Previewing the nine by-elections of 16th July 2026

Nine by-elections on 16th July 2026:

and

Breckland council, Norfolk; caused by the resignation of Labour PCC and councillor Sarah Taylor.

We’re halfway through the summer of 2026 and the school holidays are about to get underway. But there is no rest for some of our electoral administrators, as this summer has been marked by a series of large and high-profile by-elections - some of which span entire counties. As is the case with today’s poll for the Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioner.

As an institution, elected Police and Crime Commissioners may well be on their way out. This was a constitutional innovation of the Coalition government which applied to England and Wales outside Greater London. PCCs replaced the previous system of police oversight by police authorities, which were committees of local councillors, magistrates and members of the public.

It’s fair to say that these elected positions have not caught the public imagination. The first PCC elections, held on a standalone basis in November 2012, had the most dismal turnouts ever seen in a major British election: in Norfolk just 14.5% of residents cast a vote, and that was nowhere near being the worst turnout score. It’s very difficult for turnout in a UK local election to fall below 13% (because about 20% of electors are registered for a postal vote, and around two-thirds of postal votes are returned), but several police areas managed that in November 2012.

Subsequent PCC elections in 2016, 2021 (postponed from 2020) and 2024 have seen higher turnouts, but still nothing to write home about - and in many areas those higher turnouts have been driven by simultaneous local elections being held. Although it has to be said that this consideration doesn’t apply to Norfolk, where Norwich city council is the only local authority which holds annual elections.

The first three PCC elections were held using the Supplementary Vote system, and this made a difference in Norfolk at the first poll in 2012. When the first preferences were counted, the Conservative candidate Jamie Athill led with 32% of the vote to 29% for independent candidate Stephen Bett, 22% for Labour and 10% for UKIP; but in the runoff the Labour transfers lined up behind Bett, who defeated the Conservatives by a 52-48 margin. Bett had been the chairman of the Norfolk police authority going into the election, and he was also a Conservative member of Norfolk county council representing the North Coast division to the east of Hunstanton; he had applied for the Conservative nomination in the 2012 election without success.

Stephen Bett had a scandal-hit term of office, which included briefly stepping aside from his position in 2014 during an investigation into his expenses. He stood for re-election in 2016 and finished in fourth place, with 17% of the vote and just behind UKIP on the same score. The Conservatives on 28% and Labour on 24% went into the runoff, in which the Conservatives’ Lorne Green got the better of the transfers and won by 54-46.

Green was an unusual choice of Conservative candidate. He is a Canadian from Nova Scotia, and he had spent his career travelling the world as a diplomat with postings to London, Pakistan, Iran and Yugoslavia. In 1998 Green had left the Canadian diplomatic service to co-found the World Nuclear Transport Institute, a London-based NGO representing bodies involved in transporting and packaging radioactive materials. He had retired to Norfolk in 2011 to run a coffee shop in Snettisham, near King’s Lynn, before being elected as PCC in 2016.

Lorne Green didn’t seek re-election for a second term in 2021, citing the long commute between Snettisham and the Norfolk police HQ in Wymondham. The 2021 PCC elections were held in a good Conservative year and the election proved to be no trouble for the wonderfully-named new Conservative candidate Giles Orpen-Smellie who had a big lead in the first round with 45% of the vote against 22% for Labour and 14% for the Lib Dems; the final Conservative margin over Labour in the runoff was 63-37. Orpen-Smellie had had a 24-year career as an officer in the Parachute Regiment, rising to the rank of colonel and serving in the Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Gulf, the Balkans, Kosovo and Sierra Leone. After retiring from the Army in 2012 he had worked in the charity sector.

Orpen-Smellie stood for a second term in 2024 but was defeated, as Norfolk continued its trend of failing to re-elect its PCCs. By this point the electoral system had been changed to first-past-the-post, raising the possibility that the new PCC would represent a small minority of the county; and that’s what happened in Norfolk in 2024. Orpen-Smellie polled 34% of the vote, and this proved not to be enough to win as he was defeated by the Labour candidate Sarah Taylor on 35%. The Greens were third on 16%, with the Liberal Democrats being the only other party to stand. The breakdown of results by district shows that the Labour majority entirely came out of Norwich: the only other district which Labour carried was Great Yarmouth and then only narrowly, with the Conservatives topping the poll in the other five districts.

Sarah Taylor, whom I described in the Preview for the 2024 Norfolk PCC election as a national expert in road safety, had previously been the Labour candidate for Mid Norfolk in the 2017 general election. By the time of her PCC win she already held elected office as a Breckland councillor, being elected to represent Dereham Toftwood ward in 2023 under her maiden name of Simpson. Toftwood ward is the southern end of the town of Dereham, lying south of the A47 Norwich-Swaffham road. It has a relatively working-class demographic profile by Norfolk standards, and in the 2021 census it made the top 80 wards in England and Wales for Level 2 qualifications (5+ GCSE passes or equivalent but nothing higher) which are held by 18.0% of adults living here. Despite this Dereham Toftwood had voted Conservative in local elections up to 2023, when the Labour gain was by the narrow margin of 52-48 in a straight fight.

Breckland is the only Norfolk district under Conservative overall control. The Tories have half of the seats in South Norfolk and run a minority administration in Great Yarmouth; the Lib Dems have an overall majority in North Norfolk and lead a traffic-light coalition in Broadland district which covers large parts of Norwich’s northern suburbs; and King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council is run by an independent-led coalition that also includes Lib Dem and Green councillors. As stated the city of Norwich is the only Norfolk district that holds annual elections, and the Green Party gained overall control here from Labour in May 2026.

If we add up the votes cast across the county the in 2023 local elections we get 33% for the Conservatives, 27% for Labour, 17% for the Lib Dems and 12% for the Greens. The only Norfolk ward which did not go to the polls that year was Watlington ward in the district of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, where nobody opposed the re-election of the incumbent independent councillor. In the map below each Norfolk ward has been resized according to its electorate: click here for the full-size map.

