Previewing the five local by-elections of 6th August 2026

Five by-elections on 6th August 2026:

Reigate and Banstead council, Surrey; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Mus Tary.

This week’s edition of Andrew’s Previews is brought to you by the letter H, because four of the five wards up for election this week have names beginning with that letter. None of them are in Hertford, Hereford or Hampshire where hurricanes hardly ever happen, but that just means we can extend our geographical reach - which is already broad, because the four councils holding elections today each represent one of the four points of the compass. We’ll annoy Andy Burnham this week and start in the South.

Our first poll of August is to a council that isn’t much longer for this world. We’re in the North Downs here, at the point where the A23 road and the two railway lines towards Brighton leave Greater London. Indeed, the village of Hooley on the A23 was included in the London Borough of Croydon in 1965, before returning to Surrey at the 1974 reorganisation, and it still gets its post from Coulsdon over the Greater London boundary. The Coulsdon post town also serves the quite new village of Netherne on the Hill to the east of Hooley; until 1994 this was Netherne Hospital, a large lunatic asylum which housed almost 2,000 patients at its height.

To the south of Hooley, the two railway lines descend into the Merstham and Quarry tunnels, both over a mile long, while the A23 ascends towards a large road junction. Since 1974 this has been the temporary northern end of the M23 motorway, and the fact that this is junction number 7 shows that the motorway was clearly intended to go some distance north from here into the Great Wen. The two carriageways of the A23 are still crossed by flyovers which would have carried the M23 mainline and which have never been used; the present motorway carriageways at Hooley would have been slip roads if the M23 had been completed as planned. The scale of the nearby Merstham interchange, where the M23 and M25 meet at a four-level stacked junction, shows just how much traffic the M23 was expected to handle.

To the south of the M25 we find Merstham, which despite the order of the ward name is the largest settlement here. This was traditionally a quarrying settlement, and the so-called Reigate stone which came from Merstham was the main building material for the present-day Westminster Abbey. The quarries were important enough that they were connected to the railway network as early as 1805, via an extension of the Surrey Iron Railway: some of the cuttings for this horse-drawn line survive in this ward today. The modern railways through here take a lower course, on which we find Merstham railway station which links the ward to central London.

Merstham’s population expanded significantly after the Second World War thanks to the development of an estate in the east of the town by the Greater London Council, and despite the clear commuter demographic here just under 20% of the households in this ward are still socially rented. In the older part of the village we find Quality Street, which like the chocolates of that name takes its name from the play by J M Barrie: the street name is a reference to Seymour Hicks and his wife Ellaline Terriss, who moved here in 1902 while they were starring in the original London production of Quality Street.

The electors of Hooley, Merstham and Netherne have traditionally chosen the blue chocolates out of the Quality Street ballot box, but in recent years the green chocolates have also found favour here. This ward was last contested in 2024 at the final Reigate and Banstead council election, when it was gained by the Green Party with 38% of the vote against 24% for the defending Conservatives and 20% for Labour. The Greens had also won the ward in 2023, leaving Mus Tary - elected in 2022 - as the last Conservative councillor here.

Tary was first elected in 2021 to fill a casual vacancy before being re-elected in 2022 for a full four-year term. He would normally have due for re-election in May 2026, but those elections to Reigate and Banstead council were cancelled with councillors’ terms extended to abolition in April 2027. Reigate and Banstead was the only Surrey second-tier district still under Conservative leadership, albeit as a minority, and Tary served on the council’s cabinet with the housing and support portfolio.

Hooley, Merstham and Netherne are part of the East Surrey parliamentary seat represented since 2019 by the Conservatives’ Claire Coutinho, who had been the Cabinet minister for energy security and net zero going into the 2024 general election and continues to shadow that position in Badenoch’s shadow cabinet. This constituency is much smaller than the area of the forthcoming East Surrey council, which held its first election in May 2026 and whose councillors will take up their full responsibilities when the old structure disappears in April 2027. The May 2026 elections here were for the new East Surrey council as part of the larger ward of Merstham and Banstead South, which returned two Green Party councillors with Reform UK close behind. The old Surrey county council division of that name, which doesn't quite cover the whole of this ward, was safely Conservative when it was last contested all the way back in 2021; county councillor Frank Kelly is now in the sixth year of a four-year term which has been extended until abolition next April.

