Previewing the six local elections of 23rd June 2023

Andrew Teale

Published in

Britain Elects

24 min readJun 22, 2023

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

Six polls, for fourteen seats, on 22nd June 2023:

Tavistock North

West Devon council; caused by the resignation of Green Party councillor Terry Wheeler.

Five of today’s local elections represent the last of the unfinished business which was postponed from 4th May. That leaves only one actual by-election today, and it’s the first one arising from councillors elected in the Class of 2023.

To start the week we are back in the West Devon district, where this column covered a postponed poll in Burrator ward last week; that was won by the Lib Dems. This time we travel a few miles north to the district’s main town, Tavistock. Located around fifteen miles north of Plymouth, Tavistock has a long history with a surprising amount of industry involved, and it’s that industry which put Tavistock on the UNESCO World Heritage list — for the mining landscape of Cornwall and West Devon. There’s not gold, but there is metal in them there hills, and Tavistock was successively a centre for the stannaries and then, from the early nineteenth century, copper mining.

The nearby Devon Great Consols mine was the most productive copper mine in the world for much of the nineteenth century, and its owner (the Duke of Bedford) made so much money from it that he was able to essentially rebuild Tavistock’s town centre. Unfortunately, with all that money came in due course a big liability for death duties, and the Bedfords were forced to sell up in 1911. One result of that is that Tavistock town council is a very rich parish council indeed. The modern Tavistock parish and this ward takes in areas which are part of the Dartmoor National Park, and that gives a clue to the modern economic mainstay of this area: tourism.

Tavistock is home to the small West Devon district council, and it’s a remote enough place that the candidate can matter more than the party. North ward has returned Conservative, Lib Dem, Green (as we shall see) and independent councillors this century. Readers of Andrew’s Previews with extremely long memories may remember a by-election covered here in March 2012, in which a 20-year-old Conservative councillor resigned over inappropriate Facebook comments and the Tories lost the resulting by-election to an independent, Jeff Moody. Another Tory seat then fell vacant almost immediately, but the Conservatives held the resulting by-election in June 2012.

The 2019 West Devon elections returned a full slate of three independent councillors in Tavistock North as the Tories lost two seats in the ward. Top of the poll was Jeffrey Boyd-Moody, to give him his full name, who polled 48% of the vote; the Lib Dems finished second on 19%, Labour were third on 18% and the Conservatives fell to last place. Independent councillor Steve Hipsey resigned at the end of 2021, and the resulting by-election in February 2022 was gained by the Conservatives’ David Turnbull with the Lib Dems in second place. Turnbull did have one advantage in terms of getting his name on stakeboards all over the ward: he is an estate agent.

There was better news for the West Devon Conservatives in the 2021 Devon county elections, in which Tavistock was a safe Conservative division, and in the 2019 general election where this district is part of the Torridge and West Devon constituency represented by Sir Geoffrey Cox. However, in 2023 West Devon was one of the many shire districts where the Conservatives lost a lot of seats, and their by-election gain in Tavistock North disappeared along with control of the council. Jeff Moody was re-elected at the top of the poll with 32% of the vote; the second seat went to the Lib Dems on 27%, and the third seat to the Green Party on 21%. The Conservative slate polled 16%.

It will be apparent that Tavistock North is one of those wards which appear in this column over and over again. The latest victim of the ward’s high councillor attrition rate is the Greens’ Terry Wheeler, a mental health worker who resigned his seat after just two weeks in office. Councillor resignations after so short a time usually indicate that something has gone badly wrong somewhere, and unfortunately what’s happened in this instance is that Wheeler has been made homeless. During the election campaign his landlord had served him with a “section 21” no-fault eviction notice requiring him to move out of his rented home; Wheeler has been unable to find affordable housing for his family elsewhere in Tavistock, and in consequence he is leaving the district and standing down from the council. As a direct result of the town’s housing shortage, West Devon’s council taxpayers are now having to stump up the bill for yet another Tavistock North by-election.

