Previewing the three council by-elections of 10th August 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Three by-elections on 10th August 2023:
Evesham South
Wychavon council, Worcestershire; caused by the death of Green Party councillor Ed Cohen.
Our three local by-elections today are a bit of an eclectic mix, with two being in small towns in rural England and two being defended by political groups which aren’t traditionally seen as major parties. These two categories combine for our first poll in Worcestershire.
We’ve come to Evesham, a mediaeval market town located within a bend of the Warwickshire Avon which was once home to one of England’s largest abbeys. This was founded in the eighth century to commemorate Eof, an Anglo-Saxon swineherd who gave his name to the town and who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary here in a vision.
In later centuries Evesham Abbey became the final resting place of Simon de Montfort, who was buried here in 1265. This was during a civil war in England known as the Second Barons’ War, which was possibly the most dramatic episode in the long reign of Henry III. Relations between Henry and his barons had broken down, and a revolt by the barons had led to de Montfort becoming effective ruler of England, with King Henry a mere puppet in de Montfort’s captivity following the king’s defeat at the Battle of Lewes in 1264. De Montfort attempted to capitalise on this power vacuum by going down the populist route, making Parliament much more representative of the great and the good by summoning two burgesses of each borough and two knights of each shire to Parliament for the first time. His Parliament of 1265 became the prototype for what we now call the House of Commons.
However, the king’s son and heir Prince Edward had escaped from de Montfort’s clutches in May 1265, and history — particularly Scottish history — has remembered Edward as a pretty effective military commander. The two sides met on 4th August 1265 at the Battle of Evesham, which resulted in Simon de Montfort being killed and King Henry freed. The Second Barons’ War petered out over the next couple of years, but the constitutional innovation it led to was not forgotten: Henry’s later Parliaments also included burgesses and knights of the shire, while Edward — who succeeded his father as King Edward I in 1272 — went on to summon the Model Parliament of 1295 on very similar lines to raise money for his military campaigns against the Scots.
The 1295 Model Parliament included two burgesses from Evesham, and Evesham continued to be a parliamentary borough all the way up to 1885. By this point the old borough boundary had expanded over the Avon to take in the village of Bengeworth, over the bridge which runs east from the town centre towards Broadway and the Cotswold escarpment. Much of Evesham’s growth has taken place on this side of the river, and it’s here we find the Evesham South ward. This ward lies either side of the Battleton Brook, and is centred on the De Montfort School which educates the local secondary school and sixth-form pupils. In the 2021 census, on slightly different boundaries, Evesham South came in the top 40 wards in England and Wales for those employed in the retail or wholesale sector; the ward includes a number of large supermarkets and other outlets together with most of the industrial Vale Business Park immediately to the south of the town.
The modern parliamentary representative here is Nigel Huddleston, who has represented the safe Conservative seat of Mid Worcestershire since 2015; he is currently a junior minister for international trade. The recently-concluded Boundary Commission review mostly left the Worcestershire seats as they are, but the name Mid Worcestershire was clearly thought to be inappropriate for a seat which is basically the rural eastern part of the county; so from the next general election Huddleston’s constituency will be renamed to “Droitwich and Evesham”.
That might be a better name for Wychavon council, which also covers a large swathe of eastern Worcestershire from Evesham to Droitwich. The council offices are in Pershore, which is smaller than those towns but is centrally-located within the district. Even in May 2023 conditions this council has a large Conservative majority, as does Worcestershire county council.
However, Evesham South ward is not part of that Conservative majority. It was gained by the Green Party in 2019, and on revised boundaries for 2023 the Green slate of Julie Tucker and Ed Cohen was re-elected with a 56–27 lead over the Conservatives. The Evesham South division of Worcestershire county council, which is larger than this ward, remained in Conservative hands at its last election in 2021 with the Greens finishing in a strong second place.
