Previewing the five by-elections of 27th August 2026

Five by-elections on 27th August 2026:

Dover council, Kent; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Martin Bates.

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

We’re going to start this week on what the right-wing press would have you believe is the front line: the coast of Kent. It’s certainly the front line of Brexit, because this ward overlooks Dover harbour; and during the Second World War this corner of Kent literally was the front line, as it was within range of artillery pieces on the French coast. Such was the threat to life that the village of St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe was evacuated for much of the war.

The main barrier to the small boats coming ashore here is the White Cliffs of Dover, which stand up to 100 metres high and run along most of the coast between Dover and Deal. These cliffs overlook one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and for centuries the South Foreland Lighthouses on top of the cliffs warned captains of the hazardous Goodwin Sands off Deal. The clifftop is now in the hands of the National Trust, which has opened a visitor centre above the Dover ferryport.

The military are still here today, particularly in the parish of Guston which overlooks Dover town from the east. The squaddies show up in the area’s census return in an unusual way: Guston, Kingsdown and St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe ward makes the top 60 wards in the UK for Buddhism (2.0%), which in this context means Gurkhas. The next generation of military recruits are being educated here at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, a boarding school in the state sector whose intake was traditionally drawn from boys whose fathers had served or were serving in the Army. Its name is not a reference to the Andrew formerly known as Prince: the school was renamed in 1892 in honour of the future George V, who was created Duke of York in that year.

The White Cliffs terminate to the south of Deal at the village of Kingsdown, which was part of the Cinque Ports as a limb of Dover back in the day; another of Dover’s limbs was nearby Ringwould, which shares a parish council with Kingsdown. Inland we find the ward’s railhead of Martin Mill, which lies on the Dover to Deal railway line.

In an outbreak of sense from the Boundary Commission, this ward which covers the countryside between Dover and Deal is part of the Dover and Deal parliamentary seat. This was a Labour gain in the 2024 general election, and its MP Mike Tapp subsequently spent time in government in 2025-26 with the ever-popular portfolio of migration and citizenship. His predecessor Natalie Elphicke had defected from the Conservatives to Labour shortly before the 2024 election, in which she stood down. She had taken what was then the Dover seat over in 2019 from her then husband Charlie Elphicke, who lost the Conservative whip twice in the 2017-19 Parliament over sexual assault allegations: Charlie Elphicke was subsequently convicted of those, and sentenced to two years in prison.

The Dover council area is larger than the Dover and Deal parliamentary seat, as it also includes Sandwich to the north. This was under Conservative control from 2007 to 2023, and this area has previously appeared twice in Andrew’s Previews for by-elections to replace retiring Conservative leaders of Dover district council. A by-election was held to this ward in December 2019, on the undercard of the general election, and the predecessor St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe ward got the full treatment in November 2017. Labour gained overall control of Dover council in 2023, winning 17 seats to 14 Conservatives and one independent; but their group has since split, and the latest composition has the rump Labour group of 12 running a minority administration against 13 Conservatives (plus this vacancy) and 6 independents. Guston, Kingsdown and St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe ward remained in Conservative hands at the 2023 election, although the winning Conservative slate only polled 33% of the vote: the Green Party were runners-up on 26%, with Labour scoring 24% and the Lib Dems 9%.

There was a very different result here in last year’s Kent county council election, in which this ward is part of the Dover North county division. That seat was comfortably won by Reform UK, who won all seven of the Kent county council seats for Dover district as a whole. So the Conservatives might well look at this by-election with some concern, as they are on the defensive here following the retirement of Martin Bates who had served since winning the 2019 by-election here.

Defending for the Conservatives is David Hawkes, who previously appeared in this column when he won a May 2021 by-election for the neighbouring Mill Hill ward in Deal. Hawkes, a former nurse who works for a children’s hospice, had gained his seat from Labour but lost it back in 2023. The Green Party candidate is Ingrid Dodd, a retired GP who gives an address in Kingsdown. Labour have selected Steve Wisbey, who lives in St Margaret’s Bay and previously stood here in May 2019 in a rare local election outing for the now-defunct pro-EU party Renew. This time there is no Liberal Democrat candidate so a few votes are up for grabs. Reform UK have selected James Defriend who is a county councillor for Dover Town division, Restore Britain have nominated former Royal Marines officer Jez Hermer who has a military MBE to his name, and we have an independent candidacy from Graham Wanstall who has contested a few local elections in Dover town over the last decade; he most recently stood in 2023 in Maxton and Elms Vale ward, finishing as runner-up there.