The Greens’ third-place finish last month may make this a difficult defence for their candidate Annabel Martin, whose husband Neil is a Tavistock town councillor. The town’s housing shortage is a major issue for independent candidate and town councillor Ursula Mann, who is calling for a community land trust to be set up to provide land for developing affordable homes for local people. The Lib Dem candidate is Holly Greenbury-Pullen, who lives and works in rural Dartmoor; in May she contested Dartmoor ward under the name of Holly Greenberry-Pullen. I’m not sure which, if any, of those spellings is correct. The Conservatives have reselected Judy Hughes who stood here in May; she works for NHS Property Services, and and according to her statement to whocanivotefor.co.uk (link) her favourite biscuit is shortbread. Also standing is Uwem Udo for Labour.

Parliamentary constituency: Torridge and West Devon
Devon county council division: Tavistock
ONS Travel to Work Area: Plymouth
Postcode district: PL19

Holly Greenbury-Pullen (LD)
Judy Hughes (C‌)
Ursula Mann (Ind)
Annabel Martin (Grn)
Uwem Udo (Lab)

May 2023 result Ind 822/505 LD 685 Grn 540 C 414/333/268 Reform UK 95
February 2022 by-election C 379 LD 337 Grn 163 Lab 85
May 2019 result Ind 870/717/695 LD 338 Lab 326 C 269/263
May 2015 result Ind 1218/782/632 C 1018/859 Grn 769 Lab 529
Previous results in detail

Paulton

Bath and North East Somerset council; postponed from 4th May following the death of Tim Morgan, who had been nominated as a Green Party candidate.

We stay in the south-west region by travelling to a place where crime is quite clearly a problem. Over the last 26 years, more than 400 people have been murdered in the countryside around Midsomer, and clearly the local police chief inspector is having trouble stemming this massive homicide rate. It’s a wonder that central government haven’t intervened by now. There have been similar problems in Oxford, where I understand that DI Lewis’ sidekick is at a bit of a loose end right now; perhaps he fancies a transfer?

Just to the north of Midsomer Norton lies the village of Paulton, which can be found in hilly countryside about nine miles south-west of Bath. Not all of those hills are natural. Paulton lies on the Somerset coalfield, and spoil tips from its coalmining and industrial past continue to litter the landscape. The village was the western terminus of the Somerset Coal Canal, which linked the collieries to the River Avon and the Kennet and Avon Canal to the east. The Somerset Coal Canal has been derelict for over a century, but recent restoration work at the former Paulton basin has uncovered what is claimed to the largest drydock on England’s canal network. Paulton came to wider prominence for footballing reasons in late 2009, when the village’s non-league side Paulton Rovers were the lowest-ranked team to make the first round proper of the 2009–10 FA Cup; they were drawn at home to Norwich City, then of League One, who thrashed them 7–0.

Paulton is part of the North East Somerset parliamentary seat, which has been represented since 2010 by the newly-knighted Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. The young fogey won a large majority in the December 2019 general election, but it tends to be forgotten that he gained the seat from Labour in 2010: the predecessor constituency of Wansdyke had a Labour MP during the Blair and Brown years. The Labour vote in this area is concentrated in the Somerset coalfield, and in local elections Paulton is firmly in the Labour column. All five previous elections this century to Bath and North East Somerset council have returned two Labour councillors for Paulton ward’s two seats. The most recent poll here, in 2019, was very decisive with 52% for the Labour slate against 18% for an independent candidate and 11% each for the Conservatives and UKIP.

That political makeup also makes Paulton ward a bit of an oddity on Bath and North East Somerset council, whose other wards polled as scheduled on 4th May. BANES council has had a Liberal Democrat majority since 2019, and the Lib Dems improved their position last month: the latest count gives 41 Liberal Democrat councillors, 5 Labour, 5 independents, just 3 Conservatives (who have fallen a long way since winning a council majority in 2015) and 3 Greens, with the two seats in Paulton yet to poll. The Paulton ward election had to be postponed after the death of Tim Morgan, who had recently retired from running a local authority special educational needs and disability service. He was due to stand in the election as a Green Party candidate, but sadly passed away two days before polling day.