Since May 2024 we have had two regular elections in Norfolk. One of these was the 2024 general election, in which Norfolk elected 8½ MPs; the half was the Greens’ Adrian Ramsey, whose Waveney Valley constituency straddles the border between Norfolk and Suffolk. If we use the ward-level modelling of the 2024 general election prepared by Ben Walker of Britain Elects to split Waveney Valley into its Norfolk and Suffolk parts, then vote shares across the county were 30% for Labour, 29% for the Conservatives, 19% for Reform UK and 12% for the Liberal Democrats, with Labour winning four seats, the Conservatives three, Reform UK one (Rupert Lowe in Great Yarmouth), and the Lib Dems one (Steffan Aquarone in North Norfolk). The Conservative total did not include Liz Truss, who famously lost her seat in South West Norfolk, but does include George Freeman who was re-elected for a fifth term of office in his Mid Norfolk constituency which includes Dereham.

To date, Norfolk had escaped all local government reorganisations since the Heath big bang of 1974. An attempt by Norwich city council to become unitary from 2011 was cancelled by the incoming Coalition government, but not before the ordinary May 2010 Norwich elections had been postponed in advance of the reorganisation. This led to farcical scenes when the High Court ruled that the councillors who should have been re-elected in May 2010 were out of office, and an extraordinary council election had to be held in Norwich in September 2010 to replace them. As a result of this, the Norfolk county council and Norfolk police areas continue to have the same boundaries.

The incoming Labour government then announced sweeping plans for local government reorganisation in England, seemingly without having realised that doing this might destroy its local government base. As part of this the scheduled 2025 Norwich county council elections were postponed to 2026, but notably little progress was then made. A further postponement to 2027 was mooted before being cancelled in the face of legal action from Reform UK and amid threats by several Norfolk county councillors to resign their seats and seek a fresh mandate from their electors anyway.

So the 2025 Norfolk county council election eventually went ahead in 2026, and the Conservatives lost their majority. A fragmented result in vote share terms saw Reform UK top the poll with 31% of the vote, against 20% for the Conservatives, 17% for the Greens, 15% for the Lib Dems and 10% for Labour. Under England’s first-past-the-post system this translated into no overall control, with Reform UK finishing three seats short of a majority on 40; they have formed a minority administration against 13 Lib Dem councillors, 12 Greens, 9 councillors for Great Yarmouth First which is a localist group associated with ex-Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, 8 Conservatives, 1 Labour councillor (a fluke win in Hethersett division) and 1 independent.

The Reform UK total includes the Dereham South county division which covers Dereham Toftwood ward, where Reform UK’s Robin Hunter-Clarke polled almost twice as many votes as his nearest Conservative rival. Hunter-Clarke, who became deputy leader of Norfolk county council following the election, is apparently notable enough for Wikipedia. He first won elected office when he was elected as a Conservative member of Skegness town council in 2011 at the age of 18; two years later he was in UKIP and he was elected as the Lincolnshire county councillor for Skegness South. During his four-year term in Lincolnshire, Hunter-Clarke had one of the best UKIP results in the 2015 general election as their candidate for Boston and Skegness, and more curiously he also sought election to the faraway Vale of Glamorgan council in a November 2016 by-election for Gibbonsdown ward in Barry. (It appears I missed this in the Preview at the time.) By that point Hunter-Clarke was working in Cardiff as chief of staff to the Welsh UKIP leader Neil Hamilton, whom he later took to the Employment Tribunal after being sacked in 2018. After standing for Abolish the Welsh Assembly in the 2021 Senedd election, Hunter-Clarke moved to Norfolk and rejoined the Conservatives and he was elected to Breckland council on their ticket in a May 2024 by-election in Hermitage ward, gaining his seat from the Lib Dems on the undercard of Sarah Taylor’s PCC win. (Or perhaps it was the other way round.) He then defected to Reform UK last year. Hunter-Clarke isn’t the only prominent Brexiteer to be associated with the Dereham South county division: Catherine Blaiklock, who went on to become the first leader of the Brexit Party, was the UKIP candidate here in 2017.

As well as annoying its local government base with plans for local government reorganisation, the Starmer administration also announced last November that it intended to scrap elected police and crime commissioners and that the current PCCs will not be replaced when their terms end in 2028. This prompted the Norfolk PCC and Breckland Labour councillor Sarah Taylor to quit the party and become an independent PCC and councillor. She then submitted her resignation from both positions in June, citing changes in her family circumstances.

This triggers the ridiculous procedure for Police and Crime Commissioner by-elections, under which a by-election has to be held within 35 working days of the vacancy. That rule has resulted in a succession of PCC by-elections at inappropriate times, normally in the summer, and this poll is no exception to that.

Parliament has recently legislated to restore the supplementary vote for police and crime commissioner elections, but this PCC by-election came too soon for that change and will be held under first-past-the-post. Defending for Labour is Beth Jones, who is a mental health nurse and a former deputy leader of Norwich city council, where she represents University ward. The Conservative candidate Matthew Taylor previously featured in this column in December 2021 when he gained a North Norfolk council by-election in Stalham ward at the age of 22; he was elected to the county council in May, also representing Stalham. The Green Party have reselected their regular Norfolk PCC candidate Martin Schmierer, who is a Norwich city councillor for the city-centre Mancroft ward and was Lord Mayor of Norwich in 2018-19. Also standing are Christopher Brown for the Lib Dems, Mark Buckton for Restore Britain (a far-right political party which is also associated with the ex-Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe), independent candidate Marcus Pearcey who owns a number of pubs in Norwich and elsewhere in the county, and Reform UK’s Colin Sutton who is a former Metropolitan Police officer and has presented true crime TV documentaries since leaving the force. Sutton was an unsuccessful candidate for Norfolk county council in May, when he contested Diss and Roydon division; he is now seeking to become Reform UK's first Police and Crime Commissioner.