Mus Tary had not stood for election to the new council, partly because East Surrey’s daytime council meetings were incompatible with his day job in the recruitment sector, and partly because of his health. By this point, Tary had undergone over three years of treatment for cancer on his tongue. Tary passed away in June at an appallingly early age: he was born in 1985, which would have made him 40 or 41 at his death.

Tary’s death has left the Conservative minority administration on Reigate and Banstead council even further away from the 23 votes needed for a majority. The Tories are now down to 16 seats plus this vacancy, against 14 Greens, 7 councillors elected for Residents’ Associations, 4 Lib Dems and 3 independent councillors (one of whom caucuses with the Greens). So the defending Conservative candidate in this by-election has some work to do: he is Jon Mears, who narrowly missed out on being elected to East Surrey council for Reigate ward in May. The Greens have taken no chance of being beaten to the plum spot of top of the ballot paper by selecting Nick Abear, a web and SEO consultant who was elected to East Surrey council in May for Redhill East and Meadvale ward. Labour have reselected Catherine Barrett, who stood here in 2024 and also contested Merstham and Banstead South ward three months ago. Another unsuccessful candidate for Merstham and Banstead South in May was Reform UK’s Johnny Wolf, who completes this ballot paper alongside Tina Cohen for the Lib Dems.

Parliamentary constituency: East Surrey
Surrey county council division: Merstham and Banstead South (almost all), Redhill East (small part)
East Surrey ward (from April 2027): Merstham and Banstead South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Crawley
Postcode districts: CR5, RH1

Nick Abear (Grn)
Catherine Barrett (Lab)
Tina Cohen (LD)
Jon Mears (C)
Johnny Wolf (RUK)

May 2024 result Grn 1011 C 635 Lab 533 RUK 284 LD 173
May 2023 result Grn 929 C 717 Lab 573 LD 263
May 2022 result C 958 Lab 734 Grn 694 LD 343
May 2021 double vacancy C 1423/1003 Lab 745/521 Grn 554 LD 510
May 2019 result C 1026/776/722 Lab 664/598/510 Grn 586 LD 435/406/344 UKIP 330
Previous results in detail

Caerphilly council, Gwent; caused by the resignation of Plaid Cymru councillor Donna Cushing.

We now go West, to the final entry in a recent series of by-elections triggered by new members of Senedd Cymru resigning their previous council seats - something which Welsh local government law requires them to do. Last out of the blocks with their resignation was Caerphilly councillor Donna Cushing, who was elected in May as one of the two Plaid Cymru MSs for Sir Fynwy Torfaen - finally reaching high office after two failed attempts to be elected as Gwent police and crime commissioner.

Cushing leaves behind her council seat in Hengoed, a village which clings to the steep western side of the Rhymney valley just to the north of Ystrad Mynach. To give you an idea how steep this slope is, Hengoed railway station - which has frequent Valley Lines trains to Cardiff - is at the western end of the Hengoed Viaduct which stands up to 120 feet above the valley floor. This viaduct was built for a different railway line, but it now carries only pedestrians - forming the only level link between Hengoed and Maesycwmmer on the far side of the valley. Until 1974 the Rhymney was the border between Monmouthshire and Glamorgan and - by some definitions - the border between England and Wales, making the Hengoed Viaduct a national border crossing.

The Hengoed side of the valley has always been Wales. In the 2021 census Hengoed made the top 100 wards in England and Wales for residents employed in the water, sewerage and waste management sector (2.2%) and for residents with no religion (59.2%), the latter statistic being a common feature of the census return from the South Wales valleys. More unusually for the Valleys, a majority of the housing stock here is semi-detached.

Your columnist visited Hengoed last year when it hosted the last by-election to Senedd Cymru as part of the Caerphilly constituency - a famous Plaid Cymru gain from Labour. This year’s Senedd election placed Hengoed within the expanded seat of Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni, which gave 42% of the vote to Plaid, 34% to Reform UK and 11% to Labour; under the proportional representation system, Plaid Cymru and Reform UK won three seats each. There is still a Caerphilly constituency at Westminster, which has been held since 2024 by Labour backbencher Chris Evans; he has sat in the Commons since 2010, but he only took over Hengoed’s representation after his previous Islwyn seat disappeared in boundary changes.

Caerphilly council is under Labour control, but Hengoed ward has voted for the Plaid Cymru slate at every election this century and the outgoing councillor Donna Cushing had sat for the ward since 2017. The last local elections here in 2022 were a straight fight between Plaid Cymru and Labour, with Plaid prevailing by the narrow margin of 55-45.