Both outgoing Labour councillors for Paulton ward are seeking re-election. Liz Hardman is looking for her fourth term in office, Grant Johnson (who is also the vice-chairman of Paulton parish council) for his second term. Despite his surname being fairly high up the alphabet, Johnson is the last of the eight candidates on the alphabetical ballot paper. The independent candidate from last time is not trying again, and there is no UKIP candidate this time either. This may represent an opportunity for the Conservatives to at least regain the second place they normally hold in Paulton; on the Conservative slate here are Alex Frost (a retired HGV driver) and Deirdre Horstmann (a former BANES councillor who represented Radstock ward from 2015 to 2019). Also standing are Melanie Bullard and Belinda Gornall for the Lib Dems, and the Green Party slate of Deborah Brosnan and Edward Arnall-Culliford. Arnall-Culliford’s nomination, to replace the late Tim Morgan, is the only change from the original ballot paper. Electors here have up to two votes, reflecting the two seats up for election.

Parliamentary constituency: North East Somerset
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bath
Postcode districts: BA3, BS39

Edward Arnall-Culliford (Grn)
Deborah Brosnan (Grn)
Melanie Bullard (LD)
Alex Frost (C‌)
Belinda Gornall (LD)
Liz Hardman (Lab)
Deirdre Horstmann (C‌)
Grant Johnson (Lab)

May 2019 result Lab 808/630 Ind 272 C 177/167 UKIP 177 LD 112/78
May 2015 result Lab 1170/861 C 844/530 Ind 673 UKIP 589 Grn 235 LD 140/110
May 2011 result Lab 787/785 C 616/432 LD 333/293
May 2007 result Lab 637/575 C 444/435 LD 200/179
May 2003 result Lab 548/509 C 280/202 LD 167/131
Previous results in detail: 2003–15 2019

Coxford

Southampton council, Hampshire; abandoned on 4th May following the death of Conservative councillor Graham Galton, who had been nominated for re-election.

We now travel to the south coast and to the city of Southampton, but not to the city centre or the waterfront; this week I get to write about the council estates on the landward edge of the city. Such is the task of the Previewer.

Specifically, we’ve come to the Lordshill and Lordswood areas on the northern edge of Southampton. These were incorporated into the city in 1967 and the city council promptly built new housing estates on them. Lordshill, off the Romsey Road, has particularly high deprivation levels; the ward as a whole has high levels of social housing and low qualification rates. The major local employer is Southampton General Hospital, which lies just outside the ward boundary.

The whole of Southampton city council was up for re-election this year on new ward boundaries, but the new lines for Coxford ward are the same as the old ones so we can trace the results here all the way back to 2002. This is an interesting ward which has voted for all three main parties in the last 21 years, although Coxford is one of those places where the Coalition led to the Lib Dem vote disappearing. The ward has only voted Conservative twice, in 2008 and 2021: both of those were Conservative landslide years in Southampton.

Labour won all three seats in Coxford ward over the period 2010–12, but then the city council proposed closing a local swimming pool to save money. This led to two of Coxford ward’s councillors, Don Thomas and Keith Morrell, walking out of the Labour party. They formed a left-wing anti-austerity group on the council, which proved to be electorally successful and won all four elections in Coxford ward in the period 2014–18. The Thomas/Morrell group was described on the Southampton council website at the time as “Putting People First”; officially they were re-elected as independents, but in practice their election campaigns were sponsored by the seriously left-wing Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and represent the closest TUSC has ever got to winning a council seat. By 2019 the Putting People First group had run out of steam; Keith Morrell resigned from the council and Labour won the resulting by-election (Andrew’s Previews 2019, page 50).

Since then Coxford has often been a fairly close Labour versus Conservative contest. There was a Conservative blowout here in 2021 but the May 2022 poll saw Labour lead by the narrow margin of 45–42, so the seats being defended in the ward at this election are 2 for Labour and 1 for the Conservatives. The ward is part of the Southampton Test parliamentary seat, which has been represented by Labour’s Alan Whitehead continuously since 1997.

