Labour has won a Kidsgrove Town Council seat after a Reform councillor’s failure to complete required paperwork triggered a byelection.
Ange Cooper was elected in Kidsgrove Central and Ravenscliffe with 403 votes, narrowly beating Reform’s Olivia Westcott on 377. Independent Georgia Shenton came third with 127, Conservative Cressida Dickens fourth with 122. Labour’s majority: 26 votes. Turnout was 16.9%, with 1,034 ballots issued from an electorate of 6,120, five ballots rejected.
It caps an awkward run for Reform in a seat the party originally won without any vote at all.
Westcott was returned unopposed in May
Westcott was one of seven candidates returned unopposed for seven available seats back in May. No ballot required, but she still had to sign a Declaration of Acceptance of Office before formally taking her seat. For town and parish councillors, that declaration normally has to happen before or at the first council meeting following the election, unless the council agrees to extend the deadline. Miss it, and the seat automatically becomes vacant under Section 83 of the Local Government Act 1972.
Westcott didn’t sign it before or during the annual town council meeting on 21 May. She later said a family emergency arose about two hours before the meeting and kept her from attending, and that she contacted the council to explain, initially being told she could complete the paperwork the following day. By then the deadline had already passed and the seat was vacant. Kidsgrove Town Council said it would review its arrangements afterwards.
Voters got called back to the polls
Once the vacancy was formally created, local electors requested a byelection, and Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council confirmed the poll for 6 August. Reform selected Westcott again, giving her a shot at winning the seat properly this time. Facing three other candidates instead of none, she lost by 26 votes.
The full result: Ange Cooper (Labour) 403, 39.2%. Olivia Westcott (Reform) 377, 36.6%. Georgia Shenton (Independent) 127, 12.3%. Cressida Dickens (Conservative) 122, 11.9%.
It’s a close result in a low-turnout town council race, fewer than one in six eligible voters actually took part, and Labour’s margin was 2.5 points. Calling it a sweeping verdict on Reform would be overstating it. That doesn’t make it any less embarrassing, though. Reform started with a councillor returned unopposed and ended up losing the seat the moment residents were actually asked to vote.
Westcott’s still a borough councillor
This result only touches her attempted seat on the town council. She remains a Reform councillor on Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, representing the separate Kidsgrove and Ravenscliffe ward alongside Charlie Clarke and former Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis. Town and borough councils are separate tiers, so Cooper’s win doesn’t shift the balance of power at the borough level, which Reform took control of in May.
It does hand Labour a small local win to point to, at a moment when Reform’s been keen to present itself as the dominant force in English council politics. That record has already faced real scrutiny, with more than 120 Reform councillors having left, lost the whip, or changed affiliation since the party started building its local government presence. Reform in Kent was also recently embarrassed after opposition councillors exploited a loophole in a new rule requiring meetings to end with the national anthem, the Greens sang all six verses instead of stopping after the first.
Kidsgrove is a more straightforward story than either of those. Reform won the seat unopposed. Its candidate missed a paperwork deadline. A byelection got called. When voters finally got an actual choice, Labour won it by 26 votes.
One response to “Labour takes Kidsgrove seat after Reform councillor’s paperwork failure forces byelection”
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Reform councillors have a habit of claiming a family emergency. On the Isle of Wight a certain David MacLean won his seat, never turned to the vote count and claimed “family emergency”. He was then stood down claiming: yes you’ve guessed it “family emergency” The idiots in his constituency voted in another Reform Councillor!
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