ALDC By-Election Report, 16th January

By Matthew Ma | Fri 17th January 2025 - 7:41 pm

There were two principal council by-elections running this week, both Lib Dem defences in the Western Counties. We successfully defended one and just barely lost out on the other.

In Cotswold DC, Cllr Andrea Pellegram comfortably won the seat over second place Reform in the Chesterton ward. Congratulations to Andrea and the local team for getting almost half of the votes and holding the seat!

Cotswold DC, Chesterton
Liberal Democrat (Andrea Pellegram): 296 (48.1%, -15.8%)
Reform: 152 (24.7%, new)
Conservative: 106 (17.2%, -7.6%)
Labour: 61 (9.9%, new)

In the other election in the Western Counties, Hossein Pirooz placed a close second in the Saltford ward in Bath & North East Somerset Council, only 4 votes behind the independent who gained the seat from us. It was a close but unfortunate result, thank you to Hossein for standing and the local team for all the effort put in, you’ll get them next time.

Bath & North East Somerset Council, Saltford
Independent: 587 (29.8%, +5.4%)
Liberal Democrat (Hossein Pirooz): 583 (29.6%, -10.5%)
Conservative: 375 (19.0%, -1.7%)
Reform: 205 (10.4%, new)
Green Party: 159 (8.1%, +1.4%)
Labour: 60 (3.0%, -5.0%)

For a full summary of these results, and all other principal council by-elections, please refer to the ALDC by-elections page here.

* Matthew Ma works in the Campaigns and Communications team at ALDC

4 Comments

Ian Patterson 17th Jan '25 - 10:56pm

What went wrong with the Polling Day operation in Saltford?
Geoff Reid 18th Jan '25 - 11:37am

A by-election in a two member ward can be very tricky, particularly if one councillor had a massive personal vote and was able to pull the second over the line.
Winning or coming second, in the current climate getting twice as many votes as ReformUK matters, demonstrating that it is Lib Dems who can stand up to the Faragist far right.
Anthony Acton 18th Jan '25 - 1:52pm

Geoff – exactly the situation here. Also, the winning independent was a local parish councillor campaigning against a controversial plan for a bus lane on the busy A4 through the village.
David Evans 18th Jan '25 - 3:39pm

Hi Anthony, Thanks for the info. The only question is why didn’t the Lib Dems make opposing the bus lane our issue? When I’ve been on it, the A4 through Saltford doesn’t look anything like wide enough to put a bus lane in without very serious impact on other traffic.