UK local by-elections 2012

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

(cont)

REDHILL AND NORTHBOURNE, Bournemouth council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Peter Charon, apparently for business reasons and family commitments.  He had been leader of the council until January this year when he was deposed by the Conservative group.

The Redhill and Northbourne ward covers a residential tract on the northern edge of the South Coast resort of Bournemouth.  It runs to the west of Redhill Park and to the south of the Stour Valley.  (As you might guess from this description, I know nothing whatsoever about Bournemouth.)

This ward covers some of Bournemouth's least deprived areas, but that demographic makeup didn't translate to a safe Conservative ward for the council leader.  Redhill and Northbourne returned three Lib Dem councillors in 2003 before Peter Charon gained a seat in 2007 and split the three seats 2LD/1C.  The three councillors were re-elected last year with Charon topping the poll; for some reason there were only two Liberal Democrat candidates last year for the three seats.  Since then Sue Levell, one of the ward's Lib Dem councillors, has gone Independent.

For some reason this by-election has attracted an enormous field, with nine candidates on the ballot paper.  The Conservative candidate is letting agency manager David d'Orton-Gibson, who fought this ward unsuccessfully last year.  The Liberal Democrats have selected Pat Lewis, who lost her council seat last year in the neighbouring Kinson North ward; confusingly another Lib Dem councillor who lost her seat in Kinson North last year, Claire Smith, is standing as an independent with Cllr Levell's endorsement.  The Labour candidate is Jo Kennedy, who fought this ward as an Independent last year and had a very good result, finishing sixth not far short of d'Orton-Gibson; she runs a local hairdressing salon.  Also on the ballot paper are Sandra Hale of the Green Party, Colin Smith of the BNP and independent candidates Paul Graham and Peter Woodley.  There was going to be a tenth candidate, Steve Bartlett, who was nominated as an independent candidate, but he withdrew before the deadline.

Parliamentary constituency: Bournemouth West
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bournemouth

Nicholas Atkinson (UKIP)
David d'Orton-Gibson (C)
Paul Graham (Ind)
Sandra Hale (Grn)
Jo Kennedy (Lab)
Pat Lewis (LD)
Claire Smith (Ind)
Colin Smith (BNP)
Peter Woodley (Ind)

May 2011 result C 1363/1147/1079 LD 1278/1189 Ind 1027 Lab 539
May 2007 result LD 1277/1272/1103 C 1214/1162/1066 UKIP 302 Ind 263 Lab 176/168
May 2003 result LD 1290/1281/1275 C 720/720/660 Ind 538 Lab 307/256


MEADS, Eastbourne borough council, East Sussex; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Nigel Goodyear who wants to stand as an independent for the post of Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner.

Meads ward has a reputation for being the smart end of the seaside resort of Eastbourne.  Much of it was developed in the Victorian era by the Duke of Devonshire, who owned the land, at the same time as the rest of the resort was being developed; with the Victorian hotels and bandstand along the seafront, the shoreline of the ward is probably little changed visually since then.  The ward covers the southern end of town and its population is hemmed into the eastern corner of the ward by the steep South Downs, which terminate here in the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head, allegedly the world's third most popular suicide spot.  Since 2011 the ward has been the eastern end of the South Downs National Park.

Eastbourne council has been closely fought between the Lib Dems and Conservatives for many years, with the Lib Dems most recently holding the upper hand having gained the parliamentary seat in 2010 and holding their majority on the council last year.  Meads ward is the strongest of the borough's nine wards for the Conservatives and is not normally seriously contested by the Lib Dems.

The defending Conservative candidate is school inspector Caroline Ansell who fought the borough's Hampden Park ward last year.  She faces opposition from Lib Dem candidate Gerard Thompson, Labour candidate Dennis Scard (who fought this ward last year), UKIP candidate Ian Cameron (who also fought this ward last year) and Independent candidate Keith Gell, who last year was an also-ran in the borough's Devonshire ward.

East Sussex county council division: Meads (coterminous)
Parliamentary constituency: Eastbourne
ONS Travel to Work Area: Eastbourne

Caroline Ansell (C)
Ian Cameron (UKIP)
Keith Gell (Ind)
Dennis Scard (Lab)
Gerard Thompson (LD)

May 2011 result C 2239/2232/2126 LD 797/766/734 Grn 414/361 Lab 411/373/349 UKIP 404
May 2007 result C 2407/2387/2329 LD 729/692/681 Grn 457/375/299 Lab 220
May 2006 result C 2440 LD 756 Grn 306 Lab 173
June 2004 result C 2672 LD 589 Grn 271 Lab 221
May 2003 result C 2202 LD 518 Lab 216 Grn 154
May 2002 result C 2001/1967/1949 LD 731/686/662 Grn 351 Lab 280 UKIP 174/129


TOWN, North Lincolnshire council; caused by the death of Labour councillor Darrell Barkworth who had been a councillor for 21 years, initially on Humberside County Council, and had served as Mayor of North Lincolnshire.

