Previewing the four by-elections of 20th August 2026

Four by-elections on 20th August 2026:

Cumberland council, Cumbria; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Lucy Patrick.

Following last week’s Clacton poll, the backlog of major by-elections has finally been cleared. There are no vacancies in the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament or for any county or similar-level elected position. For at least the next month or two it will be local by-elections all the way, and with over 40 vacancies in our local government at the time of writing that’s plenty to be going on with.

Mind, possibly the most important vote today isn’t in a local by-election but will be taking place in the Oldham council chamber. Oldham remains without a council leader more than three months after the May local elections, and the council officers have now lost patience with the politicians after four meetings with deadlocked leadership votes. A section 5 notice has now been issued by the monitoring officer, pointing out that the council is breaking the law by not having a leader and cabinet in place, and an extraordinary council meeting is due to kick off at 18:00 today with two substantive agenda items: consider the section 5 report, and then elect a leader. The expectation is that if there is still no compromise - which would require either Labour, Reform UK or the Oldham Group-led bloc to back down and support one of the other groups - then the Commissioners will be sent in. Judging from the statements coming out of Oldham’s political parties, nobody seems prepared to back down. Does direct rule beckon?

The Oldham Group aren’t a factor in today’s four council by-elections, which are divided equally between two defences for Labour and two for Reform UK. We’ll start by travelling to one of the Labour defences, which is in a ward where many pass through but few stop. Harraby South ward covers the south-east corner of the city of Carlisle; the Harraby area lies on the A6 London Road, which runs on an old Roman line towards the M6 motorway. Between the two we have the relatively new housing of the Garlands area, which is outside the old Carlisle city limits and is part of the parish of St Cuthbert Without. The ward boundaries also include the Carleton Clinic, which is an NHS psychiatric unit. The eastern boundary of this ward roughly follows the M6 motorway; the western boundary is the River Petteril, a tributary of the Eden which flows through eastern Carlisle.

Harraby South is quite a working-class ward which makes the top 50 in England and Wales for residents who identify only as Scottish (1.8%) or as Scottish and British (0.7%), which clearly reflects Carlisle’s proximity to the Border. It was originally drawn up for the 2013 election to Cumbria county council, which was abolished in 2023; the county council divisions in Carlisle were then carried forward unaltered for the first and so-far only elections to the successor Cumberland council in 2022. Harraby South has voted Labour in all three contests to date, making it part of the Labour majority on Cumberland council, but the 2017 county council result was very close between Labour and the Conservatives and there wasn’t much of a swing five years later: vote shares here in 2022 were 41% for Labour, 35% for the Conservatives and 24% for an independent candidate.

The 2022 Cumberland councillors were elected for a five-year term, so the only poll here since then was the 2024 general election in the Carlisle constituency. This has been a bellwether seat since 1997, and in 2024 it was an easy win for Labour’s Julie Minns who had held a number of consultancy roles before her election. Minns is a distant cousin of Ernest Lowthian, who had been the first Labour parliamentary candidate for Carlisle back in 1918.

Labour have successfully defended two seats in Cumberland council by-elections in this term, including an easy win in the neighbouring Harraby North ward just before the 2024 general election. This third Labour defence of the current term is to replace Lucy Patrick, who tendered her resignation last month for personal reasons. Patrick was a long-serving councillor who was first elected to the old Carlisle council back in 2008: she was a Carlisle councillor for St Aidans ward until 2019, and then served for Currock and Upperby ward from 2019 to 2023 following boundary changes.

Defending this seat for Labour is Ruth Alcroft, a former Carlisle councillor who represented Denton Holme ward from 2016 to 2019 and then Denton Holme and Morton South ward from 2019 to 2023; Alcroft, who works for a conservation charity, was also the Labour parliamentary candidate for Carlisle in 2017 and 2019. She had contested Wetheral ward in the 2022 Cumberland elections. The Conservative candidate is Rob Currie, who lost in Harraby North ward in 2022 and the 2024 by-election; he previously had a short term on Carlisle council representing Yewdale ward from 2018 to 2019. This time there is no independent candidate so a fair number of votes are up for grabs, but there is more choice for the electors with Stuart Kelly standing for the Lib Dems, Rose-Ellen Kemp for the Greens and first-time candidate Josh Kirkwood for Reform UK. The News and Star have received statements from all the candidates and you can find out more here (link).