On the basis of the 2022 results this column projected a large Labour majority on Southampton council following the 2023 all-out election, and that came to pass. There are now 35 Labour councillors against 9 Conservatives, 3 Lib Dems and a Green with the three seats in Coxford ward yet to poll. In fact the Coxford ward poll was started on time at 7am on 4th May, but the returning officer had to abandon it part-way through polling day following the death of outgoing councillor Graham Galton that morning. Councillor Galton had represented Millbrook ward on the council since 2019, but was standing for re-election here alongside his wife Diana.

The re-run poll will have an extraordinarily long ballot paper with a total of nineteen candidates standing. On the Labour slate, outgoing councillor Matt Renyard (who won the 2019 by-election) is seeking re-election for a third term; he is joined by new faces Rebecca McCreanor (who has lived in the ward since 2007) and Beccy Ruddick (who is a supermarket worker and USDAW rep). For the Conservatives, outgoing councillor Diana Galton (who has served since 2021) is seeking a second term; Paul Nolan, who finished a close second here in 2022, is back for another go; and Vicky Chung is the replacement candidate to replace the late Graham Galton. Also standing are (deep breath, here we go) David Chapman, Ken Darke and Peter Galton (no relation) for the Lib Dems; Ash Phillips from the original ballot paper and new candidates Joanne Clements and Ronald Meldrum for the Greens; Maggie Fricker from the original ballot paper and new candidates Declan Clune and Ali Haydor for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition; independent candidate Ed Surridge; and a newly-nominated slate from Reform UK consisting of Anthony Adhikary, Philip Crook and John Edwards. Electors here have three votes.

Parliamentary constituency: Southampton Test
ONS Travel to Work Area: Southampton
Postcode district: SO16

Anthony Adhikary (Reform UK)
David Chapman (LD)
Joanne Clements (Grn)
Declan Clune (TUSC‌)
Vicky Chung (C‌)
Philip Crook (Reform UK)
Ken Darke (LD)
John Edwards (Reform UK)
Maggie Fricker (TUSC‌)
Diana Galton (C‌)
Peter Galton (LD)
Ali Haydor (TUSC‌)
Rebecca McCreanor (Lab)
Ronald Meldrum (Grn)
Paul Nolan (C‌)
Ash Phillips (Grn)
Matt Renyard (Lab)
Beccy Ruddick (Lab)
Ed Surridge (Ind)

May 2022 result Lab 1429 C 1338 LD 199 Grn 162 TUSC 41
May 2021 result C 1723 Lab 1090 LD 229 Grn 162 TUSC 63
May 2019 result Lab 768 C 739 LD 470 Socialist Alternative 442 Grn 194
March 2019 by-election Lab 668 C 529 LD 450 Socialist Alternative 368 Integrity Southampton 178 Ind 174 UKIP 123 Grn 53
May 2018 result Ind 1595 Lab 958 C 559 LD 103 Grn 101 Ind 82
May 2016 result Ind 1317 Lab 924 UKIP 498 C 396 LD 113 Ind 84 Grn 70
May 2015 result Ind 2300 Lab 1330 C 1196 UKIP 978 LD 215 Grn 209
May 2014 result Ind 1633 UKIP 796 Lab 724 C 500 LD 168
May 2012 result Lab 1647 C 667 LD 334 UKIP 295 Grn 75 TUSC 57 Ind 39
May 2011 result Lab 2004 C 1112 LD 702
May 2010 result Lab 2379 LD 1826 C 1769 Ind 279
May 2008 result C 1018 Lab 986 LD 918 UKIP 287
May 2007 result Lab 1219 LD 1162 C 784 UKIP 201 Grn 128
May 2006 result LD 1229 Lab 1180 C 620 Grn 273
June 2004 result LD 1110 Lab 1018 UKIP 510 C 478
May 2003 result LD 1187 Lab 933 C 361 Lab 245 BNP 197 UKIP 95
May 2002 result LD 1328/1272/1185 Lab 1000/968/927 C 398/377/352
Previous results in detail

Rural South

West Lancashire council; postponed from 4th May following the death of Our West Lancashire councillor Ian Davis, who had been nominated for re-election.

