Previewing the three council by-elections of 11th August 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Three by-elections on 11th August 2022:
Bridgend Central
Bridgend council, Glamorgan; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Stuart Baldwin.
To start this week, we have the first local by-election of the year in Wales. Welsh local government was completely renewed at this year’s local elections, which saw every Welsh councillor up for election with new ward boundaries introduced across the country.
The last Welsh council by-election of the previous term happened in the county borough of Bridgend in December 2021, with Labour losing a seat to an independent in the Caerau division (Andrew’s Previews 2021, page 584). And it’s Bridgend we return to for the first of the new term, as we come to Bridgend town centre.
The name of Bridgend refers to an ancient bridge over the River Ogmore; the current Old Bridge, which was built around 1425 to replace an earlier crossing, still exists but is now a footbridge only. Even before there was a bridge the Ogmore could be forded here, which attracted the Normans during their twelfth-century invasion of Wales. The tautologically-named Newcastle Castle, guarding the western side of the river, was first erected in 1106; the ruins which can be seen today date from later in the century.
Bridgend town centre, which has had a bit of a tidy-up in this century, lies on the east side of the River Ogmore. Unlike much of Glamorgan Bridgend was never a coal-mining centre, depending for its economy on the town’s market and its transport links. The town’s railway station — the fifth-busiest station in Wales — forms a junction between the South Wales Main Line, the Vale of Glamorgan line to Barry and Cardiff, and a branch line up the Ogmore valley to Maesteg; Wildmill railway station, the first stop on the Maesteg branch, also lies within this ward’s boundary. One major public sector employer in Bridgend is South Wales Police, whose headquarters are here.
The town is recognised by the ONS as the centre of its own Travel to Work Area, and is also the home of Bridgend county borough council. This council has oscillated in recent years between a Labour majority and a hung council; it was hung in 2017. The Labour party generally performed well in South Wales in this year’s local elections, and this included narrowly gaining an overall majority in Bridgend. In seat terms the result of May’s election was 27 Labour councillors, 21 independents, 2 Plaid Cymru and just one Conservative councillor — down from 11 at the previous election. The boundary changes mean that the comparison is not exact, but the message for the local Conservatives is clear enough.
And Bridgend, it will be recalled, has a Conservative MP who has been in the news a bit recently. Jamie Wallis, who gained the Bridgend constituency from Labour in 2019, was hauled before Cardiff magistrates last month over a bizarre incident in November 2021 in which Wallis crashed his car into a lamppost, while dressed as a woman, and then fled the scene. Wallis was found guilty of failing to stop and report an accident and leaving the car in a dangerous position; the district judge imposed a £2,500 fine and a six-month driving ban. Jamie Wallis has also come out as trans, which is not an easy process for anyone let alone somebody as firmly in the public eye as an MP. And it’s not as if Wallis has good career prospects in the medium-term anyway: the Conservative majority in Bridgend is small, and the draft constituency map from the Boundary Commission for Wales merges Wallis’ seat with the Ogmore constituency to create a safe Labour unit.
Boundary changes have already come into effect for Bridgend county borough council, creating a new ward called Bridgend Central from May this year. This is a straight merger of the previous Morfa ward (which was based on the town centre) and the previous Newcastle ward (west of the River Ogmore), with the number of councillors for the area cut from four to three. Morfa ward had been a Lib Dem stronghold until the Coalition saw their vote fell away: Lib Dem councillor Peter Foley was successfully re-elected as an independent in 2012, with Labour gaining the other Lib Dem seat in 2012 and Foley’s seat in 2017. Newcastle ward was marginal between Labour and the Conservatives; from 2012 until 2015 one of its Labour councillors was Christina Rees, who left the council to successfully seek election as MP for Neath and subsequently served as shadow Welsh secretary under Jeremy Corbyn.
Those two differing political traditions combined in May 2022 to produce a split result, but probably not the one you might have expected from that description. Independent candidates polled 45% of the vote and won two of the three seats available, and the Labour slate polled 43% and won the other seat. The only other party to stand was the Conservatives, who placed a poor third.