Parliamentary constituency: Carlisle
ONS Travel to Work Area: Carlisle
Postcode district: CA1

Ruth Alcroft (Lab)
Rob Currie (C)
Stuart Kelly (LD)
Rose-Ellen Kemp (Grn)
Josh Kirkwood (RUK)

May 2022 result Lab 634 C 547 Ind 369
May 2017 Cumbria CC result Lab 671 C 655 Ind 173
May 2013 Cumbria CC result Lab 568 C 345 UKIP 272 LD 75 Grn 21
Previous results in detail

Barnsley council, South Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Kay Hughes.

First things first, it’s pronounced PENNIS. Don’t be rude.

Our first Reform UK defence of the week comes in the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. Barnsley was one of the councils which fell to Reform UK in May’s turquoise landslide: Reform UK won 42 seats compared to 11 for the outgoing Labour administration, 8 Lib Dems and 2 independents. That majority should be safe for the next four years, as Barnsley council has now come off the thirds cycle and its next local elections will be in 2030.

Mind, Reform UK have pretty quickly found themselves one councillor down after Kay Hughes stepped down for personal reasons two months into her four-year term. This forces a by-election in the intriguing territory of Penistone East ward, which covers a series of commuter villages to the west of Barnsley and is not at all how you might imagine urban South Yorkshire to be. There are 8½ parishes here, with the half being the village of Hoylandswaine which is part of Penistone parish: but the name “Penistone East” is slightly misleading, because none of Penistone’s built-up area is actually in this ward.

The largest village here is Thurgoland, which lies on the main road between Sheffield and Huddersfield and has 1,478 electors on the roll. The road and railway lines between Penistone and Barnsley pass through the villages of Silkstone and Silkstone Common, with Silkstone Common being the local railhead. These were once coalmining centres, and one legacy of that history is the Old Silkstone brass band, which has been going since 1861 and currently competes in the First Section, the second tier of brass banding.

Penistone East ward has been subject to two recent boundary changes. In April 2025 a small corner at the southern end of the ward was moved into the city of Sheffield, covering a new housing development near Oughtibridge which is accessible only from Sheffield. Then, as part of the general boundary review for Barnsley which came into force this year, Ingbirchworth parish to the north of Penistone was added to this ward and Stainborough parish was removed. This boundary change removed from the ward the country house and gardens of Wentworth Castle, but there is still plenty of open space here. In fact, the northern end of this ward takes in part of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which is worth a visit particularly in the nice weather we’ve been having. Just within the ward boundary can be found this statue by Thomas Price, entitled Network.

As stated, this is a commuter area and very politically different from the rest of Barnsley. In fact, until this decade Penistone East was the most staunchly Conservative-voting part of Barnsley borough, and in the 2019 general election it will have certainly have boosted the Conservative majority in the Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency. However, this seat swung back to Labour in 2024 and elected Marie Tidball, a disability rights campaigner who was born with shortened arms and legs and only one finger on each hand.

Marie’s father John Tidball was the Labour candidate for Penistone East in 2007. This ward had a full slate of Conservative councillors, although not always safely so, until Labour narrowly gained the ward in 2023 and won a second seat in 2024. The all-out elections in May 2026, on new boundaries, then turned in a surprising result: Labour topped the poll with 37% and held their two seats, while Reform UK polled 30% and gained the ward’s other seat from the Conservatives on 19%. There was a large personal vote for outgoing Labour councillor Alex Burnett who topped the poll by a long way on 2,040 votes; Reform UK’s Kay Hughes was second on 1,669 votes, while Labour’s Frances Nixon had the benefit of the alphabet to beat her running-mate and outgoing councillor John Roberts for the final seat by 1,645 votes to 1,632. A close result in Penistone East, but not as close as Penistone West ward where the count had to be adjourned after multiple recounts and wasn’t finished until the Saturday after the election: in that ward third and fifth place were eventually separated by just three votes.