Do you know anybody from Argleton?
Have you ever been to Argleton?
Do you know anybody who has ever been to Argleton?

You’ve probably answered “no” to all of those questions. Now, you may recognise this as a modified form of the test for the Bielefeld conspiracy, a long-running internet joke which eventually prompted the council for the German city of Bielefeld to offer a €1 million prize to anybody who could prove the city did not exist. Nobody made a successful claim for the money, and Bielefeld city council now officially considers the matter closed.

West Lancashire council have not yet organised a similar competition for Argleton, perhaps because Argleton definitely does not exist. This is despite the best efforts of Google Maps, which once listed a location called “Argleton” in empty fields between Town Green railway station (on the Merseyrail Ormskirk branch) and the A59 road. Theories as to how this came about range from a trap to catch those abusing Google Maps’ copyright to a misspelling of the local civil parish, Aughton. Argleton was removed from Google Maps around 2010, but not before bored people on the internet had done what bored people on the internet do; there is still at least one website which will happily sell you T-shirts bearing the purported logo of the equally-fictional Lancashire football team FC Argleton.

The real-life village of Aughton lies at one end of the Rural South ward of West Lancashire council, which is centred on the village of Bickerstaffe but also includes some industrial and outlying parts of the towns around it: Kirkby, Skelmersdale and Ormskirk. Prominent among these is the main campus of Edge Hill University, which lies on the south-eastern edge of Ormskirk. Edge Hill was founded in 1885 as a women’s teacher training college in the Edge Hill area of Liverpool (hence the name); it moved to Ormskirk in the 1930s and became a fully-fledged university in 2006. The Edge Hill campus polling station is the largest polling district in Rural South ward, with 1,137 electors on the roll; however, student turnout in local elections is notoriously low.

If you want to look at previous election results or census records for West Lancashire’s Rural South ward, you’ll find they’re a bit like Argleton in that they don’t exist. West Lancashire council got new ward boundaries this year, and the new lines are radically different from the old pattern. The previous wards were introduced in 2002 and were a mixture of single-member, 2-member and 3-member electoral units. These days the Local Government Boundary Commission for England has instructions not to do that kind of thing in councils like West Lancashire which use the thirds electoral cycle; as a result the new ward map here has a uniform pattern of wards with three councillors. All of those seats were up for election in May 2023, and in future years all of West Lancashire’s wards will elect a single councillor at each year’s election.

Comparing the old ward map with the new, Rural South ward takes in the whole of the former Bickerstaffe ward, the Aughton half of the former Aughton and Downholland ward, the Edge Hill campus from Ormskirk’s former Derby ward, and the southern fringe of the former Skelmersdale South ward. Aughton and Downholland usually voted Conservative but it had trended towards Labour in recent years, and in 2022 Labour broke through to win the ward by just 19 votes. Skem South was very safe for Labour — it’s Skelmersdale, what did you expect? — and I won’t dwell on the electoral history of Derby ward given the typical student turnout in local elections. That leaves Bickerstaffe, which was one of the few West Lancashire wards which were consistently marginal between Conservative and Labour; but at its last election in 2019 both of those parties performed very badly as the OWL group swooped to make a gain. The OWLs are not what they seem: the initials stand for Our West Lancashire, a localist group which performed particularly well in Ormskirk and the surrounding area.