Green councillor Ed Cohen passed away in June at the age of 73, just a month into his second term of office. So we have a Green Party defence in this Evesham South by-election, which falls to Peter Knight who is a retired priest and former Evesham town councillor. The Conservatives have reselected Stan Brotherton who fought this ward in May: he is a qualified accountant and current Evesham town councillor who has written some books on the town’s history. Also standing are two independent candidates, Julie Haines (a town councillor who stood in Bengeworth ward in May) and Matt Snape (a former Conservative councillor for this ward in 2017–19 who was the Reform UK candidate for the county council here in 2021), together with two candidates for parties which didn’t stand here in May: David Quayle for the Lib Dems and David Tasker for Labour. Counting for this by-election will take place on Friday, so don’t wait up all night for the result.
Parliamentary constituency: Mid Worcestershire
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Droitwich and Evesham
Worcestershire county council division: Evesham South (Evesham South parish ward of Evesham parish), Evesham North West (Fairfield parish ward of Evesham parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Evesham
Postcode district: WR11
Stan Brotherton (C)
Julie Haines (Ind)
Peter Knight (Grn)
David Quayle (LD)
Matt Snape (Ind)
David Tasker (Lab)
May 2023 result Grn 623/511 C 303/298 Ind 186/154
Previous results in detail
Upminster
Havering council, London; caused by the death of Upminster and Cranham Residents Association councillor Linda Hawthorn.
Our second poll of the week definitely puts the “local” into local by-elections, as we come to the point where the London sprawl ends and the Essex countryside begins. Upminster is a major railway junction, with fast c2c and slow London Underground trains travelling west to central London, mainline trains going east to Southend and south to Thurrock, and London Overground trains travel north-west on a short branch line to Romford. This is the easternmost station on the London Underground network.
The railways came here in 1885 and resulted in the usual population growth for London: this was terminated by the introduction of the Green Belt, meaning that the houses came here and no further. One result of this is that Upminster ward includes the only significant part of Greater London outside the M25 motorway, the village of North Ockendon; this was included within Hornchurch urban district in the 1930s, but the urban development never came.
In 1709, before all of this development, the countryside around Upminster was quiet enough that the rector of Upminster, William Derham FRS, was able to do some scientific experiments to improve on Isaac Newton’s estimate of the speed of sound. Derham used a telescope from the tower of his church (St Laurence, Upminster) to see the flash of a shotgun being fired from St Mary Magdalene in North Ockendon, and then used a half-second pendulum to measure the time until the gunshot was heard. His estimate for the speed of sound was 1072 Parisian feet (in today’s units, 348.4 metres) per second, which is only 1.5% away from the currently-accepted value of 343 metres per second.
Upminster is now part of the London Borough of Havering, but in demographic terms it is not like London at all. In the 2021 census Upminster had the highest Christian population of any ward in London (62.3%), the highest retired population of any ward in London (30.0%), the second-highest number of residents born in the UK of any ward in London (91.8%) and the second-highest White British population in London (85.4%). Upminster makes the top 15 wards in England and Wales for those in intermediate occupations (18.0%) and the top 90 for semi-detached housing (66.8%)
There has been a parliamentary seat based on Upminster since 1974, currently with the name Hornchurch and Upminster. This has been a Conservative seat with the sole exception of the Labour landslide of 1997. Since 2017 the local MP has been Julia Lopez (originally elected as Julia Dockerill), who has spent most of the time since September 2021 as a junior minister in the culture department; however, Lopez’ ministerial role is currently being covered by the former culture secretary Sir John Whittingdale while she is on maternity leave.
Julia Lopez has a safe Conservative seat which the Boundary Commission review has left with only minor changes. But general and local elections in her constituency are rather different matters. The London Borough of Havering is very unusual in that it is the only London borough with a tradition of voting for Residents Association candidates; as a result of this, the council has been hung since 2014.
The Residents are not a united bloc, and partly because of this Havering council was continuously under Conservative leadership from 2002 to 2022; but this changed when the 2022 elections returned 23 councillors for various Residents groups, 23 Conservatives and 9 Labour. Ray Morgon became only the second Residents leader of the council, and the first since 1996–97, at the head of a coalition between the Havering Residents Assocation and Labour. The Havering Residents Association is an umbrella group for most but not all of the Residents councillors, and although the Upminster and Cranham Residents Association is affiliated to that group only five of the six UCRA councillors are actually part of it; the other councillor is still in the UCRA but is not part of the ruling administration. Confused? You will be.