The Dereham Toftwood by-election has a shorter ballot paper with only three candidates. Defending for Labour is Robin Goreham, something of a local government veteran who is seeking to return after some years away: Goreham previously served on Breckland council for 20 years, representing the former Dereham-Central ward from 1995 to 2015, and he was also the Norfolk county councillor for Dereham South from 2005 to 2009 and has served on multiple occasions as mayor of Dereham. The town’s present deputy mayor Stuart Green, who was runner-up here in 2023, is back as the Conservative candidate. And entering the fray is Reform UK’s Gokce Schuler, an architect who moved to Dereham from her native Turkey around 15 years ago; in May’s county elections Schuler stood in Wymondham.

All votes in Norfolk will be counted in Friday. For the PCC election, each district will hold a separate count with results being phoned through to the returning officer Trevor Holden: he is also the area returning officer for both Broadland and South Norfolk councils, which share a headquarters building and counting centre at the Horizon Centre east of Norwich. The final PCC result will be declared there - along with the result of the by-election in the next section.

Parliamentary constituencies: Broadland, Great Yarmouth, Mid Norfolk, North Norfolk, North West Norfolk, Norwich North, Norwich South, South Norfolk, Waveney Valley (part)

Christopher Brown (LD)
Mark Buckton (Restore Britain)
Beth Jones (Lab)
Marcus Pearcey (Ind)
Martin Schmierer (Grn)
Colin Sutton (RUK)
Matthew Taylor (C)

May 2024 result Lab 52455 C 50567 Grn 23628 LD 22525
May 2021 first preferences C 103980 Lab 51056 LD 31666 Grn 23469 Ind 20473; runoff C 119994 Lab 69552
May 2016 first preferences C 42928 Lab 37141 UKIP 27030 Ind 25527 LD 12838 Grn 9187; runoff C 60061 Lab 50287
May 2012 first preferences C 30834 Ind 27842 Lab 21456 UKIP 9633 LD 7392; runoff Ind 39988 C 36605

Parliamentary constituency: Mid Norfolk
Norfolk county council division: Dereham South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Norwich
Postcode district: NR19

Robin Goreham (Lab)
Stuart Green (C)
Gokce Schuler (RUK)

May 2023 result Lab 572/555 C 518/512
May 2019 result C 556/541 Lab 470/397
May 2015 result C 1060/1003 UKIP 782 Lab 596/524 Grn 465/209
Previous results in detail

Norfolk county council; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Mark Tucker.

There is one further by-election being combined with today’s Norfolk PCC by-election, a move which might well drive up turnout in the Old Catton division which is one of those areas on the northern edge of the Norwich built-up area that have never been formally incorporated into the city. Old Catton, which was where Anna Sewell wrote her classic novel Black Beauty in the 1870s, was once an agricultural area but it became fashionable among the Norwich business classes following the laying-out of Catton Park in the late 18th century. This was the first major work of the landscape gardener Humphrey Repton, who was commissioned by two-time Mayor of Norwich Jeremiah Ives in 1788 after Ives had taken over the brand-new stately home of Catton Hall. Catton Hall still stands today but it has been split up into apartments; much of Catton Park has been turned into housing estates, but some of it survives as a public park to this day.

For the last two decades Old Catton county division has had the same boundaries as the Old Catton and Sprowston West ward of Broadland council, whose name accurately reflects that Old Catton parish does not cover the whole ward and the eastern fringes of this electoral area are part of the neighbouring Sprowston parish. The Sprowston West part of the division has seen strong population growth this century thanks to the building of more housing.

Whatever the name of this electoral unit, until May Old Catton had consistently returned Conservative candidates to Norfolk county council and Broadland council, including at two previous by-elections in July 2011 for the county council and September 2021 for Broadland council. The last Broadland election here, in 2023, gave 41% of the vote to the Conservative slate, 29% to Labour and 16% to the Greens.

This makes Old Catton one of the more consistently Conservative areas of a key marginal seat. Norwich North has voted for the government at every election since 1983 with the exception of a Conservative win in a 2009 by-election. Its current incumbent is first-term Labour backbencher Alice Macdonald, who is originally from Norfolk - her mother was leader of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council - but whose previous political experience had been as a Southwark councillor in London.

But in May 2026 Old Catton was one of the 40 Norfolk county council seats won by Reform UK. Their candidate Mark Tucker won a fragmented result with 30% of the vote against 26% for the Conservatives, 19% for the Greens and 16% for Labour. Tucker didn’t last very long as a county councillor: he submitted his resignation at the beginning of June less than four weeks after his election, citing poor health.

Defending this seat for Reform UK is Sue Lawn, who has extensive previous political experience: she is a former mayor of the eastern Norwich suburb of Thorpe St Andrew, and she was a Conservative member of Broadland council from 2013 to 2023, representing Blofield with South Walsham ward from a May 2013 by-election before transferring to Thorpe St Andrew South East ward two years later. In May Lawn was the Reform UK candidate for Thorpe St Andrew, which she lost to the Conservatives. The Conservative candidate for this by-election is again Antony Little, who was runner-up here in May: Little is the headteacher of the Hewett Academy, a secondary school in southern Norwich, and he is a former leader of the now-defunct Conservative group on Norwich city council where he represented Bowthorpe ward from 2006 to 2010. The Greens have changed candidate to Phoebe Connell, who contested Coltishall and Spixworth division in May. Labour have selected Jake Norman, who was another unsuccessful Norfolk county council candidate in May when he contested Taverham division. Also standing are Martin Callam for the Lib Dems, His Excellency Freeman for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, and Hamish Williams who is the first-ever local by-election candidate for Restore Britain.