Parliamentary constituency: Dover and Deal
Kent county council division: Dover North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Dover (Guston, Langdon, Ripple and St Margaret’s at Cliffe parishes), Margate and Ramsgate (Great Mongeham, and Ringwould with Kingsdown parishes)
Postcode districts: CT14, CT15, CT16

James Defriend (RUK)
Ingrid Dodd (Grn)
David Hawkes (C)
Jez Hermer (Restore Britain)
Graham Wanstall (Ind)
Steve Wisbey (Lab)

May 2023 result C 960/941 Grn 758 Lab 690/604 LD 262 Heritage Party 230
December 2019 by-election C 2523 Lab 902 Grn 461 LD 382
May 2019 result C 1159/938 Grn 531 Lab 431/340 Renew 389 Ind 211
Previous results in detail

Wandsworth council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Lizzy Dobres.

“Broad-bosomed, bold, becalmed, benign
Lies Bal-ham, four-square on the Northern Line”

- Denis Norden and Frank Muir, Balham, Gateway to the South

If Dover is the gateway to England, then Bal-ham is the Gateway to the South. And if we take the literal gateway as the bridge carrying the Brighton main line over the Balham High Road, then the Trinity ward of Wandsworth - which covers the debatable lands between Bal-ham and Tooting - starts immediately beyond that bridge.

Trinity ward is named after the small open space of Trinity Fields and the adjacent Trinity Road, which runs arrow-straight from the road junction at Tooting Bec down to the Thames at Wandsworth Bridge. It is served by Tooting Bec underground station, Wandsworth Common mainline station and Bal-ham station where those two lines meet: those three stations mark the northern, eastern and southern corners of Trinity ward.

In the 2021 census Trinity was in the top 15 wards in England and Wales for residents educated to degree level, at 70.8% of adults, and in the top 50 for residents in full-time employment (53.4%). It was in the top 70 wards for both of the ONS “managerial, administrative and professional occupations” categories, at 33.9% in the higher category and 28.2% in the lower category. It ranked 11th for residents in working in professional, scientific and technical activities (19.6%) and just squeaked into the top 100 wards for residents working in the financial and insurance sector (12.3%). Trinity also made the top 60 wards for residents born in Oceania (2.0%). In other words, this is a bastion of the professional middle classes.

Trinity ward is part of the Tooting constituency, which has been in Labour hands since its creation in 1974. The local MP since a 2016 by-election has been Rosena Allin-Khan, who was a doctor at the nearby St George’s Hospital in Tooting before her election. Allin-Khan also sat on Wandsworth council from 2014 to 2018 representing Bedford ward, which was then on the far side of the Balham High Road.

Wandsworth was for many years the local authority where Normal Rules Do Not Apply. In local elections the borough voted far to the right of its parliamentary profile, partly thanks to the borough’s long-standing Conservative administration setting aggressive low-council-tax policies. It took until 2022 for Labour to win a majority here, but they then lost control after one term as Wandsworth, for the very first time, fell into no overall control: May’s election returned 29 Conservative councillors, 28 Labour and 1 independent who has given confidence and supply to a minority Conservative administration. This is already on its second leader since the election, as Aled Richards-Jones stood down from the top job after less than two months citing increased commitments in his legal career.

On the same day as Richards-Jones announced he was relinquishing the council leadership, the Labour group deputy leader Lizzy Dobres quit Wandsworth council altogether for pretty much the same reason. She is taking up a new job which is politically restricted. This forces a by-election in Trinity ward, in which the Conservatives could - if they gain the seat - win overall control of the council.

And Trinity ward, like the borough as a whole, is politically split down the middle. This ward was created in 2022 as a cut-down version of the former Nightingale ward, with boundaries rather more favourable to Labour than previously, and Labour won here in 2022 with a 46-37 lead over the Conservatives. But in May 2026 the Labour lead fell to 39-35 - with 16% for the Greens in third place - and that was enough for the Conservatives to gain one of Trinity ward’s two seats, with the Tories’ Kirsten Botting unseating Labour’s Jack Mayorcas by 64 votes.

