23AUG

Labour takes Penistone East from Reform

2 min read

19:09UTC

Labour won Penistone East on 20 August with 1,728 votes to Reform UK's 795, in a ward that returned three members in May.

← Back to Reform loses three wards, wins Clacton Jump to analysis ↓

PoliticsAssessed

Key takeaway

Labour won Penistone East by 28 points, in a ward whose May result offers no comparable baseline.

A ward that elected three councillors in May chose one on 20 August, and Labour won it. Penistone East on Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council went from Reform UK to Labour by 1,728 votes to 795, a margin of 28 points on 3,339 ballots, or 51.8% against 23.8%⁠¹.

Penistone is a town in the South Yorkshire borough of Barnsley, and the seat came to Reform on 7 May in the round that returned 1,448 Reform councillors across 14 English councils. That May contest elected three members, which is the reason no swing figure appears here⁠². Where each elector holds three votes, a party's share blends plumping, split tickets and preferences between individual candidates into one number. Set that against a single vacancy and the swing you get describes the counting rules rather than the electorate.

Thursday's paper still says something plain: Labour won a seat Reform held going in, and won it comfortably. The committee arithmetic follows without waiting for a comparison. Places and scrutiny chairs on Barnsley are allocated by group size, and this reallocation at least came from a poll, unlike the councillor attrition Mark Pack has been tracking since May, which moves the same places with nobody voting.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Most council wards elect one councillor, but some, including Penistone East, elect three at once from a single ballot where voters can choose up to three candidates. That all-up contest happened in May. August's by-election filled just one seat that fell vacant since then, contested as a normal single-seat race. Because the ballot structure is different, comparing the two results directly, the way you would for a simple rematch between the same two candidates, does not produce a meaningful number.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Multi-member wards elect several councillors at once from a single ballot on which each voter can back as many candidates as there are seats. A later by-election to fill one vacant seat is fought as a single-seat contest with a different ballot structure and a different, usually smaller, field of candidates.

The two contests are not measuring the same thing, which is why no conventional share change applies to Penistone East, even though both elections happened in the same ward.

What could happen next?

Meaning
Penistone East's result cannot be filed alongside the single-vacancy wards in this set without a caveat about the different ballot structure.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Consensus view: The Elections Centre's long-running Local Elections Handbook, compiled by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, treats multi-member ward by-elections as non-comparable to that ward's earlier all-up result, because a single vacancy is contested against a different, usually smaller, field than the several seats filled together at the original poll.

Penistone East elected three councillors in May, so a like-for-like swing figure for the August vacancy cannot legitimately be produced.

Counter-view: Labour's 1,728 votes to Reform's 795, 51.8% against 23.8% of 3,339 valid votes, are still informative even without a certified swing figure. They show Labour comfortably ahead in this specific single-seat matchup, whatever the earlier three-seat result looked like.

Key tension: Whether the absence of a computable swing should stop comparisons between Penistone East and the single-vacancy wards in this same set of results, or whether the raw vote shares are comparable enough regardless.

Sources:PollCheck·Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council·Ayes To The Right

Mentions:Labour Party →Reform UK →Penistone East →Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council →Barnsley →Mark Pack →

First Reported In

Update #16 · Reform loses three wards, wins Clacton

PollCheck· 23 Aug 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

This Event

Labour takes Penistone East from Reform

Barnsley's group balance shifts on a result that cannot be compared with the May election that produced the seat.

Led to

Labour retakes a St Helens ward

Billinge continues Labour retaking May-won Reform wards.

Occurred 27 Aug 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)

Ap Iorwerth presented six priorities to the Senedd on 22 September without numeric targets or a named partner party, promising to work across the chamber where there is common ground. He says his government will be judged on results.

Michael Marra / Scottish Labour

Marra won the leadership on 19 September, and three days later his 17 MSPs backed Swinney's right-to-decide motion once their child-poverty amendment was written in. He says Scottish Labour's task is to tell voters what it stands for.

Andy Burnham / Labour Party

Burnham told conference in Liverpool on 29 September that Labour's next manifesto will commit to changing the electoral system, and invited every party into a National Commission on Electoral Reform. He has not named a replacement system, and no chair or remit has been published.

Conservative Party (frontbench peers and Kemi Badenoch)

Conservative frontbench peers argued against retrospective rules at the Lords Second Reading on 14 September, a position that protects gifts made before any cap. Kemi Badenoch rejected Burnham's electoral reform commission on 2 October, accusing him of using it to entrench the left.

Reform UK

Reform denied wrongdoing after the Channel 4 News programme, called the sting a hoax by climate activists and said it would cooperate with the Metropolitan Police. In the same month it announced £36m gifts from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.

Steff Aquarone / Liberal Democrats (North Norfolk)

Aquarone told Rayner in the Commons on 7 September that North Norfolk District Council had spent money preparing for a reorganisation the Government has now withdrawn. He puts the cost of the cancelled merger on districts in the four areas.