The re-elected Labour councillor was Stuart Baldwin, who had topped the poll in Morfa ward in 2017. He had served as Mayor of Bridgend during his term, and at the time of his election he was the council’s cabinet member for communities. His re-election in May caused a problem. Baldwin had also applied for and been offered a job with the council as a Climate Change Response Manager, with a salary of around £50,000; if he accepted the job he would be disqualified from being a Bridgend councillor. The job offer was made after nominations closed for May’s election, and the Returning Officer did the right thing in allowing the poll to go ahead and sorting out the consequences afterwards should Baldwin be re-elected, which he was. Stuart Baldwin gave notice within a week of his re-election that he would not be taking up his new term as a Bridgend councillor, and this by-election is the result.
I mentioned above the last Bridgend council by-election, in Caerau ward last December, which was also a Labour defence in rather embarrassing circumstances. In that case the previous Labour councillor had died of COVID, but he was also under investigation following a local scandal over shoddy home improvement work in the ward’s council houses. Labour lost that by-election to an independent candidate. Could there be a similar result here?
Defending for Labour is Ceri Evans, a former teacher who was one of the unsuccessful Labour candidates here in May. On that occasion she finished in fifth place, five votes behind the independent runner-up Steven Easterbrook who is also trying again; Easterbrook is endorsed by the Bridgend County Independents group on the council. Also standing are Thomas Dwyer for the Conservatives, Edward Curran for the Lib Dems and Paul John for the Greens. The local press have profiled all the candidates here (link).
Parliamentary constituency: Bridgend
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bridgend
Postcode district: CF31
Edward Curran (LD)
Thomas Dwyer (C)
Steven Easterbrook (Ind)
Ceri Evans (Lab)
Paul John (Grn)
May 2022 result Ind 1159/1072/1048 Lab 1112/1043/980 C 324/310/297
Previous results in detail
Dodderhill
Wychavon council, Worcestershire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Laurence Smith.
We now cross to one of the most important parts of the UK’s broadcasting network. Near the Worcestershire village of Wychbold a series of masts reach up to the sky, lit up with red warning lights at night. This is the Droitwich transmitting station, from which BBC Radio 4’s longwave signal is broadcast to the UK and beyond. Radio 4 longwave isn’t just about the spoken word. There’s a time signal encoded in the broadcast, which is still used to switch some old-style Economy 7 electricity meters to and from offpeak charging; and the presence of the station is one of the ways in which the UK’s submarine captains can reassure themselves that our society hasn’t collapsed yet.
Wychbold lies in the parish and ward of Dodderhill, which essentially occupies the space between Bromsgrove and Droitwich. The ward also takes in the parish of Upton Green to the west of Bromsgrove, which gives it a rather weird and diffuse shape. The A38 road through Wychbold lies on the course of a Roman road, but has now been superseded by the M5 motorway which gives this area excellent transport links to Worcester, Birmingham and beyond.
Radio 4 longwave has been known to broadcast The Archers, an everyday story of country folk which is now in its eighth decade. Until this week June Spencer, who had played the part of Peggy Woolley since the pilot episode, had been an ever-present on the programme; Spencer is now 103 years old, and she has decided to call it a day.
The Archers’ setting of Borsetshire is in the English Midlands, with a number of villages in this general corner of Worcestershire claiming to be the inspiration for Ambridge. Chances are that Ambridge’s district councillor would, like Dodderhill’s councillor, sit on Wychavon council which covers a large swathe of the east of the county: Droitwich and Evesham are both covered by Wychavon district, whose council offices are in Pershore.
This is a very Conservative part of England. The last Wychavon council elections were in May 2019 and returned a large Conservative majority; this includes Dodderhill, where new Conservative councillor Laurence Smith was elected unopposed. The most recent contested election for this ward was in 2015, when the Conservatives defeated the Lib Dems 67–33 in a straight fight. Dodderhill is part of the Ombersley division of Worcestershire county council, which this column visited six years ago this week (Andrew’s Previews 2016, page 160); the Conservative winner of that county council by-election was re-elected for a third term last year with 72% of the vote.
The Dodderhill by-election results from the resignation of Laurence Smith three years into his first term of office. Smith is quite a young councillor who (according to his LinkedIn page) has a full-time job as an analyst with the Bank of England. Given the current headwinds facing the UK economy, that must be a pretty demanding job right now.
There will be a contest for this by-election. Defending for the Conservatives is Rick Deller, who works for a recruitment firm in the technology sector. The Lib Dem candidate is John Littlechild, who works in the chemicals industry. Deller and Littlechild both give addresses in Droitwich, meaning that the only candidate to live in the ward is Susan Howarth of the Green Party; she completes the ballot paper.