So the stakes are high in this by-election. The defending Labour candidate is Shirin Georgiani, a consultant with a law firm who was an unsuccessful candidate for Wandsworth Town ward in May. The Conservatives have reselected Otto Jacobsson, who was their losing candidate in this ward in May: he works for a cryptocurrency firm, and he previously turned up in this column at a 2024 by-election in Tooting Broadway ward. Standing for the Greens is Sylvain Magne, an animator and graphic artist who contested Wandle ward three months ago. Also on the Trinity candidate list are Dylan Henderson for the Lib Dems - who was only 18 when he stood here in May - and Josh Shanton for Reform UK. Hopefully the proud locals of Bal-ham will cast their votes in a truly democratic spirit.

Parliamentary constituency: Tooting
London Assembly constituency: Merton and Wandsworth
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: SW12, SW17

Shirin Georgiani (Lab)
Dylan Henderson (LD)
Otto Jacobsson (C)
Sylvain Magne (Grn)
Josh Shanton (RUK)

May 2026 result Lab 1842/1583 C 1647/1518 Grn 759/508 LD 250/221 RUK 199/198 Ind 56 TUSC 11
May 2022 result Lab 2074/1827 C 1680/1672 Grn 407 LD 387/369
Previous results in detail

St Helens council, Merseyside; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Jennifer Gerrard.

We now travel to north-west England to reach the dividing line between Merseyside and Greater Manchester. This is approximately marked by the high point of Billinge Hill, which stands at an altitude of 179 metres and is the county top for Merseyside; it is one of 175 hills in England to be listed as Marilyns, meaning that the next higher point (in this case, Winter Hill) can only be reached by descending 150 metres. There are only three English Marilyns with lower elevations than Billinge Hill: they are Normanby Top in the Lincolnshire Wolds, Cliffe Hill in the South Downs, and Arnside Knott in Cumbria. Despite its modest height Billinge Hill has a very extensive field of view: on a clear day those who journey to the top can see hills and mountains in the Lake District over 70 miles to the north, Snowdonia to the west and Shropshire to the south, while most of Greater Manchester is visible to the east.

The village of Billinge lies on the southern slopes of Billinge Hill, on the main road between Wigan and St Helens; it is the major settlement in the parish of Billinge Chapel End. To the south of this is the village of Garswood, which lies on the railway line between Wigan and St Helens (and on to Liverpool); it is the major settlement in the parish of Seneley Green. Both of these administrative units are offcuts from the 1974 reorganisation, which cut Billinge and Garswood off from the urban districts they had previously been part of: Billinge Chapel End was previously part of the Billinge and Winstanley urban district, while Garswood was administered as part of Ashton-in-Makerfield. Perhaps as a consequence of this, Billinge and Garswood have Wigan WN postcodes rather than St Helens WA postcodes.

In the 2021 census Billinge and Seneley Green ward was ranked 26th in England and Wales for Christianity, which is a common feature of the census return for Lancashire past and present: all of the 25 wards which are more Christian than Billinge and Seneley Green are in north-west England. The ward was left untouched by a boundary review which came into force the following year.

The county boundary here wasn’t settled until as late as 1993, when the area around Tatlocks Hillock to the north-east of Billinge was transferred out of Greater Manchester. So it’s only since 1997 that the whole of this ward has been part of the St Helens North constituency, which is represented by first-term Labour MP David Baines. He came to the Commons from local government, having previously served from 2019 to 2024 as leader of St Helens council.

Baines called for Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation as Prime Minister following the May 2026 local elections, in which Reform UK gained overall control of St Helens council. The Reform UK majority includes the three seats in Billinge and Seneley Green ward, which they won comfortably in May with 35% of the vote; Labour finished on 23%, the ward’s two outgoing independent councillors polled 22% and the Greens were next on 13%. In 2022 the three seats had split between Labour and two independent candidates; before that Billinge and Seneley Green had been a solidly Labour ward, including at previous by-elections in November 2013 and October 2010.

Reform UK have already had to defend one St Helens by-election since May, after a councillor for the neighbouring Haydock ward quit just a week after the election amid controversy over his sideline starring in hardcore gay pornography on OnlyFans. (I’ll be honest, I still don’t see why that should have been a resigning matter.) This poll is triggered by the resignation of Reform UK’s Jennifer Gerrard, who had made it into the council cabinet after the May election where she held the culture, leisure and heritage portfolio. Gerrard quit the council last month for personal reasons.