This column covered the OWL phenomenon six years ago in previewing a by-election for the former Derby ward (Andrew’s Previews 2017, page 172), which was won by one of OWL’s founding members, Ian Davis. He was re-elected for a full term in 2018 and again in 2022. Before entering politics Davis had been managing director of Thomas Robinson and Son, a firm which made flour milling machinery; this job took him all over the world, and Davis’ tribute page on the Our West Lancashire website (link) includes some hair-raising stories of his experiences selling Robinson’s machinery in Nigeria and Iran. Ian Davis passed away on 3rd April, two days before nominations closed for the May 2023 local elections; his nomination papers had already gone in before his death, and consequently the poll in Rural South had to be postponed. The original statement of persons nominated for the 2023 West Lancashire elections didn’t include a list of nominated candidates for Rural South, instead saying “election countermanded due to the death of a candidate”.

Going up to other levels of government doesn’t really help in pinpointing a favourite to win this intriguing ward. Most of Rural South is covered by the West Lancashire East county council division, which was Conservative in 2017 and 2021; on the latter occasion Davis, as the OWL candidate, finished a strong second. Aughton is part of the West Lancashire West county division, which is safely Conservative. The part of the ward previously in Skem South ward — a strip of land on the edge of Skelmersdale, mostly given over to industrial units but including the residential West Gillibrands area — is covered by the Labour-held county division of Skelmersdale West. The whole area was previewed here last February because it’s part of the West Lancashire parliamentary seat, which is safely Labour and swung strongly to that party at a parliamentary by-election in February.

The other West Lancashire wards polled as scheduled on 4th May, and Labour recovered a majority on the council after the rise of the OWLs had pushed them into a minority for the last two years. The latest composition gives 26 Labour councillors against 15 Conservatives and just one OWL, with the three seats in Rural South ward still to come.

The revised ballot paper for Rural South features three candidates each for the Conservatives, Labour and OWLs. This is a completely new ward and all three of those parties had outgoing councillors covering part of the area, so I’ll take those slates in alphabetical order. The Tory slate is headed by Paul Turpin, who was elected as a councillor for Aughton and Downholland ward in 2021 and is seeking re-election; the other two Conservative candidates are Aughton parish councillor Asheem Naraen and his wife Sangeeta, both of whom are doctors. On the Labour slate are Paul Dickie (who formerly worked on the buses and railways, and has been a governor of Lathom high school for over 25 years), Julie Gibson (the Lancashire county councilor for Skelmersdale West) and Ian Moran (a postman, CWU rep in Skelmersdale, Lathom South parish councillor and former leader of West Lancashire council, who previously represented Up Holland ward from 2010 to 2022). Our West Lancashire need to win at least one seat here to return to group status on West Lancashire council; their candidate list is headed by Ian Rigby, the outgoing councillor for Bickerstaffe ward, and also includes Thomas Marsh-Pritchard (manager of Bickerstaffe FC’s men’s first team) and Linda Webster (a Bickerstaffe parish councillor). With three seats available, electors here may cast up to three votes.

Parliamentary constituency: West Lancashire
Lancashire county council division: West Lancashire East (Bickerstaffe, Lathom South and Simonswood parishes and part of Ormskirk town), West Lancashire West (part of Aughton parish), Skelmersdale West (part of Skelmersdale town)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Liverpool
Postcode districts: L31, L33, L39, L40, WA11, WN8

Paul Dickie (Lab)
Julie Gibson (Lab)
Thomas Marsh-Pritchard (Our West Lancs)
Ian Moran (Lab)
Asheem Naraen (C‌)
Sangeeta Naraen (C‌)
Ian Rigby (Our West Lancs)
Paul Turpin (C‌)
Linda Webster (Our West Lancs)

No previous results on these boundaries

Warren

Wyre council, Lancashire; postponed from 4th May following the death of Brian Crawford, who had been nominated as an independent candidate.

Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside. Well, let’s stay within Lancashire but cross to very different territory from the villages of West Lancashire. Fleetwood is a planned Victorian town next to the Wyre estuary, at the north-west corner of the Fylde peninsula; but unlike Blackpool to the south, Fleetwood was conceived first and foremost as a seaport. It’s still a major centre of what remains of the UK’s fishing and fish processing industry, but the major local export now is from the Lofthouse’s factory which makes the delicious throat lozenges Fisherman’s Friend. These have fans in high places: the French president Emmanuel Macron reputedly consumed whole crates of Fisherman’s Friends during his election campaigns, and Margaret Thatcher was also a regular user of them.