Parliamentary constituency: Mid Worcestershire
Worcestershire county council division: Ombersley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Worcester and Kidderminster
Postcode districts: B60, B61, WR9
Rick Deller (C)
Susan Howarth (Grn)
John Littlechild (LD)
May 2019 result C unopposed
May 2015 result C 902 LD 445
May 2011 result C 542 LD 203
May 2007 result C 527 LD 242
May 2003 result C 393 LD 176
Previous results in detail
Laleham and Shepperton Green
Spelthorne council, Surrey; caused by the death of independent ex-Conservative councillor Richard Smith-Ainsley.
For our final poll this week we return to a ward this column covered less than three months ago, on 25th May to be exact. Let’s hope that this sequel doesn’t suffer from the diminishing returns which many film franchises run into sooner or later.
Mind, Shepperton Studios knows a thing or two about film franchises as a major shooting location for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But films have been made at Shepperton a lot longer than that. Indeed, 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. Best Picture Academy Award-winning films from Oliver! to Gladiator, science fiction from Dr Strangelove to Red Dwarf and beyond, TV game shows from the original Crystal Maze to the 2011 edition of Dancing on Ice, and even Thomas the Tank Engine have all come out of Shepperton’s 15 sound stages. Netflix want to build two more stages here, and Amazon Prime have also put some recent investment in. Shepperton’s future looks secure 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 normally under water.
Of the parts not under water (at least when the Thames is behaving itself and we are not under drought conditions), 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 the first of several notably poor years for the Surrey Conservatives. Seat totals across the borough that year were 23 Conservatives, 8 Lib Dems, 4 Labour, 2 Greens and 2 independents.
The Conservative group subsequently split, costing the party its majority on the council. For a while the splinter group installed a Lib Dem-led coalition administration, but following some more musical chairs at the May 2022 AGM Spelthorne now has a Conservative leader again. At the time of writing the council website lists 14 Conservative councillors, 7 Lib Dems, 4 members of the United Spelthorne Group (all of whom were elected for the Conservatives), 3 Greens, 3 Labour, 2 members of the Breakthrough Party (who were both elected for Labour), 2 members of the Independent Spelthorne Group (1 elected as an independent, 1 as a Conservative) and three more independent councillors affiliated to the Conservative, Green and Lib Dem groups respectively. Spelthorne politics is a bit complicated.
The Conservative position on the council hasn’t really been helped by some pretty poor by-election performances over the last year and a bit. They gained a seat from the Lib Dems in Staines South ward in May 2021, by seven votes (Andrew’s Previews 2021, page 145), but then saw the Greens hold a by-election in Staines ward in July 2021 (ibid., page 295). Labour gained a seat from the Conservatives in Stanwell North ward in February this year, and the Laleham and Shepperton Green by-election on Wednesday 25th May resulted in a Green Party gain from the Conservatives, Green candidate Stuart Whitmore replacing the late Conservative councillor Mary Madams.
Shortly after that poll had been dealt with, another of Laleham and Shepperton Green ward’s councillors passed away. Richard Smith-Ainsley had represented this ward on and off since 1995, with continuous service from 2007, and had served as deputy leader of the council and chair of the planning committee. He was one of the councillors who had split from the Conservative party since 2019, and at the time of his death he was part of the Independent Spelthorne Group.
The last three by-elections to Spelthorne council have all seen the Conservatives opposed by just one of the main opposition parties, and that trend is repeated here. This means that the 2019 election result (Conservatives 40%, Greens 22%, Lib Dems 18%, UKIP 16%) isn’t that relevant for this by-election, nor is May’s by-election (Green 52% Conservative 44%), because this time it appears to be the Lib Dems’ turn to be the challenger.
Both defeated candidates from May have returned for another go. For the second time in less than three months the defending Conservative candidate is Karen Howkins, who is the chairman of the residents association for the small village of Charlton which lies east of the studio site. As stated, this time the challenge to Howkins comes from Lib Dem candidate John Thesiger, a retired social worker who is currently writing a biography of his great-uncle, the Bride of Frankenstein actor Ernest Thesiger. As in May, the only other candidate is Paul Couchman of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
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 (C)
John Thesiger (LD)
May 2022 by-election Grn 903 C 775 TUSC 69
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