Parliamentary constituency: Norwich North
Broadland council ward: Old Catton and Sprowston West (same boundaries)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Norwich
Postcode districts: NR3, NR6, NR12

Martin Callam (LD)
Phoebe Connell (Grn)
His Excellency Freeman (Loony)
Sue Lawn (RUK)
Antony Little (C)
Jake Norman (Lab)
Hamish Williams (Restore Britain)

May 2026 result RUK 1006 C 875 Grn 628 Lab 531 LD 308
May 2023 Broadland council result C 1036/973/869 Lab 738/582/559 Grn 402 LD 345/307/300
September 2021 Broadland council by-election C 721 Lab 332 LD 278 Grn 110
May 2021 result C 1420 Lab 580 Grn 227 LD 153
May 2019 Broadland council result C 1024/985/962 LD 433/425/236 Lab 401/398/351 Grn 344
May 2017 result C 1356 Lab 418 LD 310
May 2015 Broadland council result C 2107/2020/1661 Lab 1256/1017/901 UKIP 904 LD 528/483/300
May 2013 result C 796 UKIP 497 Lab 389 LD 362 Grn 119
July 2011 by-election C 664 LD 414 Lab 337 UKIP 107 Grn 75
May 2011 Broadland council result C 1688/1493/1398 Lab 849/691 LD 439/350 UKIP 306
June 2009 result C 1206 UKIP 402 LD 334 Lab 267 Grn 262
May 2007 Broadland council result C 1357/1288/1248 LD 574/553/529 Lab 480
May 2005 result C 1790 Lab 1456 LD 1019 Grn 217
June 2004 Broadland council result C 1060/1022/1006 LD 779/753/692 Lab 497/477/439
Previous results in detail

Peterborough council, Cambridgeshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Daisy Blakemore-Creedon.

Crossing from Norwich to Peterborough brings us to a ward which featured in Andrew’s Previews just five months ago. It’s time for us to again visit the curiously-drawn ward of Fletton and Woodston, which covers two disconnected areas either side of the River Nene.

The Nene was once a county boundary, with the Soke of Peterborough to the north of it and Huntingdonshire to the south. This meant that Fletton, which lies directly to the south of Peterborough city centre over the Nene, was historically in a different county from it. Woodston lies to the west of Fletton along the Oundle Road. This was once quite an industrial area, with Fletton having a very large brickworks, but most of the former factory sites have now been redeveloped for housing. The ward is served by the preserved Nene Valley Railway, whose Peterborough terminus is here.

For reasons best known to the Local Government Boundary Commission, Fletton and Woodston ward also crosses the Nene to take in the open space of Thorpe Meadows (where Peterborough’s rowing lake is located) and a residential area to the west of Peterborough city centre along Thorpe Road. That area has no connection to the rest of the ward or indeed to the rest of the North West Cambridgeshire constituency, most of whose electors live in the southern and western fringes of Peterborough city. North West Cambridgeshire turned in one of the closest results of the 2024 general election with Labour’s Sam Carling, a Cambridge city councillor and postgraduate student, defeating the Conservative MP Shailesh Vara by just 39 votes. Carling is the Baby of the House, being elected at the age of 22, and he is the first (and still the only) MP to be born in the 21st century.

Peterborough city council has been hung since 2019, and for much of that time its composition has been a fragmented mess with councillors defecting in all directions and election results which are equally volatile. Following the May 2026 elections a precarious Labour minority administration with just 13 out of 60 seats was replaced with a broader (but still a minority) Labour-led coalition to run the city. The coalition partners are 11 Labour councillors, 8 Lib Dems and 8 councillors for the localist group Peterborough First; in opposition are 13 Conservatives, 8 independents, 6 Greens and 5 Reform UK councillors. Reform UK polled the most votes across the city this year, but thanks to the magic of England’s first-past-the-post system the Conservatives won the most wards.

Fletton and Woodston ward had been closely fought between the Conservatives and Labour since its creation in 2016. The winning councillor here in 2019 was the Conservatives’ Louise Coles, sister-in-law of the Revd Richard Coles, who died in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her seat was vacant for a year before a by-election could be held, at which point it was gained by Labour; the new Labour councillor then defected to the Greens but lost re-election in 2023 under his new colours. Louise Coles’ husband Andy Coles, who has been the subject of controversy over his previous role as an undercover police officer, then lost his seat to Labour’s Daily Blakemore-Creedon in 2024 by a 48-34 margin to give Labour all three seats in the ward. Blakemore-Creedon was just 18 years old at the time of her election, which reportedly made her the UK’s youngest councillor.

This Labour monopoly did not last. First to go was Blakemore-Creedon, who quit the Labour party in May 2025 citing a bullying culture within the Labour group and antisemitic abuse which she had received after calling for the city’s minicabs to be fitted with CCTV. The other two Labour ward councillors for Fletton and Woodston then both died within a month of each other: Nick Thulbourn succumbed to liver cancer in December 2025, while political veteran Alan Dowson - one of the few remaining councillors with service from before the 1974 reorganisation - passed away in January at the age of 87.

Alan Dowson would have been due for re-election this May so his council seat was left vacant for the last four months of the term, and the last Fletton and Woodston by-election in February was just for Nick Thulbourn’s seat. Labour came nowhere near holding the seat: in fact, their defending candidate finished in fourth place with 17% of the vote. Reform UK won February’s by-election on a low vote share of 29%, with the Greens second on 28% and the Conservatives third on 22%. The old Labour-Conservative duopoly sunk even further in the May 2026 ordinary election for Alan Dowson’s seat, which interestingly was rather different from the result three months before: in May the Green Party won Fletton and Woodston with 38% of the vote, against 27% for Reform UK and 16% for the Conservatives whose candidate was again Andy Coles.

The voters of Fletton and Woodston ward are now being called out for their second by-election of the year after Daisy Blakemore-Creedon tendered her resignation at the end of May. Her parting shot was a blistering resignation statement accusing the council of “systemic cover-ups, a lack of transparency, and an environment that too often discourages people from speaking honestly when something is wrong.” Blakemore-Creedon was the UK’s youngest councillor when she started her term: she is now aged 20, which must make her a strong candidate for the title of the UK’s youngest former councillor.

