24JUL

Reform loses Old Catton to the Tories

1 min read

12:51UTC

Conservative Antony Little gained Old Catton from Reform UK on 16 July, ten weeks after Reform won the Norfolk seat by 1,006 votes; the Greens surged into second and Labour fell to 5.2%.

← Back to England's council map redrawn as five sue Jump to analysis ↓

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Key takeaway

Reform lost a Norfolk seat it won by 1,006 votes in May, with the Greens consolidating the anti-Reform vote.

Conservative Antony Little gained the Old Catton division of Norfolk County Council from Reform UK on 16 July 2026, ten weeks after Reform won it by 1,006 votes. Little took the seat with 973 votes (35.5%), the Green Party surged into second on 32.7%, up 14 points, and Reform's Sue Lawn fell to third on 19.9%; Labour collapsed to 5.2% on a 39.8% turnout ¹.

The vacancy came when Mark Tucker, who had won the seat for Reform in May, resigned within four weeks citing poor health ². That churn is not new: Reform lost 22 councillors in the fortnight after polling day and roughly 40 by early July . Old Catton is where the attrition finally showed as a lost seat rather than a resignation tally.

Norfolk's anti-Reform vote split three ways in May; here it consolidated behind The Greens as the single viable challenger, lifting them from fourth into contention a point behind Little. Where Reform's opponents co-ordinate, its May margins do not survive a mid-term test.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Just ten weeks after Reform UK first won the Old Catton council seat in Norfolk, the Conservatives took it back. Antony Little won for the Conservatives, the Green Party jumped into second place, and Labour's vote collapsed to just 5.2%. The seat became vacant because the Reform councillor who won it in May resigned citing poor health. A single council by-election does not change who runs the country, but it is watched closely as an early test of how durable Reform's gains really are.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Reform's May 2026 majority in Old Catton was built on a first-time protest vote against the two main parties. First-time protest votes tend to be softer than votes for an established party, because voters have no record of the new party actually running anything before deciding whether to stick with it.

Councillor Mark Tucker's resignation within weeks of winning, which triggered this by-election, removed the one local figure whose personal vote might have anchored Reform's support, leaving the seat to be recontested on national polling dynamics rather than incumbency.

Sources:Democracy Club / Norfolk County Council declaration·Democracy Club / Norfolk County Council declaration

Mentions:Reform UK →Green Party →UKIP →Norfolk →Labour Party →Conservative Party →

First Reported In

Update #13 · England's council map redrawn as five sue

Democracy Club / Norfolk County Council declaration· 24 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Reform loses 22 councillors in 14 days

Reform's post-election councillor attrition tracked since May surfaced at the ballot box in Old Catton's loss.

Occurred 21 May 2026

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Reform's councillor losses start to slow

Reform's roughly 40 cumulative departures by early July presaged the Old Catton defeat.

Occurred 2 Jul 2026

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This Event

Reform loses Old Catton to the Tories

Old Catton is the first ballot-box evidence that Reform's May gains are soft where the party must defend.

Different Perspectives

Reform UK

Reform lost Old Catton, the Norfolk seat it won by 1,006 votes ten weeks earlier, to the Conservatives on 16 July, while holding second in both other 16 July by-elections it did not previously hold. The party's May intake already undershot MRP polling by 38%, evidence its local base is thinner than its seat count suggested.

MHCLG / Steve Reed

Reed confirmed 38 new unitaries for 14 counties on 16 July but held back West Sussex and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, saying further time was needed. The department locked in the areas it was confident defending and paused the two it was not.

Local Government Association / litigating councils

Harlow's judicial review, filed 22 July, makes it the fifth council suing over reorganisation, joining Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Portsmouth, with none yet granted a full hearing. New LGA chair Eamonn O'Brien's 7 July intervention now sits behind their case, arguing the timetable itself risks statutory services.

Local Government Association

New chair Eamonn O'Brien broke the LGA's neutrality on reorganisation for the first time since December 2024, telling the incoming prime minister the 'unprecedented scale' of disaggregation risks statutory services and asking him to adjust the LGR timetable, aligning the sector's institutional voice with the judicial review claims Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk have already filed.

Incoming Burnham government

Burnham secured 349 of the backing the NEC's 81-MP threshold required by 13 July, becoming Labour leader on 17 July and prime minister on 20 July without a members' ballot. He now inherits the LGR timetable the LGA wants him to adjust and a finance bill his own backbencher, Liam Byrne, is trying to harden further via amendment NC34.

Rupert Lowe / Restore Britain

Lowe called Farage's Clacton contest a 'Reform-sponsored media circus' and kept Restore Britain out of it, pledging instead to stand in the second by-election he expects the Harborne inquiry to force later this year. The boycott doubles as a signal that Restore Britain, not Reform, will contest the 'real' vote.