Sc**nthorpe, the town which fails to pass the spam filter, is like Eastbourne a town almost entirely developed in the Victorian era.  But that's where the similarity ends, as Sc**nthorpe is a heavily industrial town whose economy is still based on steel, with Tata Industries running an enormous steelworks in the town; other industries in the town include distribution and food production.

The Town ward is a section through the town from west to east with the ward's southern boundary being the railway line.  The ward includes the town centre, the bus station and the railway station (hourly trains east to Grimsby and Cleethorpes, two trains per hour west to Doncaster and Sheffield).  Apart from the western end of the ward around the Kingsway Golf Course this is a very deprived area, with three of the ward's five census areas being in the most deprived 20% in England.  The ward has a relatively high ethnic minority population for Lincolnshire, with 11% of the population identifying themselves as Muslim and 8% as Bangladeshi in the 2001 census.

North Lincolnshire district as a whole includes just a large enough rural area to produce interesting battles for council control, although the Conservative margin of victory in the 2003 election will never be surpassed for closeness: the council split C 22 Lab 21 and that 22nd Conservative seat was won by one vote.  Since then the council has swung against the national tide, with a Labour gain in 2007 and a Conservative gain last year; this was the only council gained by the Conservatives last year, a result which might have been something to do with the scandal which ended the political career of Sc**nthorpe's former Labour MP Elliot Morley, who pleaded guilty to false accounting just before the 2011 election.  Town ward is safe Labour but the majority has ebbed and flowed in tandem with those results, and last year the Labour majority fell from 32 points to 12 points.

The defending Labour candidate for the by-election is Haque Kataria, who last year fought the hopeless ward of Axholme South.  Abdul Wadud is the Conservative candidate, and the only other candidate standing is Douglas Ward who has the BNP nomination.

Parliamentary constituency: Sc**nthorpe
ONS Travel to Work Area: Sc**nthorpe

Haque Kataria (Lab)
Abdul Wadud (C)
Douglas Ward (BNP)

May 2011 result Lab 1045/930 C 790/755 Grn 276
May 2007 result Lab 990/892 C 444/362 BNP 250
May 2003 result Lab 1288/1078 C 720/580 LD 450 Socialist Alliance 276

There are no by-elections in Jubilee week so the next preview will be in advance of the six by-elections scheduled for 14th June.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

The Holy Word for this week

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Holy Word for this week

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Holy Word for tonight

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

I did write a Holy Word for Bettws but it seems Britain-Votes never published it.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

I'm going to start posting these again here as I get the impression Britain-Votes is on its last legs.

There are five by-elections this week in the final week of by-elections before the Police and Crime Commissioner elections on 15th November; more than thirty by-elections have now been called for that date and I'm not sure whether I'll do a column for that number.  If I do, it'll be a very abbreviated one-paragraph job on each.  So enjoy what will be the last normal by-election preview for a month.  We're off to memories of my childhood in Hartlepool, and there are also polls in the towns of Didcot, New Tredegar, Maidenhead and Whittlesey.


SEATON, Hartlepool borough council, Co Durham; caused by the resignation of Independent councillor Mike Turner to care for his parents.

My grandparents used to live in Hartlepool, and Seaton Carew, on the coast just south of Hartlepool, is a place I have very fond memories of.  To the wider world Seaton Carew is known for three things: the Hartlepool nuclear power station on Seal Sands, the controversial Able UK shipbreaking facility at Graythorp basin, and the curious case of John Darwin, who faked his own death in a canoeing accident here in 2002.  

What Seaton Carew should be known for is its wide, sandy beach which was the reason it was built in the first place, as a seaside resort for Quaker families from Darlington.  You find a lot of things on the beach: as well as the usual flotsam and jetsam there is lots of coal washed up with every high tide from an open seam out to sea.  Some people still make a living collecting seacoal from the beach.  More unusual items on the beach are the wreck of a collier brig which occasionally appears out of the sands, and a submerged forest along the shore between Seaton and Hartlepool.