Reform UK now have to defend their only seat in this intriguing ward. They have selected Eunice Asante who was an unsuccessful candidate in Darton East ward in May: she is a healthcare professional with a PhD in health service management, who came to the UK at the age of 19. It would appear that this selection hasn’t gone down well with Peter Millar, who finished in fifth place here in May as a Reform UK candidate and was also close to being elected as a Conservative candidate here in 2024: Millar, who gives an address in Silkstone Common, is contesting this by-election as an independent candidate. Millar had lost in 2024 to Labour candidate John Roberts, who narrowly lost his seat to his running-mate in May and wants it back; Roberts is a Penistone town councillor representing Hoylandswaine. Also returning from May is the Conservatives’ Steven Burkinshaw, who has been a regular Conservative candidate in Barnsley in recent years: he contested this ward in 2023 and also stood in a 2024 by-election in the neighbouring Dodworth ward. A ballot paper of eight candidates is completed by Ehren Holt for the Greens, Andy Waters for the Lib Dems, independent candidate Carlo Turner who was last seen on a Barnsley ballot paper in 2021 when he stood in Kingstone ward, and businessman and former Penistone town councillor David Wood who has the nomination of Restore Britain; Wood has been a frequent candidate in Penistone West ward in recent years, standing twice for UKIP (in a 2014 by-election and 2015), once for Reform UK (in 2024) and most recently as an independent candidate in May. It’s certainly not impossible that this could be close enough for a recount - which gives us time for an encore from the Old Silkstone Band...

Parliamentary constituency: Penistone and Stocksbridge
ONS Travel to Work Area: Barnsley
Postcode districts: S35, S36, S70, S74, S75, WF4

Eunice Asante (RUK)
Steven Burkinshaw (C)
Ehren Holt (Grn)
Peter Millar (Ind)
John Roberts (Lab)
Carlo Turner (Ind)
Andy Waters (LD)
David Wood (Restore Britain)

May 2026 result Lab 2040/1645/1632 RUK 1669/1604/1529 C 1050/843/703 Grn 402/346 LD 312/189/115
Previous results in detail

Nottingham council; caused by the disqualification of Labour councillor Nadia Farhat.

For our big city by-election this week we have come to Nottingham. The ward here up for election today is named after the River Leen, a tributary of the Trent which flows from north to south through western Nottingham. Its course through the city is closely followed by the Robin Hood railway line towards Mansfield and by the tram line as far as Wilkinson Street, where the trams turn eastward to run along suburban streets into the city centre. Wilkinson Street tram stop, a park-and-ride site adjacent to the tram depot, is just outside the boundary of this ward.

Confusingly Nottingham’s Leen Valley ward doesn’t actually contain any of the river, as its eastern boundary is the railway line: instead we have housing along the Western Boulevard and Aspley Lane, together with a number of schools and the open space of Melbourne Park. Most of the housing in this area dates from the interwar years when coalmining was a major employer in western Nottingham, and Leen Valley ward continues to be a politically left-wing area - although not in the same way as a century ago. The 2021 census found Leen Valley ward to be majority non-white, and its Muslim population of 36.6% is the highest figure in Nottingham and one of the highest in the East Midlands.

Labour came close to sweeping the board in Nottingham at the 2023 elections, winning 51 out of 55 seats: the other four seats went three to the Nottingham Independents and one to an independent councillor, all of whom were elected for wards south of the Trent in Clifton. Leen Valley was strongly Labour, with the party’s slate of Audrey Dinnall and new face Nadia Farhat enjoying a 64-22 lead over the Conservatives. This by-election is to replace Farhat, who was disqualified from the city council last month for failing to turn up to any meetings in six months. She had previously quit the Labour party, over Gaza, shortly after her election.

