Cllr Claire Thomas, Hull councillor and Lib Dem PPC for Hull West and Hessle in 2015, tells us about their double-gain from Labour on Hessle Town Council earlier this month.
August is probably not my favourite time to be fighting an election – not only are volunteers more likely to be on holiday, but so are voters, so I knew we had a challenge on our hands to take two Town Council seats from Labour last week in Hessle.
Hessle has a mixture of Lib Dem and Labour Councillors on the County and Town Councils. In the last elections in 2011, Labour had won all 7 seats in the two wards with by-elections, so we knew we had a lot of work to do to gain the seats from Labour.
But Labour also has a poor track record of delivery in Hessle (one of the by-elections was triggered by the Labour Councillor being disqualified for non-attendance), as well as in neighbouring Hull where Labour are currently closing libraries and children’s centres contrary to their election pledges.
Thankfully, we had a great team effort with lots of help from people in Hull and the East Riding, as well as further afield. Despite the holiday season, we still got a great turnout from volunteers. We had already been campaigning on local issues, such as car parking charges and fighting to save surrounding green spaces from development. So we were able to build on the Lib Dems track record of working hard in Hessle.
In our area it’s a straight fight between the Lib Dems and Labour – and in these by-elections this was made even more clear as there were no further candidates.
On the day, we gained a result that was even better than we could have hoped for. We gained over 70% of the vote in each ward, with a swing of 29% in Eastfield ward and 25.6% in Northfield ward.
I’m really pleased that with David Nolan and Janet Smith we’ve now got two great Councillors for Hessle who will work hard for the town. And I’m really grateful to everyone who worked hard to get them elected.