Defending for Reform UK is Karen Hatch, who has extensive NHS senior leadership experience; she has also come under fire during the by-election campaign for racist social media. Labour have reselected Steve Owen, who gives an address in Garswood and was runner-up here in May; Owen did have the consolation prize of being elected unopposed to both Seneley Green and Billinge Chapel End parish councils. Billinge Chapel End parish councillor Colin Betts, who was an independent St Helens councillor for this ward from 2022 to 2026, is trying to get back on St Helens council after losing his seat here in May. Another independent on the ballot is Tom Middleton-Leonard, who stood in May in Newton-le-Willows East ward on the ticket of the Newton-le-Willows Independents. The Green Party have selected Billinge Chapel End parish councillor Sue Rahman, who has worked for the NHS and Social Services and runs her own business; she has fought this ward in the past, but in May she stood in Windle ward. David Titmuss completes this ballot paper for the Conservatives.

Parliamentary constituency: St Helens North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode districts: WA11, WN4, WN5

Colin Betts (Ind)
Karen Hatch (RUK)
Tom Middleton-Leonard (Ind)
Steve Owen (Lab)
Sue Rahman (Grn)
David Titmuss (C)

May 2026 result RUK 1465/1421/1370 Lab 958/777/727 Ind 947/816 Grn 546/552 C 319
May 2022 result Ind 1424/1352/998 Lab 1388/1220/980 C 646
Previous results in detail

Sheffield council, South Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Gareth Slater.

We now cross to the wrong side of the Pennines for the second of today’s big city by-elections. The Southey ward of Sheffield lies on the northern edge of the city’s built-up area and covers a series of large 1930s council estates along the A61 Halifax Road, the main road going north out of the city. Even after decades of Right to Buy there are still high levels of social housing here. Localities here include Parson Cross, Fox Hill and Southey itself, which has no connection with the poet Robert Southey.

Southey ward is a good example of the sort of area where Labour got blown away by Reform UK this year in a left-wing ward where they hadn’t faced serious competition in a long time, but where strong showings for UKIP in the mid-2010s had demonstrated potential for the radical right. Reform UK won Southey ward in May with 50% of the vote, to just 25% for Labour and 13% for the Greens.

Previous Labour councillors for Southey ward include Gill Furniss, who stood down in May 2016 at the same time as she was first elected as the local MP in the Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough by-election. The ward last appeared in this column in May 2017, after Sheffield council’s deputy leader Leigh Bramall left local government to take up a new career in communications; Labour easily held the resulting by-election on that occasion.

Sheffield is still under Labour leadership, but the council is hung and all parties participate in the committee system that runs the city. At the time of writing the council website shows 25 Labour councillors plus this vacancy, 22 Lib Dems, 20 Greens, 11 Reform UK, 3 independents (two of whom were elected for Reform UK), and 2 councillors in the Sheffield Community Councillors Group, which is a Labour splinter. For some reason the Labour councillors are listed by the council website under separate “Labour” and “Labour and Co-operative” headings, and when I wrote this on Sunday Sheffield’s website hadn’t yet been updated to reflect the recent resignation of Green councillor Andy Davies (who will be replaced in a by-election in Walkley ward next month) or the bizarre case of Firth Park ward councillor Robert Hanson, who was thrown out of the Reform UK group last week after it came to light that he wasn’t actually a member of the party.

This by-election is to replace Gareth Slater, who was elected here for Labour in 2024 and resigned halfway through his first term due to family commitments. He had previously quit the Labour party earlier this year.

Defending this difficult seat for Labour is Jayne Dunn, the long-serving councillor who lost her seat here in May and is now trying to get it back. Dunn was first elected in 2012 for Broomhill ward, transferring to Southey ward in 2016 following boundary changes, and she was Lord Mayor of Sheffield in 2025-26. The Reform UK nomination has gone to Paul Jakeman, who contested the far more upmarket Dore and Totley ward in May and has a background in the building industry. The Green Party have selected Daniel Moy, who is a first-time candidate. Also on the ballot here are Daniel Gage for the Conservatives and Oliver George for the Lib Dems.