Welsh local government law requires candidates to declare memberships of other political parties which they have held in the last 12 months, and this reveals that the defending Plaid Cymru candidate Antony Cook is a rather recent recruit to their banner: until March he was a member of the minor Welsh nationalist party Gwlad, and he was the Gwlad candidate in last October’s Senedd by-election. Cook, who gives an address in the ward, is an Army veteran who now works as a surveyor and analyst. The Labour candidate Dan Kelly has a long commute from here across the Severn to Bristol, where he works as a fireman. We will not have a straight fight this time, with candidates coming forward for three other parties: David Emmins is the Conservative candidate, Reform UK have selected primary school teacher Kimberley Heath, and David Scullin declares recent membership of the Greens on his nomination papers but is standing here on the Liberal Democrat ticket.

Westminster constituency: Caerphilly
Senedd constituency: Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cardiff
Postcode district: CF82

Antony Cook (PC)
David Emmins (C)
Kimberley Heath (RUK)
Dan Kelly (Lab)
David Scullin (LD)

May 2022 result PC 608/576 Lab 502/494
Previous results in detail

King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council; caused respectively by the resignations of Conservative councillors Andrew Jamieson and Stuart Dark.

Our two by-elections in the East are in neighbouring wards with an unusual feature for that part of the country: they are on a west-facing coast. Heacham and Snettisham both lie on the eastern side of the Wash, off the main road between King’s Lynn and Hunstanton; Heacham is a seaside resort, while Snettisham is further inland but its 14th-century parish church has a 175-foot spire which has traditionally been a landmark for sailors in the Wash.

These two wards have very similar demographics. Heacham (above) and Snettisham (below) both make the top 30 wards in England and Wales for the 65-84 age bracket (36.5% in Snettisham, 36.1% in Heacham) and the top 50 wards in England and Wales for retired population (46.3% in Heacham, 45.2% in Snettisham). Both wards are also in the top 100 for residents who identify only as English.

The village sign for Heacham depicts Rebecca Rolfe, a figure from the early 17th century who may be better known to readers by her Native American name of Pocahontas. Her husband John Rolfe was born in Heacham in 1585, and he and Pocahontas lived here for a time in 1616-17.

There is history from earlier times at Ken Hill, between Heacham and Snettisham, where a number of hoards of Iron Age and Romano-British precious metal have been found over the last century. Those who visit the British Museum and haven’t got tickets for the Bayeux Tapestry might see the Snettisham Jeweller’s Hoard or the Snettisham Great Torc, a large Celtic neck ring dated to the 1st century BC and made of the gold-silver alloy electrum. The similar Sedgeford Torc is also on-topic here, as Sedgeford is one of two inland parishes within Heacham ward. In the present day, Ken Hill - rebranded as “Wild Ken Hill” - is the subject of a “rewilding” project led by the farmer, which has included the reintroduction of beavers to Norfolk. Guided wildlife tours are available.

Wild Ken Hill is not connected with the local Conservative MP James Wild, a shadow Treasury frontbencher who has represented the North West Norfolk constituency since 2019. His seat is unusual in that it voted Labour in 1997 but never since.

The Tories are in opposition on King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council, which is under no overall control. Council leadership is provided by the Independent Partnership group which controls 20 of the 55 seats, a number which includes two Lib Dem councillors and a defector to Your Party; in opposition are the Conservative group of 17 seats plus these two vacancies, 5 Labour, 5 Reform UK, 3 councillors in the West Norfolk Independent Group, 2 councillors in the Progressive Group and 1 independent member. The Reform UK group includes the winners of three by-elections last year, one of which was in Hunstanton ward just to the north of Heacham.

Snettisham ward has returned Conservatives at every election since 2000, and there have been a lot of elections here because this is one of those places that turns up in this column over and over again. In fact, this is the fourth Snettisham by-election so far this century. The last one in August 2018 returned Conservative councillor Stuart Dark, who I described at the time as “a retired Metropolitan Police detective superintendent who was honoured by the police for commanding the UK’s initial response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami”. Dark was also a Norfolk county councillor from 2017 until he stood down in May. On King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council, Stuart Dark successfully sought re-election in Heacham ward in 2019 following boundary changes, then moved back to Snettisham ward in 2023 and defeated independent candidate Avril Wright - who had won a previous Snettisham by-election in 2013 as a Conservative candidate - by 52-30.