The only polls which have taken place in Nottingham since 2023 were for the 2024 general election, in which Leen Valley ward was part of the Nottingham North and Kimberley seat. This seat has a high-profile MP: it is represented by Alex Norris, who was promoted to the Cabinet last month as justice secretary. Norris was first elected in 2017 but he has only represented Leen Valley ward since 2024, when it was moved into his seat from Nottingham South.

The timing of Nadia Farhat’s disqualification forced an August by-election, in which Abbas Hussain is the defending Labour candidate: he is a lawyer who has worked for a number of local councils in recent years, including Nottingham. The Conservatives have reselected Gail Stancliffe who previously stood here in 2019 and 2023. The Lib Dem candidate is Liz Morgan-Danvers; Parveen Begum is the first-ever election candidate for the Nottingham People’s Alliance, a Labour splinter group which currently holds 6 seats on the council; the Reform UK candidate is Stewart Frost; and the Green Party have selected Hugh Mc Guinness.

Parliamentary constituency: Nottingham North and Kimberley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Nottingham
Postcode district: NG8

Parveen Begum (Nottingham People’s Alliance)
Stewart Frost (RUK)
Abbas Hussain (Lab)
Hugh Mc Guinness (Grn)
Liz Morgan-Danvers (LD)
Gail Stancliffe (C)

May 2023 result Lab 1416/1338 C 476/372 LD 309/224
May 2019 result Lab 1388/1258 C 488/440 LD 290/285
Previous results in detail

Huntingdonshire council, Cambridgeshire; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Tony Nelson.

We’ll finish for the week on the navigable River Great Ouse, which was once the border between Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. On the eastern bank of the Great Ouse was a village called Eynesbury, not far from a point where the river could be forded. In 975 the local nobleman Leofric and his wife Leofleda founded a priory at the northern end of Eynesbury parish, over the Hen Brook from the old village, and in order to attract pilgrims he managed to get hold of the relics of St Neot, a ninth-century Cornish monk who was associated with a large number of miracles.

The Cornish were none too pleased about this, but the gambit worked and a small town grew up around St Neots Priory. By the start of the 13th century St Neots had become a parish of its own, independent of Eynesbury, and it developed into a thriving local centre even after the priory was dissolved in the 1530s and subsequently disappeared - no trace of it remains today. A long bridge was thrown over the Great Ouse floodplain to the west, and this created the conditions for a small Civil War battle in the town in 1648: a Royalist force resting overnight in the town’s market square was surprised and defeated in a night attack by Roundheads advancing over the bridge.

St Neots’ location on the Great North Road meant that it became an important stop for stagecoaches. In 1850 the stagecoaches were displaced by the railways, with the opening by the Great Northern Railway of St Neots railway station on what is now the East Coast Main Line.

In 1876 the town of St Neots expanded to cover Eynesbury to its south, but serious population growth here didn’t come until after the Second World War when a large amount of London overspill housing was built. Much of Eynesbury ward’s housing dates from that period. The housebuilders are still at work today with the massive Wintringham estate under construction on the eastern side of the railway line: some of that area is part of Eynesbury ward.

The town had previously been part of the Huntingdon constituency, but this population growth meant that St Neots joined the parliamentary map in 2024 with the creation of a new constituency called St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire. That seat was won at its first election by the Liberal Democrats’ Ian Sollom, who had come to this area from his native Shropshire to study cosmology at Cambridge and never left. Sollom had previously served on South Cambridgeshire council from 2018 to 2022.

The county boundary up the Great Ouse was eliminated in 1965 when Huntingdonshire was merged with the Soke of Peterborough to the north; at the same time St Neots’ western suburbs of Eaton Ford and Eaton Socon were transferred into the new county from Bedfordshire. This arrangement lasted only nine years before the new county of Huntingdon and Peterborough was itself abolished in 1974 and the whole area became part of Cambridgeshire.

Huntingdonshire now exists as a second-tier district within Cambridgeshire. Its council has been hung since 2022 with a Liberal Democrat-led coalition running the show since then. There was a whole-council election here in May which returned 20 Liberal Democrat councillors, 15 Conservatives, 10 Reform UK, 4 independents, 2 Greens and 1 Labour; the Lib Dem, independent and Green councillors formed a coalition which had half of the seats on the council, 26 out of 52.