The people who live in Seaton are an independent-minded lot compared to Hartlepool as a whole, and Hartlepool's a rather idiosyncratic place in itself.  You might not appreciate this from its parliamentary history, with the town (or towns; West and Old Hartlepool were independent before the 1960s) having mostly been safe Labour since the war; it took a very famous Conservative to win the Hartlepools parliamentary seat in the Macmillan landslide of 1959, Cdr John Kerans who basically won on his record as commander of the ship involved in the Yangtse Incident, something which will have gone down well in a town with such strong naval links.  Kerans didn't stand for re-election in 1964 and Labour took The Hartlepools back with the long-serving MP Ted Leadbitter, whom my grandparents knew and respected much more than his successor, Peter Mandelson.

My grandmother always said that a monkey would win in Hartlepool if it had a red rosette.  Notoriously, it turned out that the red rosette wasn't actually required, with the first Hartlepool mayoral election in 2002 won by a man in his twenties called Stuart Drummond who was standing as a publicity stunt for the local football club, for which he was the mascot 'H'Angus the Monkey'.  Despite failing to fulfil his only campaign promise - free bananas for local schoolchildren - Drummond is now well into his third term of office.  (He's had more wins than The Pool have had so far this season.)

One way in which Drummond has left his mark on the council came this May when the town got new ward boundaries; the Mayor argued that much fewer councillors were required under a Mayoral system, and the size of the council was cut from 47 to 33 councillors in May.  The resulting major changes to ward boundaries make it difficult to read much into any Hartlepool ward results before 2012.  Mike Turner had won a previous Seaton ward in 2002 as Labour, narrowly defeating the Conservatives' David Young, but that was the last team the old Seaton ward voted Labour; Turner was re-elected on new boundaries in 2004 as a wildly popular Independent and elected a running-mate, with Young narrowly defeating UKIP for the final seat.  Seaton ward has had a full slate of Independent councillors since Young lost his seat in 2010, and all three councillors were re-elected on the new boundaries in May 2012 by a large majority over a Putting Hartlepool First candidate.

Six candidates are in the ring to succeed Mike Turner.  The new Independent candidate is David Young, who would appear to have fallen out with the Conservatives for whom he stood in the hopeless Headland and Harbour ward in May.  The Headland - Old Hartlepool - always was a strange place to West Hartlepudlians and it would appear that the feeling is mutual.  Local resident Kelly Atkinson is standing for Putting Hartlepool First after finishing as runner-up in May.  Ann Marshall, who lost out to Putting Hartlepool First in the neighbouring Fens and Rossmere ward in May, is the Labour candidate, Tom Hind represents the town's active UKIP branch, Shane Moore is the official Conservative candidate (both Hind and Moore fought Hart ward at the other end of town in May), and Jim Tighe is trying for the Liberal Democrats.

Parliamentary constituency: Hartlepool
ONS Travel to Work Area: Hartlepool

Kelly Atkinson (Putting Hartlepool First)
Tom Hind (UKIP)
Ann Marshall (Lab)
Shane Moore (C)
Jim Tighe (LD)
David Young (Ind)

May 2012 result Ind 1168/883/769 Putting Hartlepool First 328/172 Lab 287/274/237 UKIP 243 C 158


DIDCOT ALL SAINTS, South Oxfordshire district council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Terry Joslin for health reasons.

Perhaps surprisingly the largest town in South Oxfordshire district, Didcot is one of the towns which boomed thanks to the railway; Didcot Parkway is the junction station for Oxford off the Great Western main line.  The town is home to a large power station and there is much scientific employment in the area thanks to projects including the Joint European Torus and the recently-completed Diamond Light Source synchrotron.

The Didcot All Saints ward, one of four wards covering Didcot, consists of the centre and west of the town just south of Didcot Parkway station.

While Didcot All Saints has had at least one Conservative councillor since 2003, Didcot is the only part of South Oxfordshire district to have a significant Labour vote, and in 2011 Labour snatched the second seat in the ward from the Conservatives (who had held it since 2007 after gaining it from an independent).  The result was very close, with just five votes separating the top Labour and Conservative candidates.

The defending Labour candidate is Denise MacDonald, a scientist at the Medical Research Council complex in nearby Harwell.  The Conservative candidate Jane Murphy is the only one on the ballot paper not to give an address in Didcot, but she is a town councillor for this ward and was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate here in 2011, standing here rather than the marginal Didcot Northbourne ward which she had been councillor for from 2007.  The ballot paper is completed by Andrew Jones, who was the top Lib Dem candidate here last year.

