Cllr Caroline Leaver (North Devon DC, Devon CC) explains how we made the first by-election gain of 2025 from the Conservatives in Instow ward in North Devon.
On 9th January 2025 the Liberal Democrats won a historic by-election to North Devon Council, taking the seat from the Conservatives with a majority of 29. We had not stood in this seat the last time it had been contested. Congratulations to Cllr Becky Coombs. Welcome to the team running North Devon Council.
Instow is probably one of the most beautiful parts of the county, located on the north Devon coast at the confluence of the Taw and Torridge rivers. The ward is extremely rural. The only settlement of any size being the coastal village of Instow, and the rest of the ward covers the very, very rural area between Barnstaple and Bideford. It’s mainly fields and hamlets of 3 or 4 houses, with many, many miles of narrow country lanes. The beach is a magnet for tourists and locals alike, and the countries longest continuously paved and traffic free cycle path, the Tarka Trail, runs through the village. It’s a lovely place.
What is not so lovely though has been the Conservatives’ electoral success over decades, winning the seat in every local election this century.
The by-election was the first by-election in Britain of 2025, forced by the resignation of the latest tory district councillor. I’ve no doubt they timed the by-election over the Christmas holidays to give them the advantage over any candidate who would need to campaign to win the seat from them. They reckoned without the campaigning strategy and hard work of North Devon Lib Dems. We are thrilled to have won the seat, and for Cllr Becky Coombs to have joined the Lib Dem team running the District Council.
So how did we do it? Its really not that complicated. There were a number of key ingredients that came together to make the win possible.
We had a great candidate, who came second as an Independent candidate in 2023 and came close to winning. Becky has lived in the ward for ten years, works with young people and is pretty well known in Instow village.
The campaign strategy focused mainly on leaflet delivery, with canvassing ramping up after Christmas. Literature we used was:
- A RISO survey
- A3 colour Leaflet Introducing Becky
- A blue letter to Postal Voters stuffed inside a Christmas card (postal ballots arrived 19 December so the timing was good for that)
- A final leaflet to all voters
- A blue letter on the last weekend before polling to all voters who had voted in at least one local election in the last ten years (the same letter as to Postal Voters)
- A good morning leaflet delivered on eve of poll and polling day morning
- An ‘It’s Today’ leaflet to for knocking up Lib Dem voters on election day.
A selection of the literature delivered in the by-election can be found in this folder.
Using Connect to create Minivan lists made it possible to find the isolated homes of Postal Voters for leaflet and Blue letter delivery. It’s a massively helpful approach to rural campaigning and we wouldn’t have won without it.
Box counts from the Verification showed that we smashed the Postal Vote (thanks to Blue letters and Christmas cards) and the most rural parts of the ward. This was really down to the determination of a core of around 8 -10 people from across the district who took it upon themselves to work the rural parts of the ward with more focus than has ever happened before. Leaflet delivery is slow, particularly Blue Letters, but absolutely worth it – particularly in these areas where our hand written envelopes with a friendly, positive letter from a candidate was a welcome novelty.
The result was fantastic. For the Liberal Democrats to take this seat from the tories in the first by-election of the year was great. What was also fantastic about this by-election is that it shows really clearly that we can win in rural areas. We can win where the tories have always won before. We can use data and campaigning tools to target those voters who are most likely to respond well and to vote for us.
Tories beware – the Lib Dems have you in their sights, armed with Blue letters, some fabulously hard working people and minivan codes!