Catherine Goodyer

Catherine Goodyer was the Labour Party candidate in the Barton and Winton ward by-election on Salford City Council, held on 22 April 2026. She polled 643 votes, narrowly behind Reform UK's Michael James Felse (676), who took the seat with a margin of just 33 votes.

Gooyer has lived in the Barton and Winton community for seven years and stood as a first-time candidate. She works as a caseworker and said she had seen the challenges facing her community at first hand, with a focus on holding landlords to account and street cleaning. Her selection followed the death of Labour's long-serving incumbent David Lancaster MBE, in whose memory she acknowledged she would have "big shoes to fill."

The result continued Labour's pattern of by-election losses to Reform UK in the pre-7 May period across northern England, lending credibility to polling models projecting Reform council gains in other Greater Manchester boroughs. Barton and Winton had been a SAFE Labour ward; Goodyer's defeat added it to the list of seats providing direct evidence of Reform's inroads in metropolitan Labour territory ahead of the main cycle.