Peterborough Labour will want their defection loss back, and this time they have selected another young candidate in Adam Marshall. The Greens will be looking to win here for the second time this year with their nominee Katherine Sharp, who contested Hargate and Hempsted ward in May. Also looking to win here for the second time this year are Reform UK who have selected Ryan Gallagher: in May he stood in Paston and Walton ward. Yet another losing 2026 candidate in a different Peterborough ward is the Conservatives’ Janet Brown, who had no luck in Stanground South ward two months ago. Also on the ballot are Lewis Page for the Lib Dems and Jonathan Wilde in a rare local by-election appearance for Your Party.

Parliamentary constituency: North West Cambridgeshire
ONS Travel to Work Area: Peterborough
Postcode districts: PE2, PE3

Janet Brown (C)
Ryan Gallagher (RUK)
Adam Marshall (Lab)
Lewis Page (LD)
Katherine Sharp (Grn)
Jonathan Wilde (Your Party)

May 2026 result Grn 1007 RUK 714 C 428 Ind 258 Lab 254
February 2026 result RUK 565 Grn 529 C 419 Lab 323 LD 84
May 2024 result Lab 940 C 658 Grn 222 LD 99 TUSC 37
May 2023 result Lab 732 C 720 Grn 406 LD 98
May 2022 result Lab 880 C 812 Grn 202 LD 139
May 2021 double vacancy C 997/900 Lab 933/911 Grn 274 LD 157/122 Freedom Alliance 65
May 2019 result C 661 Lab 590 UKIP 299 Grn 210 LD 154 Our Nation 33
May 2018 result Lab 876 C 864 Grn 268
May 2016 result C 731/701/619 Lab 682/635/535 Ind 369/335 Grn 316 TUSC 108
Previous results in detail

Cambridgeshire county council; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Jim Sidlow.

We stay within the North West Cambridgeshire constituency for the time being to reach a very different kind of area out in the Fens. The market town of Ramsey lies some miles to the north of Huntingdon, and is the centre of a large parish which includes several other settlements with “Ramsey” at the beginning of their names. Ramsey Forty Foot takes its name from Cornelius Vermuyden’s Forty Foot Drain which removes water from the fens; Ramsey St Mary’s is named after its parish church; and Ramsey Heights has an approximate elevation of 0 metres above sea level.

This was an important place in the mediaeval period thanks to the presence of Ramsey Abbey, which was a very wealthy institution when it was dissolved in 1537. Ramsey was a Benedictine abbey which was founded in 969 by St Oswald of Worcester and dedicated to him. One relic of that time is the tenth-century manuscript of the Ramsey Psalter, which is now in the British Library, and which is thought to have been written for use either at Ramsey Abbey or by Oswald himself.

Following the dissolution Ramsey Abbey was bought by Sir Richard Williams, also known as Sir Richard Cromwell, a Welsh knight who was an MP for Huntingdonshire at the time. He quickly demolished most of the abbey buildings for their dressed stone, much of which ended up in the Cambridge colleges of Gonville and Caius, King’s and Trinity which were being built or refurbished around this time. A house was later built on the site of the abbey church which eventually became the home of the Fellowes family (later Lords de Ramsey) and is now a secondary school. The only relics of Ramsey Abbey which still stand are parts of the 15th-century gatehouse, which is now in the hands of the National Trust, and the 12th-century parish church of St Thomas à Becket - a name which is at best anachronistic and at worst wrong. Thomas was called many things during his lifetime, but he was never Thomas à Becket. Take the à out, please.

Modern-day Ramsey has merged into the neighbouring village of Bury to the south. This was a hive of activity during the Second World War thanks to the presence of RAF Upwood, which was home to a number of units in the 1940s including a squadron of Lancaster bombers. In 1981 the RAF turned Upwood over to the US Air Force who used it for housing and medical services; the Yanks eventually moved out in the 2000s and RAF Upwood is now being redeveloped for housing.

The airfield was clearly a tempting target for the Luxembourg-born German Second World War spy Josef Jakobs, who parachuted into the Ramsey area in February 1941 with a map of RAF Upwood, £500 in British currency, forged identity papers, a radio transmitter and a German sausage. Unfortunately for him, Jakobs landed heavily, broke his ankle and was unable to move from his landing site, and once dawn broke he had to summon help from local farmers by firing his pistol into the air. He was found guilty of treachery and executed by firing squad in August 1941, becoming the last person to be executed within the Tower of London.

Ramsey became politically notable in 2011 as the first location to elect a UKIP-controlled town council. UKIP had previously won what was then the Ramsey division in the 2009 Cambridgeshire county election, which here was postponed to 23rd July 2009 after one of the originally-nominated candidates died during the election campaign.

The UKIP county councillor Peter Reeve served two terms before losing his seat to the Conservatives’ Adela Costello in 2017, which was the first contest on the present boundaries. Costello then lost her seat in 2025 to Reform UK candidate Jim Sidlow, who polled 47% of the vote to the Conservatives’ 29% and Labour’s 11%. The Liberal Democrats, who control Cambridgeshire county council, were not in contention here.

Helpfully the Ramsey and Bury county division has the same boundaries as the Ramsey ward of Huntingdonshire council, so we can make easy comparisons between the county and district levels. Huntingdonshire had a full council election in May at which Reform UK gained the three seats in Ramsey ward from the Conservatives on a rather low vote share: topline figures were 28% for Reform UK, 24% for an independent slate, 21% for the Conservatives and 10% for the Greens. Top of the poll was Ryan Coogan, who had been the Reform UK candidate for mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough in 2025. Coogan is currently being investigated by Cambridgeshire police on suspicion of making false statements on his nomination papers for the 2026 Huntingdonshire election, so it’s not impossible that Andrew’s Previews might be back in Ramsey in fairly short order.