Parliamentary constituency: Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough
ONS Travel to Work Area: Sheffield
Postcode districts: S5, S6, S35

Jayne Dunn (Lab)
Daniel Gage (C)
Oliver George (LD)
Paul Jakeman (RUK)
Daniel Moy (Grn)

May 2026 result RUK 2157 Lab 1059 Grn 557 C 206 LD 204 Ind 111 TUSC 26
May 2024 result Lab 1438 Grn 376 C 319 Ind 318 LD 196 TUSC 99
May 2023 result Lab 1658 C 449 Grn 312 LD 228 TUSC 114
May 2022 result Lab 1629 C 573 Grn 446 LD 236
May 2021 result Lab 1745 C 800 Grn 374 LD 150 RUK 134
May 2019 result Lab 1341 UKIP 840 Grn 367 C 196 LD 183
May 2018 result Lab 1601 C 377 UKIP 322 Grn 279 LD 217 TUSC 46
May 2017 by-election Lab 1594 LD 706 UKIP 593 C 388 Grn 97 Yorkshire Party 46 Women’s Equality Party 40
May 2016 result Lab 2014/1926/1834 UKIP 1173/908/820 LD 204/171/143 Grn 192/167/121 C 191/176/158 TUSC 61
Previous results in detail

Newcastle upon Tyne council, Tyne and Wear; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Amy Hunter.

We’ll finish this week as we started out, by looking nervously at the barbarians across the border. This time the border is long gone, but the name of Walbottle is a clue as to its former nature. Nineteen centuries ago the modern-day locations of Throckley and Walbottle were hives of activity with construction work under way for Hadrian’s Wall, and for centuries after that the garrisons of Milecastles 10 and 11 continued to regulate cross-Wall traffic and keep watch for invaders from the north. And there were people living north of the Wall to keep watch on: last year archaeologists investigating an area around a mile to the north of Walbottle, which is now being built on for new housing, found evidence for around 40 Iron Age roundhouses.

All that remains of the Roman Wall today above ground here are a few stones of the north gate of Milecastle 10, preserved in a private garden next to the secondary school of Walbottle Academy. Milecastle 11 has not been located but is thought to lie in the vicinity of a working-men’s club at the western end of Throckley. The Roman Wall’s course through Throckley and Walbottle is now marked by the B6528 Hexham Road, which was the main trunk road west from Newcastle until an A69 bypass for Throckley was completed.

Hadrian’s Wall was never the northern border of England, which didn’t exist as a political unit until centuries after the Romans left. We can see this from a passage in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in which King Peada of the Middle Angles and King Sigeberht of the East Saxons were baptised in 653 in a Northumbrian royal estate called “Ad Murum”, from its location next to the wall. Ad Murum has been identified with Walbottle by historians.

A more enduring local boundary has been the River Tyne, which is still the dividing line between the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and the borough of Gateshead to the south. The river here was previously the county boundary between Durham and Northumberland, and the town of Newburn on the Northumberland bank was the lowest point where the Tyne could be forded. The ford has now been replaced with a bridge, linking Newburn with an industrial area on the south bank near the village of Stella.

This ford made Newburn an important strategic location, and until the Plantagenet era it was more important than Newcastle to the east. In 1640 Newburn was the site of a battle, which was a rare occasion where the Second Bishops’ War spilled over from Scotland into England. The Battle of Newburn saw the Scottish Covenanters defeat a heavily outnumbered English force, allowing the Scots to take Newcastle upon Tyne and throttle the supply of coal from Newcastle to London.

There were a number of collieries in this area back in the day, and a steelworks operated in Newburn from 1822 into the 20th century. The local coal mines provided employment to several pioneers of the railways, including George Stephenson who married his first wife Fanny Henderson at Newburn parish church in 1802. Fanny died in 1806, and some years later George married Betty Hindmarsh in 1820 - again in Newburn.

Newburn remained an independent urban district until it was annexed by Newcastle upon Tyne in 1974, and until 2018 the electoral ward which covered this area was simply called “Newburn”. A boundary review in that year then replaced this with a new ward called Callerton and Throckley, which added the villages of Callerton and Black Callerton to the north.