Stuart Dark was leader of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council going into the 2023 election, but he lost that position after the Conservative administration was defeated. During his council service he was appointed MBE in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the community in Snettisham during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is now standing down from King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council to concentrate on his work with Norfolk Citizens Advice and on other interests.

Elections in Heacham ward over the last decade have been dominated by independent councillor Terry Parish, who won a by-election in October 2016 and was re-elected with a very large personal vote in 2019 and 2023. Parish took over from Dark as the leader of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council following the 2023 elections, serving in that role for one year. The interest in recent elections here has normally been who wins Heacham's second seat: last time this went to the Conservatives’ Andrew Jamieson, who defeated the Labour candidate by just 31 votes. Topline vote shares, for what they are worth, were 51% for Parish, 25% for the Conservatives and 24% for Labour.

Like Stuart Dark, Andrew Jamieson had also been a Norfolk county councillor from 2017 to 2026; until he stood down at May’s election, he had been deputy leader of the county council. He is now leaving elected politics to pursue new opportunities.

Neither Dark nor Jamieson represented this area on the county council: Dark was the county councillor for Dersingham, while Jamieson represented North Coast division. Heacham and Snettisham are both part of the Docking division, where long-serving Conservative county councillor Michael Chenery of Horsburgh went down to defeat in May: in fact, he finished third with Terry Parish second and Reform UK winning the seat. Chenery, who held the Scottish hereditary title of Baron of Horsburgh, died not long after his defeat. These wards last went to the polls just three weeks ago, as part of the county-wide by-election for Norfolk police and crime commissioner.

Both of these by-elections have attracted a field of four candidates, and neither of them has an independent candidate this time so lots of votes are up for grabs - particularly in Heacham given the large amount of support last time for Terry Parish. Here the Conservative defence is led by Ade Adeyemo, who stood in the neighbouring Hunstanton by-election last November and finished in fourth place with a creditable 18%; in May he contested Gaywood South division in King’s Lynn. Labour have selected Ken Hubbard, who stood in May in North Coast division and contested Burnham Market and Docking ward in 2023. Reform UK’s Paul Powers was runner-up to the Lib Dems in May in Gaywood North and Central, and the Lib Dems’ Rachael Windsor will be hoping for better than the fourth-place finish she got in Docking division in May.

In the smaller Snettisham ward the defending Conservative candidate is Lissie Macfarlane. She faces opposition from Labour’s Wilf Lambert, from Reform UK’s Ben Griffin who is the county councillor for King’s Lynn North and Central, and from the Lib Dems’ Lee Henson.

Parliamentary constituency: North West Norfolk
Norfolk county council division: Docking
ONS Travel to Work Area: King’s Lynn
Postcode districts: PE31, PE36

Ade Adeyemo (C)
Ken Hubbard (Lab)
Paul Powers (RUK)
Rachael Windsor (LD)

May 2023 result Ind 1006 C 494/393 Lab 463
May 2019 result Ind 1178 C 532/328
Previous results in detail

Parliamentary constituency: North West Norfolk
Norfolk county council division: Docking
ONS Travel to Work Area: King’s Lynn
Postcode district: PE31

Ben Griffin (RUK)
Lee Henson (LD)
Wilf Lambert (Lab)
Lissie Macfarlane (C)

May 2023 result C 413 Ind 241 Lab 145
May 2019 result C 414 Ind 411
Previous results in detail

South Tyneside council, Tyne and Wear; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Alex Clarke.

Our final by-election this week is in the North, and more specifically the urban north-east. The urban growth long ago swallowed up the village of Harton, which is now a southern suburb of South Shields not far from the coast. The modern Harton ward is an entirely built-up area centred on the secondary school of Harton Academy and its feeder Harton Primary School; the ward’s southern boundary is Prince Edward Road, which lies near the end of the Great North Run course.