The 2022 Havering elections were held on new ward boundaries, which were rather controversial here: accusations of gerrymandering were made against the 2018–22 Conservative leader of the council Damian White, and the Local Government Boundary Commission took the unusual step of issuing a second draft ward map for consultation. But Elbridge Gerry himself would have had trouble creating a map to dislodge the Upminster and Cranham Residents Association, who dominate local elections in Upminster ward. In May 2022 the Residents won here with a 63–20 lead over the Conservative slate; Residents councillor Linda Hawthorn, who had represented Upminster ward continuously since 1990, topped the poll with over 3,000 votes. Hawthorn passed away in May at the age of 71, from cancer.
A hard act to follow for the defending Upminster and Cranham Residents Association candidate Jacqueline Williams, who has worked in the City since the early 80s and has 40 years’ experience in the legal profession. What little chance the Conservative candidate Edward Green had of winning probably disappeared last month when the party was forced to disown him for Islamophobic and COVID-19 conspiracy stuff on his Facebook; if you really want to know the details, I refer you to tomorrow’s edition of Private Eye. However, it was too late to take Green off the ballot paper where he is still shown as the official Conservative candidate. This might provide an opportunity for another party to take second place, and there are four other candidates on this ballot paper who could be able to capitalise: John Sullivan for Labour and Melanie Collins for the Green Party return from the 2022 election, and they are joined by Thomas Clarke for the Lib Dems and independent David Durant, who sat on Havering council from 2010 to 2022 as a councillor for Rainham and Wennington ward.
Parliamentary constituency: Hornchurch and Upminster
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Hornchurch and Upminster
London Assembly constituency: Havering and Redbridge
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: RM14, RM15
Thomas Clarke (LD)
Melanie Collins (Grn)
David Durant (Ind)
Edward Green (C)
John Sullivan (Lab)
Jacqueline Williams (Upminster and Cranham Res Assoc)
May 2022 result Upminster and Cranham Residents Association 3028/2954/2930 C 953/711/584 Lab 453/419/362 Grn 362
Previous results in detail
Election Court Watch
The mention of Rainham and Wennington ward in the last section brings us on to a discussion of occasions when things go wrong at election counts. In the 2022 local elections Rainham and Wennington was one of the very last wards to declare its result, with multiple recounts meaning that the voting figures were not finalised until the Monday evening after the poll. The final scores saw the Conservatives gaining all three seats in that ward from the Rainham and Wennington Residents, the final seat being won by a margin of 12 votes. It’s fair to say that David Durant, who lost his seat, wasn’t happy about the conduct of the count; a complaint was made to the police that an election agent had entered an area of the counting hall strictly reserved for the returning officer and count staff, but the Met found no evidence that the votes had been interfered with. (The three Conservative councillors for Rainham and Wennington have since defected to the Havering Residents Association, complaining of a lack of support from the party after a wildfire destroyed 19 houses in Wennington during last summer’s heatwave conditions.)
The Election Court didn’t get involved in the Rainham and Wennington 2022 count complaint. They have, however, now resolved the case of Green v Hannah-Wood, a case involving a genuine counting issue which affected this May’s election for Nelson town council, within the Pendle district of Lancashire. There were two candidates in May for the Marsden West ward on this parish-level body; when the ballot papers came out of the boxes the Conservatives’ Julie Green had 242 votes while Labour candidate Patricia Hannah-Wood polled 177, giving a Conservative majority of 65. However, when the votes were read out by the returning officer they were the wrong way round, and Hannah-Wood was wrongly declared as the winner. Green launched a case in the Election Court against Hannah-Wood and the returning officer for Pendle, Rose Rouse.
Patricia Hannah-Wood knew that her election was undue through no fault of her own, and she made no attempt to defend the petition. In fact, she resigned from Nelson town council a month later — which ended up creating all sorts of legal problems. The returning officer then followed the normal procedure for filling a parish council vacancy, starting off by publishing a notice of vacancy which gave the electors of Nelson a two-week deadline. If ten of the town’s electors had written to the returning officer by the deadline date of 7th July requesting a poll, then a parish council by-election would have been organised. Not enough requests for a poll were received before the deadline, so there would be no by-election and the next step would be for Nelson town council to fill the vacancy themselves by co-option.
