23AUG

Reform wins three of ten by-elections

2 min read

19:09UTC

Reform UK took Snettisham, Heacham and Long Sutton from other parties and held Harton, across ten council by-elections on 30 July and 6 August.

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Key takeaway

Reform took three seats from other parties and held a fourth in a fortnight of by-elections.

Reform UK gained three council seats and held a fourth across ten council by-elections held on Thursday 30 July and Thursday 6 August ¹. On 6 August it took Snettisham on 35.1% and Heacham on 37.8%, both from the Conservatives on King's Lynn and West Norfolk in Norfolk, with the Liberal Democrats runner-up in each. It held Harton on South Tyneside with 35.3%. Its 30 July gain was Long Sutton on South Holland in Lincolnshire, taken from an Independent on 56.3%.

Council by-elections fill single vacancies between the four-yearly whole-council rounds, usually on turnouts under a third, and in midsummer lower still. They measure a party's standing with the voters who still turn up, which is a different quantity from its ability to keep hold of the people it selected. Reform's two figures currently point in opposite directions, and only one of them involves anybody voting.

Three weeks earlier the traffic ran the other way. The Conservatives took Old Catton back from Reform in Norfolk . On the same mid-July Thursday the Conservatives and Greens took two further seats off Labour . Two Thursdays of results in either direction is a small sample, and the honest reading of these ten contests is that opposition parties consolidate where they can and Reform converts where the Conservative vote has already gone.

The gains matter most for what they set up. A ward won on a summer by-election is a ward Reform defends in the May 2027 unitary elections with an incumbent in place, on boundaries that reorganisation may yet redraw.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

A council by-election happens when a councillor resigns, dies, or is removed, and the seat is refilled by a vote in that single ward rather than waiting for the next scheduled election. Ten such contests were held on 30 July and 6 August across different councils. Reform UK won three of them from the Conservatives and an Independent, and held onto a fourth it already had. Because each of these votes only involves the few thousand voters in one small area, and because turnout in by-elections is usually much lower than in a full council election, the results tell you about that specific ward more reliably than they tell you about the country as a whole.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

By-election turnout typically runs at a fraction of a full council election, often below 30% of the electorate, which means a few hundred committed activists can decide the outcome regardless of the wider national picture. Reform's ground campaign in Norfolk, built on the party's existing county council administration there, gave it a local organisational advantage in Snettisham and Heacham that a national poll cannot capture.

The seats being contested were themselves vacated by resignations and deaths rather than a coordinated recall, so the ten results are a patchwork of unrelated local triggers rather than a single test of Reform's standing.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Reform's hold at Harton, South Tyneside shows the gains are not limited to its existing Norfolk stronghold.
Meaning
A 30% win rate across ten scattered by-elections is broadly consistent with Reform's current national polling share rather than evidence of an accelerating trend.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The Liberal Democrats built much of their 1990s and 2000s council strength through exactly this kind of steady by-election accretion, winning individual wards on local issues years before any national poll reflected the gains, showing that council by-election wins can be a genuine leading indicator rather than noise.

Counter-parallel: The Conservative Party's council by-election performance stayed resilient through 2021 and 2022 even as its national polling collapsed after the 2022 leadership turmoil, showing the two measures can diverge sharply when local campaigning capacity outlasts national reputation.

Consensus view: A 30% strike rate across ten contests reads as broadly in line with Reform's national polling share rather than a sign of momentum, because by-elections tend to track the incumbent-versus-challenger dynamic in each specific ward more than any national swing.

Counter-view: Against that, vote shares in the mid-to-high 30s in Snettisham and Heacham, plus the same-day hold at Harton in South Tyneside, point to support consolidating in more than one region rather than a single local pocket.

Key tension: Whether ten scattered by-elections, each fought on local turnout of a few hundred voters, support any conclusion about national trend at all.

Sources:Local democracy reporting

Mentions:Reform UK →Conservative Party →Liberal Democrats →Norfolk →Old Catton →Labour Party →

First Reported In

Update #15 · Reform bleeds councillors, wins by-elections

Local democracy reporting· 12 Aug 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

This Event

Reform wins three of ten by-elections

Reform is still taking seats from voters in the same weeks it is losing councillors to defection and discipline, and the two measures are routinely conflated.

Led to

Reform gains Harraby South from Labour

Reform's early-August run of ward gains and holds continued into Harraby South's 20 August gain.

Occurred 20 Aug 2026

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Lib Dems take Almondbury off Reform

The early-August pattern of Reform gains and holds contrasts with Almondbury's loss the following week.

Occurred 13 Aug 2026

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Different Perspectives

Ian Davidson, Acting Returning Officer for Clacton

Davidson's office printed a 90cm ballot paper for the record 34-candidate field, with nothing in electoral law capping candidate numbers or the £500 deposit each pays. He expects the paper's size to raise printing costs and slow the count into the early hours, a strain that follows from the major parties' boycott, not from turnout.

Scottish Labour members

Members now choose between Michael Marra and Joe Fagan after Monica Lennon fell one MP nomination short of the three-MP, three-MSP threshold, a bar set by MPs and union officials rather than the wider membership. Whoever wins takes office having faced only one rival on the members' ballot.

Labour Party

Labour gained Penistone East from Reform on 20 August but lost Harraby South to Reform the same night, a wash that undercuts any claim of momentum. The party can point to beating Reform in a genuinely fought contest, but not to a pattern running only in its favour.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats took two of Reform's May wards, Almondbury on 13 August and St Neots Eynesbury on 20 August, the latter on a 29.8-point rise in their own vote share. Both results let the party claim it is the beneficiary when voters turn against Reform, not Labour or the Conservatives.

Reform UK

Reform UK can point to winning Clacton unopposed by the other major parties and to taking Harraby South from Labour, a ward it had never previously contested. That gives the party two results to cite even as three previously held wards changed hands elsewhere in August.

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin's John O'Dowd ruled out a Stormont walkout on 11 August despite calling the DUP increasingly difficult to work with, closing a question Conor Murphy had left open a fortnight earlier. Only Sinn Féin or the DUP can collapse the joint First Minister office, so the denial gives up the party's own leverage in budget talks.