Parliamentary constituency: Wantage
ONS Travel to Work Area: Oxford

Andrew Jones (LD)
Denise MacDonald (Lab)
Jane Murphy (C)

May 2011 result Lab 647/597 C 642/635 LD 226/185
May 2007 result C 809/791 Lab 434/391 LD 320
May 2003 result C 552/419 Ind 438 Lab 391/381 LD 204


NEW TREDEGAR, Caerphilly county borough council; caused by the death of Labour councillor Les Rees at the age of 78.

There's not a lot to say about New Tredegar really: it's an ex-pit village deep in the Rhymney Valley, with everything that implies.  The division includes all of the village together with other hamlets in the valley which are part of the New Tredegar community, such as Brithdir.  The ward is linked to Cardiff by Brithdir and Tir-Phil railway stations on the Rhymney Valley line, with hourly trains to Cardiff.

Labour have not been seriously challenged in this ward in the last few elections, and in May the two Labour councillors were opposed only by a single Independent candidate who lost by 73% to 27%.

The new Labour candidate is Les Rees' daughter Eluned Stenner who is chairman of the community council and the only candidate to live in the ward.  Care home worker Gill Jones will try to get back onto the council for Plaid Cymru; she has previously represented Bargoed division.  The Tories have found a candidate in Cameron Muir-Jones, who polled impressively badly further down the valley in Llanbradach in May; he completes the ballot paper.

Parliamentary and Assembly constituency: Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cardiff

Gillian Jones (PC)
Cameron Muir-Jones (C)
Eluned Stenner (Lab)

May 2012 result Lab 965/744 Ind 362
May 2008 result Lab 930/804 PC 325/310
June 2004 result Lab 1083/928 PC 326


PINKNEYS GREEN, Windsor and Maidenhead royal borough council, Berkshire; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Wilson Hendry.

Pinkneys Green ward is in the Maidenhead half of the Royal Borough, covering the north-western end of Maidenhead.  It's a generally residential area with a little countryside (some of which is National Trust property) and few services.

The ward was safe Liberal Democrat in 2003, but the Conservatives came fairly close to splitting representation in 2007.  Long-serving councillor Wilson Hendry defected to the Conservatives in 2010, and at the 2011 election managed to get himself re-elected and bring a second seat home for the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats holding on to one of their previous seats.

The by-election will boil down to a contest between Catherine Hollingsworth for the Conservatives, who is the wife of the remaining Tory councillor, and former Lib Dem councillor for this ward (and former leader of the council) Simon Werner who lost his seat in 2011 and wants it back.  Also standing are Patrick McDonald for Labour, a parish councillor in the neighbouring parish of White Waltham, and UKIP candidate George Chamberlaine.

Parliamentary constituency: Maidenhead
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wycombe and Slough

May 2011 result C 1338/1239/1234 LD 1248/1043/999 Lab 316/259/228
May 2007 result LD 1405/1254/1192 C 1007/996/892 BNP 211
May 2003 result LD 1480/1360/1341 C 603/598/581 Lab 127

George Chamberlaine (UKIP)
Catherine Hollingsworth (C)
Patrick McDonald (Lab)
Simon Werner (LD)

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

(cont.)

ST MARYS, Fenland district council, Cambridgeshire; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Ken Peachey.

St Marys is one of six wards covering the fenland market town of Whittlesey, an island in the fens about six miles east of Peterborough.  The ward covers the town centre and runs south to the Ely-Peterborough railway line, which serves the town by the misspelt Whittlesea station.  The town's major export today is chips; McCains have a large factory here.  There appears to be a major controversy in the town at the moment involving competing supermarket proposals from Sainsbury and The Evil Supermarket Company.

Fenland is notorious for the number of unopposed elections to the council, which peaked in 2007 when eighteen of the forty councillors didn't face a contest at the ballot box.  This attracted unfavourable press comment, and in 2011 the opposition to the ruling Conservatives ensured that every Fenland ward was contested.  Ken Peachey, who had been unopposed in St Marys at his first election in 2007, faced a strong challenge from independent candidate Roy Gerstner, eventually winning by the slim margin of 40 votes.

The by-election pits the ward's two Whittlesey town councillors against each other: Gary Swan is the new Conservative candidate, while Roy Gerstner is trying again.  Labour are also fighting the ward for the first time; their candidate Colin Gale completes the ballot paper.

Parliamentary constituency: North East Cambridgeshire
ONS Travel to Work Area: Peterborough

Colin Gale (Lab)
Roy Gerstner (Ind)
Gary Swan (C)

May 2011 result C 364 Ind 324 Grn 104
May 2007 result C unopposed
May 2003 result C unopposed

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Fun news from the Whittlesey count; Electoral Services have forgotten to bring the postal votes to the counting hall.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

The Holy Word now has a new home.