Old Catton
Division of Norfolk County Council where Reform UK lost a by-election on 16 July 2026.
Old Catton, a Norfolk County Council division, flipped from Reform UK to the Conservatives on 16 July 2026, just ten weeks after Reform first won it, one of the fastest reversals of the party's May 2026 gains.
Last refreshed: 12 August 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why did Reform UK lose Old Catton just ten weeks after winning it?
Timeline for Old Catton
Mentioned in: Reform up 3.1 points, out of St Neots
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Reform wins three of ten by-elections
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Clacton's ballot paper splits the right four ways
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Reform loses Old Catton to the Tories
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Labour crumbles in two more wards
UK Local Elections 2026Background
Old Catton is an electoral division of Norfolk County Council, the top-tier local authority for the county. It carried limited standalone profile until a rapid change of hands made it a national reference point for testing the durability of Reform UK's 2026 local election gains.
The division sits within Norfolk's wider county map alongside wards such as Dereham Toftwood and the Peterborough wards of Fletton and Woodston, several of which also changed hands in the weeks after May's elections. That clustering has made Old Catton part of a broader pattern editors and analysts point to when assessing whether the results of May's local elections are holding, rather than a story about the division in isolation.
Old Catton flips back to the Conservatives
The Conservatives' Antony Little gained the Old Catton division on Norfolk County Council from Reform UK on 16 July 2026, just ten weeks after Reform had won it with a 1,006-vote majority in the 7 May county elections. The winning Reform councillor had resigned within four weeks of taking the seat, the vacancy rather than a contested defeat triggering the by-election.
The Green Party surged into second place and Labour's vote collapsed to 5.2%, part of a wider pattern that day: Labour also lost Dereham Toftwood in Norfolk to the Conservatives and Fletton and Woodston in Peterborough to The Greens, with Reform holding second place in both.
Who won the Old Catton by-election?
When was the Old Catton by-election?
What was Labour's vote share in the Old Catton by-election?