Also on 7th July the petitioner, Julie Green, applied to the Election Court for a summary judgment — asking for the case to be decided in her favour on the grounds that Hannah-Wood’s defence had no prospect of success and there was no point in going through a full trial. The returning officer had some doubts as to whether the Election Court’s antiquated procedure actually allowed for this, and in any event Hannah-Wood’s resignation while the court case was pending had opened a legal can of worms. Since there was no dispute on the facts of the case, the returning officer decided to escalate matters to the High Court in London for a ruling on the law.
The High Court’s judgment was published on 3rd August ([2023] EWHC 2034 (KB)). In brief, they quashed Patricia Hannah-Wood’s election and found that Julie Green had been duly elected in May. Because Hannah-Wood’s election was undue, her resignation had no effect and there is no vacancy for Nelson town council to fill by co-option. The High Court also clarified that, if another case arises in future where a councillor resigns while an Election Court case against them is pending, the Election Court would be able to restrain the returning officer from filling the resulting vacancy until the case is decided.
It was an expensive outcome for the returning officer, because High Court hearings do not come cheap. Rose Rouse (or, more accurately, Pendle council’s insurers) will now be on the hook for legal costs estimated at around £50,000. All this, let us not forget, is a consequence of two numbers being written down in the wrong order.
Meanwhile, over in Northern Ireland we are close to resolving another Election Court case concerning a counting error, McKinney v Reilly. This arises from the election on 18th May for the Waterside District Electoral Area of Derry City and Strabane council, held under the Single Transferable Vote as are all local elections in Northern Ireland. Here the issue is that the count stopped too soon. After six rounds of counting, the second SDLP candidate Martin Reilly was declared as the winner of the sixth and final seat in Waterside with a majority of 49.16 votes over the Alliance Party candidate Philip McKinney; however, the two DUP winners Chelsea Cooke and Niree McMorris both had surplus votes over the quota required for election, and Cooke’s surplus of 161.05 votes should have been transferred to see whether Reilly or McKinney was the true winner of the final seat.
Alliance’s Philip McKinney took the case to the Election Court, which ordered a recount. This took place yesterday, and reports suggest that once Cooke’s surplus was thrown then the SDLP’s Martin Reilly did indeed win the final seat, with a seventh-count margin over McKinney of around ten votes. The full figures will be reported to the Election Court at a hearing next week, at which the Court will almost certainly uphold Reilly’s election.
There surely has to be a better, cheaper and simpler way to sort out very simple and obvious errors like these. Maybe we’ll have such a better, cheaper and simpler process by the time when this column comes to write the next exciting episode of Election Court Watch; that will be a while off, because once McKinney v Reilly is formally disposed of then the Election Court will have completed their work arising from the May 2023 local elections. Let’s hope that everything goes smoothly for all our count officials in future, and that I don’t have to write about simple but expensive official errors like these for a long time yet.
Castle Cary
Somerset council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Mike Lewis.
For our final contest this week, let’s return to the scene of the Somerton and Frome parliamentary by-election which was convincingly gained by the Liberal Democrats three weeks ago. Here we find our Conservative defence of the week, in the town of Castle Cary.
Although Castle Cary has a population comfortably under 2,500 it’s one of the major towns in this rural corner of Somerset. It was granted a market charter by Edward IV in 1468 and developed into a textile centre. The railways came in 1855: Castle Cary railway station is a junction for lines towards Taunton to the West, Weymouth to the south and London to the east, and there some very long-distance London commuters living here. In June, it’s also the railhead for travellers to the Glastonbury Festival.
Castle Cary is the largest of the 18 parishes that make up this electoral division of Somerset. Some of these have wonderful names, and I’ll single out here the village of Queen Camel on the main road from Yeovil to Frome. Now, King Charles has made one official overseas trip since his coronation: he was in Romania in June as a guest of President Klaus Iohannis. The Queen didn’t go with him, which might or not be linked to the fact that cămilă — with essentially the same pronunciation as “Camilla” — is the Romanian word for “camel”. (It’s also the word for “camel” in several other Balkan languages: Slovenian kamela, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian камила and Greek καμήλα all have the same or similar pronunciations.) Maybe having a literal Queen Camel might have caused too much potential for confusion, offence and/or satire.