For much of the last decade St Neots Eynesbury has been outside the political mainstream in local elections, because this ward was previously the stronghold of a localist party called the St Neots Independent Group. But they decided to call it a day in advance of the 2025 Cambridgeshire county elections, and the resulting open seat on the county council was picked up by Reform UK who gained the St Neots Eynesbury county division last year; second place went to new independent candidate Sam (as in Samantha) Smith, third place to the Lib Dems and fourth to the Conservatives. Unusually, the St Neots Eynesbury county division is actually smaller than this district ward: the town centre is part of St Neots Priory Park and Little Paxton division, which was a Lib Dem gain from the Conservatives last year.

The 2026 Huntingdonshire elections saw a rather similar result in Eynesbury to the county election a year earlier. Reform UK topped the poll with just 27% of the vote, and they won two out of three seats; 26% went to independent candidates with Sam Smith winning the other seat; and the Lib Dems and Greens finished on 18% each. Tony Nelson topped the poll for Reform UK despite his two running-mates Ricky Ioannides and Pavlos Kasdovasilis being higher up the alphabetical ballot paper; Ioannides is the local county councillor, but clearly that wasn’t enough to outweigh the disadvantage - in the view of some voters - of not having an obviously English surname. Two of the outgoing St Neots Independent Group councillors sought re-election as plain independents, with Ian Taylor finishing in a strong fifth place behind the Reform UK slate and Smith.

Tony Nelson submitted his resignation at the end of June for personal reasons, less than two months after his election to Huntingdonshire council. The resulting by-election has got swept up in a political outcry over regeneration proposals for St Neots town centre: the consultancy firm which the council had engaged to come up with ideas for regeneration has proposed closing the main car park for the town centre and building houses on it. They have made similar proposals for Huntingdon and St Ives. The fallout from this has led to the Green Party withdrawing from the ruling coalition, leaving the remaining Lib Dem-independent administration in a minority with 24 out of 52 seats.

Defending for Reform UK is Steve O’Hara, who was an unsuccessful candidate in May for the neighbouring St Neots Priory Park and Little Paxton ward. There is one new independent candidate standing, and it’s a rather interesting name for this column. Former St Neots town councillor Daniel Laycock has previously been a regular election candidate in Cambridgeshire for the Green Party, including being the Green parliamentary candidate for Huntingdon in 2019. Laycock also founded the Green Elects family of social media accounts in 2021, so it was probably him that I had to tell off in public in October 2022 after Green Elects had been caught plagiarising the bits of Andrew’s Previews that related to by-elections with Green Party candidates. Plagiarism isn't worth killing yourself over, but if you are detected doing it it does cast doubt on your judgement and competence. Ian Taylor, who was a St Neots Independent Group councillor for this ward from 2022 to 2026 and unsuccessfully sought re-election as an independent candidate in May, is back for another go and this time he has the Liberal Democrat nomination. The official Green candidate is Anna Pritchard, who contested Ramsey ward at the other end of Huntingdonshire district in May but did stand in another St Neots ward in 2022. Also on the ballot are Alexander Pushkarev for the Conservatives and Michael Gilks for Labour.

Parliamentary constituency: St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire county council division: St Neots Eynesbury, St Neots Priory Park and Little Paxton (town centre)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Huntingdon
Postcode district: PE19

Michael Gilkes (Lab)
Daniel Laycock (Ind)
Steve O’Hara (RUK)
Anna Pritchard (Grn)
Alexander Pushkarev (C)
Ian Taylor (LD)

May 2026 result RUK 978/938/830 Ind 944/698/388/286 LD 653/621/505 Grn 649 C 377/348/267
May 2022 result St Neots Ind Group 1273/1155/1064 C 854/769/741 Lab 596/549/543
May 2018 result St Neots Ind Group 963/854/765 C 700/667/665 Lab 462/399 LD 291
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