gained a by-election in the Heathrow-dominated Stanwell North ward three months ago — that’s a collector’s item, it’s not often you see a Labour by-election win in Surrey.

The Conservatives are also defending this by-election, following the death in March of long-serving councillor Mary Madams who served as Mayor of Spelthorne in 2019–20. She was first elected to this ward in 2003 and had continuous service since 2011.

Madams’ ward of Laleham and Shepperton Green is a lower-middle-class area which is normally a safe Conservative ward. The Liberal Democrats came close to winning a by-election here in 2009 and won one of the three seats in 2011, but they have since faded badly. The 2019 election here gave 40% to the Conservative slate ahead of fractured opposition — 22% for the Green Party, 18% for the Lib Dems and 16% for UKIP. A large part of the Conservative vote appears to be a personal vote for councillor Maureen Attewell, who ran a long way ahead of her running-mates Richard Smith-Ainsley and Madams in both 2015 and 2019. Attewell was elected to Surrey county council last year to represent Laleham and Shepperton division, which covers the vast majority of this ward.

On paper, this ward should be much easier for the Conservatives to defend than Stanwell North was three months ago — but on the other hand, the Conservatives have lost three equally-safe seats in by-elections over the last two weeks and are yet to get on the scoreboard for this municipal year. The task of defence has fallen to Conservative candidate Karen Howkins, who is the chairman of the residents association for the small village of Charlton which lies east of the studio site. The only other party to return from 2019 is the Green Party who have selected another Charlton resident, Stuart Whitmore. Completing the ballot paper is a candidate who fought this ward in 2015 and finished in thirteenth and last place, Paul Couchman of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. The unusual Wednesday scheduling of today’s poll means that the winner will be able to take their seat for Spelthorne council’s annual meeting and mayor-making tomorrow.

Parliamentary constituency: Spelthorne
Surrey county council division: Laleham and Shepperton (almost all), Sunbury Common and Ashford Common (Littleton Common and water treatment works)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow
Postcode districts: TW15, TW16, TW17, TW18

Paul Couchman (TUSC)
Karen Howkins ©
Stuart Whitmore (Grn)

May 2019 result C 911/764/731 Grn 505 LD 416/399 UKIP 374 Lab 61
May 2015 result C 1922/1586/1529 UKIP 1321 Spelthorne Ind 966/959 Lab 675/581/249 LD 640 TUSC 100/95/68
May 2011 result C 1123/1021/798 LD 934/856/668 UKIP 590
October 2009 by-election C 814 LD 742 UKIP 154 Ind 142 Lab 77
May 2007 result C 1083/1077/1057 LD 465/451/402 Lab 307
May 2003 result C 1009/978/949 LD 398/344/299 Lab 361
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