Like many settlements in County Durham past and present, Harton was originally a pit village - and its colliery has an unusual scientific distinction. For most of the 19th century the Astronomer Royal was Sir George Airy, whose scientific achievements were by no means confined to astronomy. Airy was interested in the shape and structure of the Earth, and he made accurate calculations of the Earth’s size and shape which are still used today by the Ordnance Survey. In 1854 Airy conducted an experiment at Harton Colliery with the intention of measuring the density of the planet Earth. By taking careful measurements of pendulums at the top and the bottom of the pit, he was able to measure the difference in the strength of Earth’s gravity between the two locations: based on this and the vertical distance between the experiment sites, Airy calculated a value of 6.6 grams per cubic centimetre for the Earth’s density. (The currently-accepted value is 5.5.) As to why Airy wanted to know this ... the ratios between the masses of the Earth and other heavenly bodies are known to a high degree of accuracy based on how the Sun, the Moon and the planets move through the sky, so knowing the density and shape of the Earth gives you the mass of the Earth and (by extension) the mass of everything else in the Solar System.

The days when coalmining dominated the local economy are gone, and modern-day Harton ward is suburbia with a fairly high social renting element. In the 2021 census, which was taken on slightly different ward boundaries, Harton was in the top 40 wards in England and Wales for semi-detached housing at 70.9% of households.

Harton was incorporated into South Shields in 1921, and it has been part of the South Shields constituency since 1950. The local MP has been Labour’s Emma Lewell since she succeeded David Miliband in a 2013 by-election. Before her election to Westminster Lewell had sat on South Tyneside council, which had a Labour majority continuously from 1979 to 2025.

No longer. There was a whole-council election in South Tyneside this year to bring in new ward boundaries, which coincided with a Labour meltdown to result in a turquoise landslide. Reform UK won 41 seats in May, with the main opposition coming from the Green Party on 10 seats; independents won 2, and Labour went from control of the council to just one seat. The Labour slate actually finished in last place in Harton ward, which had previously had two Labour councillors and one independent: Reform UK polled 42% of the vote here against 24% for an independent slate headed by outgoing independent councillor Karen Myers; third place went to the Greens on 19%.

For some reason South Tyneside council seems to attract more than its fair share of idiotic behaviour. This column has previously told the stories of past South Tyneside councillors who variously (a) drank themselves to death before the age of 30; (b) deliberately drove a lorry into a council building in a row over contracts; and (c) got sent to prison for electoral fraud for standing for election while disqualified due to a previous firearms conviction.

It’s in this context that we come to today’s Harton ward by-election, which is triggered by the resignation of newly-elected Reform UK councillor Alex Clarke. Clarke hit the headlines in June after Hope Not Hate started digging into a podcast he ran with his partner which promised to “dive deep into the everyday and more controversial subjects that present themselves in modern everyday life”. Content reportedly included sexist comments mocking female drivers and asserting that “washing clothes is a woman’s job”, homophobic references to the Green Party leader Zack Polanski and the England footballer Djed Spence, and offensive slurs which I won’t repeat here about Sir Keir Starmer and the city of Birmingham.

In response to local press interest, Clarke defended his podcast as comedy and not “meant to be taken literally”, while the fact that he was still listed as a South Tyneside councillor appeared to be news to him. It seems he was under the impression that he had resigned several weeks previously, and he blamed Reform UK for mis-selling to him the amount of work that was expected of him as a councillor. By Clarke’s own account, he had only expected to have to go to six meetings a year.

With Alex Clarke having left elected office to spend more time with his opinions, South Tyneside council have a by-election to run to fill the remainder of his term which runs until 2028. Defending this seat for Reform UK is Katie Groom, who was runner-up in May in Fellgate and Hedworth ward. There are two independent candidates on the ballot: Karen Myers, who was a councillor here from 2024 to 2026, is trying to get back after finishing as a rather distant runner-up in May, while former Horsley Hill ward councillor (2024-26) Phil Brown is also seeking to return to the council. The Green Party have reselected Kathryn Kaupa who was on their slate here in May. Also standing are Labour’s Neil Maxwell who is a long-serving former councillor for this ward (2010-26), Sam Hill for the Conservatives and Mark Robson for the Lib Dems.

Two more Reform UK defences are coming up next week, including the Parliamentary Special in Clacton. You won’t want to miss that - and don’t forget that paid subscribers will get each week’s Preview before anyone else does.

Parliamentary constituency: South Shields
ONS Travel to Work Area: Newcastle
Postcode district: NE34

Phil Brown (Ind)
Katie Groom (RUK)
Sam Hill (C)
Kathryn Kaupa (Grn)
Neil Maxwell (Lab)
Karen Myers (Ind)
Mark Robson (LD)

May 2026 result RUK 1171/1136/1133 Ind 674/658/559 Grn 530/455/435 Lab 413/391/381
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