Before then we have to replace Reform UK county councillor Jim Sidlow, who handed in his notice at the end of May due to personal circumstances and pressures on his family life. Defending the resulting by-election is Howard Tobias, who was also elected to Huntindgonshire council for this ward in May. Tobias is a lawyer, but he lists his favourite biscuit on whocanivotefor.co.uk as “Jaffa Cake” which suggests he might not be aware of the notorious legal case that established that Jaffa Cakes are not biscuits for VAT purposes. Adela Costello, the Conservative county councillor who lost her seat here last year, is trying to get it back; Costello was on the Conservative slate for this ward in the Huntingdonshire elections two months ago. The Labour candidate Neil Shailer is another former Cambridgeshire county councillor who was defeated in 2025, but he previously represented not Ramsey but Romsey division in Cambridge city. Also on the ballot are Sharon Docherty for the Lib Dems, Francis Reid for the Greens and independent candidate Steve Corney, a former Cambridgeshire county councillor for Warboys and the Stukeleys who was previously a long-serving Conservative district councillor for Ramsey; Corney sought re-election to Huntingdonshire council as an independent candidate here in May, and he finished as runner-up.

Parliamentary constituency: North West Cambridgeshire
Huntingdonshire council ward: Ramsey (same boundaries)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Huntingdon
Postcode districts: PE7, PE15, PE26, PE28

Steve Corney (Ind)
Adela Costello (C)
Sharon Docherty (LD)
Francis Reid (Grn)
Neil Shailer (Lab)
Howard Tobias (RUK)

May 2026 result RUK 1127/1110/1027 Ind 954/864/784 C 830/747/384 Grn 405 Lab 381 LD 318/283/254
May 2025 result RUK 1357 C 847 Lab 315 LD 195 Grn 173
May 2022 Huntingdonshire council result C 1477/1400/1247 LD 719 Lab 704
May 2021 result C 1698 Ind 518 Lab 412
May 2018 Huntingdonshire council result C 1417/1367/1355 UKIP 1005/543/529 Lab 392/322/297 LD 320
May 2017 result C 1296 UKIP 1152 Lab 260 LD 163
Previous results in detail

Stafford council; caused by the death of Labour councillor Angela Loughran.

We now come to two polls in Staffordshire, one of which is in the county town. The Manor ward of Stafford lies in the south of the town, along the road towards Wolverhampton; it is sandwiched between the Wolverhampton railway line to the east and the M6 Stafford bypass to the west. The Stafford Manor high school lies at the centre of the ward.

Manor ward is one of the more downmarket parts of Stafford, and it has returned Labour councillors consistently since the current ward boundaries were introduced in 2015. At the last Stafford council elections in 2023 Labour led the Conservatives here by 56-29.

Labour will be seeking to replace a political veteran in this by-election. Angela Loughran, who died in April at the age of 82, had been a Stafford councillor for Manor ward since winning a 1997 by-election. Previously she had worked for 20 years as a teacher in the town, for much of that period working at Rising Brook high school - as Stafford Manor high school was known then. Loughran was mayor of Stafford in 2013-14.

The Stafford parliamentary seat is a bellwether which has voted for the government at every election since its recreation in 1983: its current representative is Labour’s Leigh Ingham, who had been a councillor in South Gloucestershire before entering the Commons. A different story was told here in the 2025 Staffordshire county council elections, at which one of the many, many seats won by Reform UK was the local division of Stafford South West.

The defending Labour candidate in this by-election Aaron Thurstance will be well aware of that, as he was the runner-up in Stafford South West last year; he is a staff member at the Houses of Parliament. The Conservatives have turned to the next generation by selecting Freddie Crisp, who is reading for a degree in politics and history at the University of Wolverhampton. Also on an all-male ballot are Joe Tunnicliffe for the Greens and Reform UK’s Ray Barron, who is a former Conservative Stafford councillor for Weeping Cross and Wildwood ward; Barron was one of the few losing Reform UK candidates in the 2025 Staffordshire county elections, and he went on to lose a county council by-election in Eccleshall and Gnosall ward shortly afterwards. Will it be third time lucky for him?

Parliamentary constituency: Stafford
Staffordshire county council division: Stafford South West
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stafford
Postcode district: ST17

Ray Barron (RUK)
Freddie Crisp (C)
Aaron Thurstance (Lab)
Joe Tunnicliffe (Grn)

May 2023 result Lab 853/785 C 450/432 Grn 227
May 2019 result Lab 737/710 C 591/572
May 2015 result Lab 1729/1421 C 1179/1163 Support Stafford Group 931
Previous results in detail

South Staffordshire council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Roger Lees.

If you ever talk to someone from the Black Country and ask them where they think the Black Country is, chances are that whichever town they’re from they will say the Black Country begins at the next town. Well, our next by-election today is genuinely on the western edge of the Black Country, as the villages of Himley and Swindon lie in open countryside between Kingswinford to the south, Sedgley to the east and Wombourne to the north.

Himley is best known for Himley Hall, an 18th-century stately home in 180 acres of Capability Brown parkland built for the Lords Dudley - who had the village of Himley relocated at the same time, because the upper classes could do that sort of thing in those days. The Hall hosted royalty in the 1930s, including the honeymoon of the Duke and Duchess of Kent after their marriage in 1934. The Dudleys sold the property to the National Coal Board as offices in 1947, and it is now run by Dudley council despite being outside their area. The parkland is open to the public, while the hall is available for weddings, afternoon teas, etc.

The smaller village of Swindon to the west lies on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, and because of that there was some Black Country metalbashing here back in the day: Swindon was home to a small ironworks until 1976. Another shadow of industry can be found next to the small village of Gospel End: Baggeridge Country Park lies on a site occupied from 1947 to 1968 by a colliery. Also within the ward boundary is the pile of rubble that used to be the Crooked House pub, which was demolished in 2023 following a suspicious fire.

The demolition of the Crooked House caused local, national and international outrage, and South Staffordshire council have ordered the owners to rebuild the pub in its previous condition. It probably helped in this regard that the local councillor was at the time the leader of that council. (Stephen) Roger Lees, who died in April at the age of 82, was first elected for Himley and Swindon ward in 2007 and joined the council’s cabinet in 2009, rising to serve as leader from 2021 to 2024. In the 2024 New Year Honours he was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to the communities in Himley, Swindon and South Staffordshire.

