There were three principal local council by-elections held on Thursday 6th October. There were two Labour holds and a Tory hold. There were no parish or town council by-election results reported to ALDC. 
Kensington and Chelsea have pioneered developing their local parties capacity in the last couple of years following their tremendous victory in Colville Ward By-Election in July 2009. They have worked on neighbouring wards and used the combined strength of the London parties to build their strength in other recent by-elections such as Brompton and Queens Gate.
A sensible tactic for those who can afford it was used to get a quick first leaflet out in Norland before the start of the regulated period using paid delivery. As is often the case in safe Labour or Tory seats our relatively standard by-election methods can have dramatically more impact when they’re novel to the electorate. In Norland it was the “blue letters”. Residents really liked them, read them and responded to them.
In Watford we had two concurrent by-elections. Nascot, where we were defending, polled last week. For the first weeks of campaigning we naturally focused on holding Nascot successfully; the Vicarage campaign suffered as a result. With Nascot held, we condensed a five week campaign into five days in Vicarage. A piece of literature was delivered every day but we could not turn it round in such a short space of time. The message from most recent by-elections is that it is the doorstep work that is crucial to success and this fell by the wayside. We were not aided by a previous Lib Dem supporter standing as an independent and splitting the vote. In the circumstances second was a creditable result. What must be worrying for the Tories in a parliamentary seat that they won at the general election is that from the two by-elections in two weeks their aggregate position is now third.
Other Byelections: