There was one principal council by-election held on the 5th November. The Tories held the seat. There were no Parish and Town council election results reported to ALDC.
The Lower Sheering Ward of Epping Forest District council in Essex is a one member rural ward that has a polling station in Hertfordshire and lies in the highly marginal Harlow parliamentary constituency. Despite this Labour failed to nominate a candidate and the Tories increased their vote by less than 1%. We ran a paperless campaign yet got more than four times the vote we received in a by-election in the ward in June 2005.
As the 10:10 campaign gathers momentum the next campaigning step for us all is working towards Copenhagen, the United Nations Climate change conference 7-18th December. The party will be producing a range of materials to help you campaign on this and there will be a number of marches and events to attend in London on December 5th. However it’s worth finding out what is happening in your area e.g. local demonstrations and getting involved. We will keep you updated week by week as the campaign develops.The Political Parties and Elections Act became law in July 2009. One key element of the act is that in the next six months the spending of political parties will be governed by three different regimes! In the period 1/1/2010 to the start of your local election regulated period (earliest 29/3/2010) materials and expenses can count towards:
· the national parties limit where it promotes the national party
· promoting the PPC counts towards the new “long” campaign limit and will need to be declared.
· promoting anything else can be allocated to the local campaign, but needs no declaration before the start of the regulated period for the local campaign.
This is complicated and will require very careful attention to imprints, PPERA declarations, Long and Short Parliamentary campaign and local election campaign expense limits. As with the Euro campaign last year record-keeping is very important. There is a strong argument for the constituency general election agent being the agent for all the wards covered by the constituency in the local elections to keep the record keeping comprehensive and consistent.