Lees was last re-elected in 2023 with a 63-21 lead over the Lib Dems in Himley and Swindon ward, which is part of an extremely Conservative district even given the travails of that party in recent years. It probably helps that Himley and Swindon ward has a very old population: it makes the top 80 wards in England and Wales for residents aged 85 or over (6.6%), who might well have voted for Enoch Powell in nearby Wolverhampton back in the day. For those who are young enough to work, Himley and Swindon was the top ward in the West Midlands region, and in the top 70 across England and Wales, for residents working in the construction industry (15.1%). Slightly more worryingly, it is in the top 40 wards in England and Wales for households which are caravans or mobile or temporary structures (11.0%).

The modern-day Conservative standard-bearer for this area in the Commons is Mike Wood, who took Himley and Swindon over after boundary changes in 2024 created a new seat of Kingswinford and South Staffordshire. Wood had previously been the MP for the abolished Dudley South seat, which had included Kingswinford. He is on the Conservative frontbench as shadow minister for the Cabinet Office. Himley and Swindon is part of the Kinver division of Staffordshire county council, which was the one of relatively few parts of Staffordshire where the Conservatives held off Reform UK last year.

Defending this by-election for the Conservatives is Sean Massey, a Swindon parish councillor who works in insurance. The Lib Dem candidate this time is Michael Jones. Also on an all-male ballot of seven candidates are Swindon parish councillor Gordon Fanthom who has stood here at every local election since 2011, originally for UKIP but since 2019 as an independent; Swindon parish councillor Richard Painter as another independent candidate; Denis Beaumont for Labour; Perton parish councillor Nigel Caine for Reform UK; and Bhanu Dhir for the Greens.

Parliamentary constituency: Kingswinford and South Staffordshire
Staffordshire county council division: Kinver
ONS Travel to Work Area: Dudley
Postcode districts: DY3, DY6

Denis Beaumont (Lab)
Nigel Caine (RUK)
Bhanu Dhir (Grn)
Gordon Fanthom (Ind)
Michael Jones (LD)
Sean Massey (C)
Richard Painter (Ind)

May 2023 result C 380 LD 127 Ind 85
Previous results in detail

Cherwell council, Oxfordshire; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Dorothy Walker.

This column sees many places which claim to be the largest village in England, or the UK, or Europe, or wherever. It’s unusual to see somewhere which has decided to revoke its claim to that title, but such is the case with Kidlington, a settlement of around 13,600 souls a few miles to the north of Oxford. Following a consultation with residents, Kidlington parish council voted in February to rebrand itself as a town council.

The BBC reported in 2016 that this village town had become one of the UK’s more bizarre destinations for international tourism, with weekly coachloads of Chinese holidaymakers descending on the residential and otherwise unremarkable Benmead Road just to the north of the village town centre and within Kidlington West ward. The most likely explanation for this may be that Kidlington was marketed as a beautiful English village town on the way to the Bicester Village shopping centre, which is also mysteriously popular with Chinese tourists.

Those Chinese tourists are unlikely to arrive in the UK at Oxford Airport, which markets itself as “London Oxford Airport” - the word “London” here presumably being used in the Ryanair sense - but has next to no regular scheduled flights, instead concentrating its operations on flight training, business aviation and recreational flights. The airport is located to the north-west of Kidlington, with the space in between being filled by a series of business parks. Also close to the airport is the Campsfield House immigration detention centre, which has recently been reopened after closing in 2018.

As well as the northern part of Kidlington, the Kidlington West ward also takes in two parishes along the A44 road towards Woodstock and Worcester: these are the large village of Yarnton and the smaller Begbroke. In between the two is Begbroke Science Park, a research centre which was established here in 1960 by the Weed Research Organisation, then part of the Ministry of Agriculture. No, they weren’t researching that type of weed. The science park then became the R&D centre for Cookson Group, which was a materials and ceramics firm; it was then taken over in 1998 by Oxford University, who still run it.

Since 2024 Kidlington has been at the centre of the newly-created Bicester and Woodstock parliamentary seat, which was won at its first contest by the Liberal Democrat candidate Calum Miller. Miller had been a senior civil servant before entering elected politics, serving from 2010 to 2012 as principal private secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg - that’s the Bernard Woolley role. At the time of his election to Westminster he was Oxfordshire county council’s cabinet member for finance.

Miller stood down from the county council at the 2025 election, in which the Lib Dems took overall control of the county. Their majority includes Kidlington West division, where the Lib Dem candidate finished on top of a four-way marginal result with 30% of the vote.

Unusually, the Kidlington West county division is actually smaller than the Kidlington West district ward which takes in more of the village town. This is part of Cherwell district, which is based in Banbury and which the Lib Dems have yet to crack overall control of, largely due to the party’s weakness in Banbury. The most recent council composition here has a coalition of 20 Lib Dems plus this vacancy, 4 Greens and an independent councillor facing 9 Conservatives, 8 Labour and 6 Reform UK councillors. Kidlington West ward has been in the Lib Dem column since 2018, and the May 2026 election here gave 45% to the Lib Dems, 23% to Reform UK and 17% to the Conservatives.

This by-election is to replace Lib Dem ward councillor Dorothy Walker, who had served since she gained her seat from the Conservatives in 2021. Walker resigned in June, shortly after completing her year as chair of Cherwell council for 2025-26.

The defending Lib Dem candidate here is Rob Packard, who is currently a Kidlington parish town councillor. Reform UK have reselected Dave Paintlin who was runner-up here in May. Standing for the Conservatives is Chuk Okoke who is a fairly recent recruit to the party: Okeke was the Labour candidate here in 2019, and he was elected in 2022 as a Labour councillor for Banbury Cross and Neithrop ward before losing re-election there in May as a Conservative. Unusually for an O, Okeke is top of this ballot paper because the only other candidate is Jenny Tamblin for the Green Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Bicester and Woodstock
Oxfordshire county council division: Kidlington West, Kidlington North and Otmoor (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Oxford
Postcode districts: OX5, OX20, OX29

Chuk Okeke (C)
Rob Packard (LD)
Dave Paintlin (RUK)
Jenny Tamblin (Grn)

May 2026 result LD 1427 RUK 734 C 548 Grn 457
May 2024 result LD 1224 C 575 Lab 281 Grn 224
May 2023 result LD 1410 C 802 Lab 297
May 2022 result LD 1465 C 1005 Lab 325
May 2021 result LD 1638 C 1255 Lab 369
May 2019 double vacancy LD 1493/1436 C 816/786 Lab 402 UKIP 252
May 2018 result LD 1793 C 1045 Lab 299
May 2016 result C 1071/1011/948 LD 857/832/820 Lab 517/442/411 UKIP 389 Grn 311
Previous results in detail

Rushmoor council, Hampshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Alex Crawford.