If you prefer to look out over the sea rather than try and extract fish from it, have a wander to the north-west corner of Warren ward. Here you can find Rossall Point Tower, a striking modern structure with excellent views over Morecambe Bay. Wyre council have put a webcam on the tower, from where you can remotely have a look at what the birds are doing (link). With this being midsummer and thanks to Fleetwood’s location on the west coast, there is plenty of light to enjoy the view from the webcam up to the hour of close of polls and for some time beyond. Behind the tower is Fleetwood Golf Club, which rather sniffily describes itself as “the only true links golf course on the Fylde Coast”; Royal Lytham and St Annes may be on both the Fylde and the Open rota, but it’s set back from the sea and is surrounded by housing.

Behind the golf course and the northern coast of the Fylde is Fleetwood’s Warren ward, which makes the top 100 wards in England and Wales for semi-detached housing. Fleetwood is part of the Wyre local government district, which also takes in the affluent Blackpool suburbs of Thornton-Cleveleys and Poulton-le-Fylde together with the strongly Conservative countryside of Over Wyre and around Garstang. Following the 2023 local elections Wyre is now the safer of the two remaining Conservative-majority district councils in north-west England; the latest count is 30 Conservative councillors against 15 Labour and 3 independents, with the two seats in Warren ward yet to poll. (The other Conservative-majority district in the north-west is neighbouring Fylde, where the Tory majority is just one seat.)

The Labour vote in Wyre district is concentrated in Fleetwood, but this was masked at the 2019 Wyre elections by a large vote for the UK Independence Party who won four seats in the town. That count included one of the two seats in Warren ward, whose votes split 29% for UKIP, 28% for Labour (who won the other seat), 25% for independent candidate Brian Crawford and 18% for the Conservatives. In other political circumstances Warren ward normally votes Labour, although the Conservatives did win here in 2007 (when the boundaries were different and Warren ward had three councillors rather than the current two). Fleetwood is currently part of the Labour-held and badly-drawn parliamentary seat of Lancaster and Fleetwood.

There were no UKIP candidates in the 2023 Wyre elections, and UKIP are now extinct as an elected political force apart from a handful of parish councillors. The outgoing UKIP councillor for Warren ward, Huw Williams, ended up in the Conservatives and sought re-election last month as a Conservative candidate for the neighbouring Rossall ward; he lost. The outgoing Labour councillor, Craig Armstrong, didn’t seek re-election this May.

The original candidate list for Warren ward had two Labour candidates, two Conservatives and independent Brian Crawford, who was back for another go after his strong fourth-place finish in 2019. Crawford was an ex-serviceman who had served in Aden and Bahrain, and he had been a Fleetwood town councillor since 2019; he had previously been a Conservative member of Cumbria county council, representing Millom from 2013 to 2017. He passed away during the election campaign at the age of 81, forcing the postponement of the election in Warren ward.

No new candidates have come forward, so the postponed poll here is a straight fight between the previously-nominated Labour and Conservative candidates. In the red corner are Maureen Blair, who already represents the ward on Fleetwood town council, and Brian Stephenson who was previously a Wyre councillor (for Fleetwood’s Park ward) from 2015 to 2019. In the blue corner are John Fitzgerald, who runs a construction firm, and David Meekins who previously stood here in 2019. Electors here have up to two votes.

Parliamentary constituency: Lancaster and Fleetwood
Lancashire county council division: Fleetwood East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Blackpool
Postcode district: FY7

Maureen Blair (Lab)
John Fitzgerald (C‌)
David Meekins (C‌)
Brian Stephenson (Lab)

May 2019 result UKIP 370 Lab 360/352 Ind 314 C 236/212
May 2015 result Lab 1178/1120 C 859/726
Previous results in detail

Hartburn

Stockton-on-Tees council, County Durham; postponed from 4th May following the death of Mike Elliott, who had been nominated as a Reform UK candidate.