The 2018 Newcastle upon Tyne ward boundaries did not stand the test of time. The city council had made assumptions about student electoral registration which were not fulfilled, while the Local Government Boundary Commission also underestimated the rate of housebuilding on the western edge of the city. By 2023 five wards in the city centre were severely undersized, while Callerton and Throckley ward was 19% above the average size for a Newcastle ward and growing strongly - and it was by no means the most oversized ward on the city’s western edge.

A further ward boundary review had to be held, which fixed the mistakes of the previous review by abolishing South Jesmond ward in the city centre and creating a new ward on the periphery. As part of that process Callerton was moved out of this ward and replaced by the Abbey Heights housing estate, which is currently under construction to the north of Walbottle. The LGBCE also restored Newburn to the ward name, following feedback from local residents.

The current parliamentary seats were drawn on the 2018-26 ward boundaries, which has left this ward split between constituencies. Throckley, Walbottle and Newburn now lie within the Hexham constituency, and that might have made a difference in 2024 when Joe Morris became the first ever Labour MP for Hexham, gaining what had previously been the longest-standing Conservative seat in North East England. Meanwhile the Abbey Heights housing estate is part of the Newcastle Central and West constituency represented by Labour’s Dame Chi Onwurah, who chairs the Commons science, innovation and technology committee.

The predecessors to this ward have mostly voted for Labour councillors over the last two decades, although the Lib Dems won Newburn ward in 2007 and 2008 and Callerton and Throckley returned a candidate from a localist party in 2019. In the current political landscape one major unknown was how Reform UK might perform here: they had not stood in Hexham in July 2024, instead endorsing the SDP leader William Clouston who finished in sixth and last place and lost his deposit. Clouston stood against Nigel Farage in the Clacton by-election earlier this month, so we can assume that the Reform UK-SDP electoral pact which was in operation in 2024 has now run its course.

In the end the Reform UK slate won Throckley, Walbottle and Newburn ward quite comfortably when it was first contested in May 2026, polling 44% of the vote to 29% for Labour and 14% for the Greens. Overall Newcastle ended up with a hung council in 2026, with the Liberal Democrats winning 25 seats and the Greens and Reform UK tying for second place on 24 seats each; Labour were reduced to just two seats, with the remaining three going to independent candidates. A Lib Dem minority administration is in place, with Green support. The Green total of 24 above includes Mohammed Suleman of Arthur’s Hill ward, who had been disendorsed by the party during the election campaign for antisemitic social media and has not been admitted to the Greens’ council group.

Reform UK’s Amy Hunter then tendered her resignation in July, two months after being elected for Throckley, Walbottle and Newburn ward, with the party citing an abrupt change in her health, personal and work commitments. She had been elected in third place in May, so the winner of this by-election will take over the remainder of a one-year term and will need to seek re-election in 2027.

Defending this seat for Reform UK is Martin Evison, who stood in May in Fawdon and West Gosforth ward; Evison is a fairly recent recruit to the party, and he stood in the 2024 general election as the SDP candidate for Newcastle North. The Labour candidate is a veteran former councillor who is apparently notable enough for Wikipedia: Linda Wright, who beat her colleagues from higher up the alphabet to finish as runner-up here in May, had represented the predecessors to this ward continuously from a November 1996 by-election until she lost her seat in 2026, and she was Lord Mayor of Newcastle in 2017-18. Last month Newcastle council awarded Wright the title of honorary alderman in recognition of her service to the city. The Green Party’s Kimberley Barrass is having another go after standing here unsuccessfully in May. Also standing are Alexis Fernandes for the Conservatives and Stephen Kelly for the Lib Dems.

That completes the by-elections for the meteorological summer of 2026, and the electoral action this autumn is going to start early with a Wednesday by-election pencilled in for next week. Stay tuned for that.

Parliamentary constituency: Hexham (most of ward), Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (area transferred from Chapel ward in May 2026)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Newcastle
Postcode districts: NE5, NE15

Kimberley Barrass (Grn)
Martin Evison (RUK)
Alexis Fernandes (C)
Stephen Kelly (LD)
Linda Wright (Lab)

May 2026 result RUK 1380/1335/1297 Lab 914/851/837 Grn 432/417/375 C 276/266/244 LD 150/133/124
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 becoming a paid subscriber to this blog - which will also you get you early access to the Previews.

Andrew Teale