This week marks the last by-election of the 2025-26 electoral cycle, and this takes us to the small Worcestershire town of Tenbury Wells.
Malvern Hills DC, Tenbury
This week’s by-election was triggered by the resignation of Conservative councillor Andrew Willmont. He came second in this two-member seat in 2023, significantly ahead of his Conservative running-mate, representing Tenbury alongside a Malvern Hills Independent, who topped the polls.
Turnout rose 7.5% in this by-election compared to the 2023 all-ups, with Reform coming out on top, from a standing start. The Conservatives slipped to a distant second place, whilst us and the Greens were even further behind, in third and fourth respectively.
Thank you to Jed Marson and the local team for flying the Lib Dem flag.
Reform UK: 687 (45.1%, new)
Conservative: 461 (30.3%. -20.2)
Liberal Democrats (Jed Marson): 193 (12.7%, new)
Green Party: 182 (12.0%, new)
Reform UK GAIN from Conservative
Turnout: 40.5%
Thank you to all of our candidates, agents, and campaign teams. A full summary of these results, and all other principal council by-elections, can be found on the ALDC by-elections page here.
* Liam Yip is the Campaigns and Communications Intern at ALDC
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5 Comments
Here is my usual month-end summary of the last fifty local by-elections.
Percentage Vote Share:
Reform 29.19%, Conservatives 19.22%, Greens 17.91%, Labour 13.37%, Liberal Democrats 13.16%, Independents 3.82%, Others 3.32%
Gains and losses are:
Reform: Net gain of thirteen: 17 gains, 3 held, 4 lost
Greens: Net gain of three: 5 gains, 1 held, 2 lost
Conservatives: Net gain of one: 4 gains, 6 held, 3 lost
Plaid Cymru: Net gain of one: 2 gains, 1 held, 1 lost
Lib Dems: Net loss of one: 4 gains, 4 held, 5 lost
Independents: Net loss of six: 0 gains, 0 held, 6 lost
Labour: Net loss of eleven: 1 gain, 2 held, 12 lost
Seats Won:
Reform 20, Conservatives 10, Liberal Democrats 8, Greens 6, Labour 3, Plaid Cymru 3
The above data is for the most recent 50 by-elections in England & Wales (11th December 2025 to 30th April 2026). Parish/Town councils are not included.
Perhaps I m wrong but didn’t the Greens stand in 2023 and got 331 votes.
Looks as if they they lost votes to Reform and ourselves.
What a joy to see Polanski humiliated today.
Either Andrew Teale is wrong or ALDC, he has Independents first, Conservatives second & Greens third on about 20%.
That makes more sense of the vote changes.
According to Ben Wallace’s ward model of the 2024GE, the LDs received 21.2% of the vote in this ward, but in this by election didn’t put in much of an effort, and came a poor third, with just 12.7%.
When the seat was contested in 2023, it was for two members, with one being won by Inds, one by Cons, hence the confusion over % change.
It’s worth noting that Malvern Hills is in west Worcestershire, one of relatively few seats where we are 2nd place to the Tories, the dort of seat that Ed Davey wants to reorientate the entire party around winning.
So you’d expect the party to have thrown everything at this by election, even if we weren’t second last time it is a by election after all and a vital opportunity to increase our support within one of our weaker parts of the constituency.
So for us to come such a distant 3rd and barely ahead of the greens is a really bad sign.
Indeed even if they local party was daft enough not to fight this, if our national media strategy and policy positioning was actually going to be effective in winning over the type of voters it’s all being targeted at, that we’d have at least gotten a higher vote share than our national polling average.