We’ll finish for this week in the south-east by taking a visit to Aldershot. This is one of the towns in the Blackwater Valley conurbation, a surprisingly large urban area which is not well-served by local government thanks to its location at the point where Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire all meet. Aldershot is on the Hampshire side of the river and it is covered by Rushmoor council, which consists of Aldershot, Farnborough and nothing else.

The name of Rushmoor comes from an area of heathland to the west of Aldershot. This is military land which includes the Rushmoor Arena, an outdoor arena built in 1923 for the now-defunct Aldershot Military Tattoo. Also here is a massive equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington by Matthew Cotes Wyatt. This statue dates from 1846 and was originally erected on top of the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner in London, a decision which was controversial and widely disliked at the time because the statue was seen as too large for the arch it sat on. The Wellington Arch’s architect, Decimus Burton, went so far as to leave money for the statue’s removal in his will.

Removal eventually came in 1882, when the Wellington Arch needed to be moved to its present location at the top of Constitution Hill to make way for a road improvement scheme. After a short time in storage, Wyatt’s statue was relocated to its present location in Aldershot in 1885. Unlike its counterpart in Glasgow, or this joker who I saw in Annan a couple of weeks ago, the Aldershot statue of Wellington does not normally have a traffic cone on its head.

The Wellington statue gives its name to the Wellington ward of Rushmoor, which takes in the Aldershot Military Town and the civilian town centre. The ward’s military nature shows up clearly in the census return, although not in the way you might have expected. Wellington is the number 2 ward in England and Wales for Buddhism at 8.9% of the population, a side-effect of recent Gurkha immigration into the UK which has been concentrated in Aldershot and Farnborough. Rushmoor has all of the top four wards in England and Wales for Buddhism and six of the top eight, and a list of the highest-ranking wards for Buddhism is dominated not by the New Age but by this area or by other garrison towns with a Gurkha detachment - Woolwich, Catterick, Tidworth, Brecon and so on. Wellington is also in the top 20 wards in England and Wales for residents employed in public administration and defence (28.3%), for full-time employment (51.9%), for households in shared ownership (6.5%) and for the 30-44 age bracket (32.0%).

The Rushmoor council area is a location of very recent Labour strength. It is entirely part of the Aldershot parliamentary seat, which returned its first-ever Labour MP in July 2024, Alex Baker; appropriately enough, she is now chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Nepal. This followed the Labour gain of Rushmoor council in the May 2024 local elections, again for the first time ever. The Labour group in Rushmoor has not remained united and there has been a split in the last couple of years; following some Reform UK gains here in May the council now has 17 Labour councillors plus this vacancy running a minority administration against 10 Conservatives, 6 Reform UK, 3 Lib Dems and 2 independents.

Wellington ward has a tendency for extremely poor turnouts thanks to the large military population, but since the current ward boundaries were introduced in 2012 it has been in the Labour column with the exception of Conservative wins in 2012 (one out of three seats), 2019 and 2021. In May Labour held on here with just 33% of the vote, against 28% for Reform UK, 24% for the Conservatives and 15% for the outgoing Labour councillor Nadia Martin seeking re-election as an independent candidate. The ward is part of the Aldershot North division of Hampshire county council, which voted on the same day and was a Reform UK gain from Labour by one vote, 1583 to 1582.

The retiring Labour councillor is a political veteran. Alex Crawford was first elected to Rushmoor council all the way back in 1976, serving on that occasion until 1985; he returned by winning a December 2009 by-election in Heron Wood ward, moved to Wellington ward following boundary changes in 2012, lost re-election in a different ward in 2021, and returned to Wellington ward in 2024. He was mayor of Rushmoor in 2011-12, and he was also the Hampshire county councillor for Aldershot North from 2021 until May.

Defending this seat in Wellington ward for Labour is Fouzia Khan, who narrowly lost to Reform UK in the neighbouring Rowhill ward in May. Another defeated candidate from May trying their hand in this by-election is Reform UK’s Rohin Shingaria, who stood then in Empress ward in Farnborough. Seeking to make a political return is the Conservatives’ Prabesh KC, who was previously a councillor for this ward from 2019 to 2023 when he stood down. There is no independent candidate this time, but two new parties have also entered the fray: the Liberal Democrats with Christopher Peart, and the Greens with Andy Wilson.

Parliamentary constituency: Aldershot
Hampshire county council division: Aldershot North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Guildford and Aldershot
Postcode districts: GU11, GU12

Prabesh KC (C)
Fouzia Khan (Lab)
Christopher Peart (LD)
Rohin Shingaria (RUK)
Andy Wilson (Grn)

May 2026 result Lab 551 RUK 459 C 389 Ind 256
May 2024 result Lab 744 C 305 TUSC 49
May 2023 result Lab 652 C 414 LD 66 TUSC 22
May 2022 result Lab 608 C 470
May 2021 result C 587 Lab 402 LD 81
May 2019 result C 328 Lab 286 LD 85
May 2018 result Lab 389 C 290 LD 64
May 2016 result Lab 385 C 190 LD 36
May 2015 result Lab 645 C 600 Christian Party 86
May 2014 result Lab 264 C 188 UKIP 177
May 2012 result Lab 220/213/186 C 191/181/159 LD 77
Previous results in detail

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Andrew Teale