We finish for the week in the Tees Valley, where it was all change in last month’s local elections — mostly to the benefit of Labour. The elected independent mayor of Middlesbrough was defeated by an elected Labour mayor; Labour now also have minority control of Redcar and Cleveland, govern Darlington in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and came just a few votes short of taking an overall majority on Hartlepool council where the Conservative-Independent coalition is having to rely on the mayor’s casting vote to survive.

Ironically, the one Tees Valley borough where Labour went backwards was the one which they previously ran, albeit as a minority. Stockton-on-Tees is the only English district to span two ceremonial counties, as it takes in territory from both the Durham and the Yorkshire side of the River Tees. On the Yorkshire side are the Middlesbrough suburb of Thornaby, the quasi-New Town of Ingleby Barwick and the more ancient riverside town of Yarm; the Durham side of the river is dominated by the towns of Billingham and Stockton-on-Tees itself.

It’s on the western edge of Stockton’s built-up area that we find the affluent suburb of Hartburn Village. Like Warren ward in Fleetwood, Hartburn ward (on its pre-2023 boundaries) was in the top 100 wards in England and Wales for semi-detached housing; but unlike Warren ward, Hartburn was in the top 50 wards in England and Wales for owner-occupation, at just over 90% of households.

Perhaps because of this, Hartburn ward was one of the safest Conservative wards in Stockton-on-Tees. In the period 2005–21 the Conservative vote here never fell below 61%. One of the ward’s councillors, Matt Vickers, was elected in December 2019 as the Conservative MP for the local parliamentary seat of Stockton South; he stood down from Stockton council, and the resulting by-election in May 2021 was won by the Conservatives with a 73–23 lead over Labour. Boundary changes for this election have added a significant amount of urban territory from the abolished Grangefield ward to the north, and increased the ward’s representation from two councillors to three. Grangefield was a politically marginal ward, but the additional voters aren’t likely to be enough to significantly change the tone in Hartburn.

The other Stockton wards polled on 4th May, and as stated they were good for the Conservatives. The Tories and Labour are now tied on 22 seats each, with 4 Thornaby localists, 3 Ingleby Barwick localists and two independents holding the balance of power and the three seats in Hartburn ward still to come. Given the nature of Hartburn ward it’s likely that the Conservatives will become the largest party on Stockton council, but they are short of the 29 seats needed for an overall majority: at last month’s AGM the Thornaby and Ingleby Barwick localists gave Labour the votes for their minority administration to continue, so control of the council is not up for grabs here. The Hartburn ward election had to be postponed after the death during the campaign of Reform UK candidate Mike Elliott; he had also contested the 2021 by-election here, coming a poor third out of three candidates.

On the Conservative slate are the two outgoing Hartburn ward councillors Lynn Hall (who has served the ward since 2015) and Niall Innes (who won the 2021 by-election) together with Jason French. Labour have only nominated two candidates for the three seats: Christopher Coombs (who stood here in 2019) and Joanna Tyler bookend the ballot paper. For Reform UK, Mike Elliott’s son Andrew remains from the original ballot paper and he is joined by replacement candidate Andrew Stephenson, a former Conservative member of Stockton council who was kicked off the council during the Covid-19 pandemic under the six-month non-attendance rule; Stephenson sought re-election as an independent candidate in the resulting by-election for the neighbouring Western Parishes ward, and lost. The delay to the poll has also allowed the Green Party to nominate a slate of Jess Hobson, Jason Jordan and Kiran Singh. With three seats available, electors here may cast up to three votes.

Parliamentary constituency: Stockton South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Middlesbrough and Stockton
Postcode districts: TS18, TS19, TS21

Christopher Coombs (Lab)
Andrew Elliott (Reform UK)
Jason French (C‌)
Lynn Hall (C‌)
Jess Hobson (Grn)
Niall Innes (C‌)
Jason Jordan (Grn)
Kiran Singh (Grn)
Andrew Stephenson (Reform UK)
Joanna Tyler (Lab)