Not all of Castle Cary division went to the polls last month in the Somerton and Frome parliamentary by-election. The south-west corner of the division is part of the Yeovil constituency, including the huge military airfield at Yeovilton. This is HMS Heron, run by the Royal Navy as one of the two main bases for the helicopters of the Fleet Air Arm. Next to the airbase can be found the Fleet Air Arm Museum, while St Bartholomew’s Church in Yeovilton is owned by the Navy as the Fleet Air Arm’s memorial church.
The new parliamentary boundaries will sort out the split of Castle Cary division between two constituencies, but Somerset is slated for major changes at the next general election. The Somerton and Frome seat will be split up, and its Lib Dem MP Sarah Dyke will have to choose whether to seek re-election in the main successor seat of Glastonbury and Somerton (which will include all of Castle Cary division) or the new constituency of Frome and East Somerset.
Somerset also saw major changes at local government level in April this year with the disappearance of South Somerset council, which was the local authority for Castle Cary for 48 years. Its replacement is a new unitary Somerset council, which is effectively the old county council. The county divisions here were first used in 2013; the 2022 Somerset council had twice as many councillors as the old county council, which (subject to a wrinkle or two) was achieved by simply doubling the number of councillors from one to two per division.
Which was good news for both the Conservatives’ Mike Lewis and the Lib Dems’ Henry Hobhouse, who have been the top two candidates for Castle Cary in all three elections on the current boundaries. In 2013 and 2017 Lewis won the division’s only seat; in 2022 there was an extra seat available and Hobhouse and Lewis were both elected at the top of their respective slates, with vote shares of 44% for the Lib Dems and 43% for the Conservatives. At the last South Somerset council elections in 2019 Hobhouse had topped the poll in Cary ward, Lewis was re-elected as councillor for Camelot ward, while the Yeovilton area was part of the sprawling Northstone, Ivelchester and St Michael’s ward which split its three seats between an independent, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.
I mentioned the Hobhouse family in the Somerton and Frome preview: they go back a long way in Castle Cary, and Lib Dem councillor Henry Hobhouse’s grandfather Sir Arthur Hobhouse and great-grandfather Henry Hobhouse both served as Liberal MPs for this part of Somerset in the distant past. (Wera Hobhouse, the Lib Dem MP for Bath, married into the family.) Henry’s local government career started in 2007, with election to South Somerset council. The late Conservative councillor Mike Lewis was also a local government veteran, having been first elected to South Somerset council in a 2002 by-election for South Somerset’s Camelot ward (that ward name referred to Cadbury Castle of Arthurian legend, which is just outside the boundary of this division). He had been a Somerset county councillor since 2013, and he lived in the village of Queen Camel.
Lewis’ death gives a tricky by-election for the Conservatives to defend, particularly given the Lib Dem takeover of the Somerton and Frome parliamentary seat three weeks ago and that party’s takeover of Somerset county council last year. Defending for the Conservatives is David Hall, a former deputy leader of the county council; he represented Bridgwater East and Bawdrip division until 2022, when he sought re-election in Somerton division and was defeated. The Lib Dem candidate is Kevin Messenger, who was Henry Hobhouse’s ward colleague as a South Somerset councillor for Cary ward from 2019 until April and is now hoping to do resume the double act on the county council. As in 2022, the Greens are the only other party to stand: their candidate is Ewan Jones.
Parliamentary constituency: Somerton and Frome (Alford, Ansford, Babcary, Bratton Seymour, Castle Cary, Lovington, Marston Magna, North Barrow, North Cadbury, Queen Camel, Rimpton, South Barrow, Sparkford, West Camel and Yarlington parishes), Yeovil (Chilton Cantelo, and Yeovilton and District parishes and part of Mudford parish)
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Glastonbury and Somerton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Yeovil
Postcode districts: BA7, BA9, BA21, BA22, DT9, TA11
Ewan Jones (Grn)
David Hall (C)
Kevin Messenger (LD)
May 2022 result LD 1618/1231 C 1556/1333 Grn 469
May 2017 result C 2062 LD 1192 Lab 153
May 2013 result C 1529 LD 1196 UKIP 627 Lab 144
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
