On 18th February we defended a seat in the Alperton ward of Brent Council, one of three seats we hold on the London Borough. It was a seat Labour deperately wanted to win back, while the Conservatives thought they could make progress in a seat with a large Hindu population.
Despite a long record on the council, we had lost our last seat in 2018. In January 2020, we stormed back on with a by election win in Alperton Ward, when Cllr Anton Georgiou was elected. He was re-elected in the scheduled elections in 2022 with over 2,100, along with Cllr Hannah Matin (while Paul Lorber was elected in nearby Sudbury Ward). Alperton is a three-member ward and a Labour councillor was also re-elected.
Sadly, Anton had to step down after being the victim of a vicious stalking and harassment campaign.
The team were able to build on Anton’s strong recordof work and action in the ward. A resignation letter from Anton, endorsing Charlie Clinton as his successor, went out across the ward.
The team had run a survey in September / October to identify the key local issues. The survey showed that the issues differed for those living in the tower blocks and those in conventional housing. Poor street cleaning and the sense that the Labour-led Council had let people down was universal. In the tower blocks, this was alongside serious concerns about poor maintenance and customer service. Elsewhere, the lack of investment in infrastructure to support new housing development was the standout issue – with knock on effects on GPs, parking & public transport being the biggest concerns.
“The area has a high number of people moving in and out,” explains the by election Campaign Manager Craig O’Donnell. “This means we needed to keep reminding people of our team’s hard-work and Labour’s failure. We started with a clear critic of Labour, moving on later to a talking more about our record and what we would deliver.”
During the campaign, this split on issues was reflected in targeted literature. The team delivered a piece of literature a week in the run up to the regulated period, and even more afterwards.
Direct mail and blue letters were a key part of the campaign (link to the recent direct mail article).
“Our literature campaign was supported by a generous grant from ALDC’s fighting Fund,” says Craig. “It helped us up the amount of direct mail we were able to do.”
Every leaflet had a bar chart on it and we worked to squeeze the Conservatives. However, the Tory vote proved hard to identify in canvassing and were therefore harder to target than we would have liked.
We did a lot of canvassing. This was targeted on the marked register, those new on the register (the area has a high number of people moving in and out) and postal voters. Some doors were knocked on 4 times!
The contact rates were impressive. In the four months running up to election day:
- 3,460 out of 4,438 doors had at least one knock
- 42% of all voters were spoken to
- Over 50% of those we want to speak to were reached
“Both Simon Drage and Richard Cole supported the campaign with canvassing analysis, ensuring we were on track to win,” finishes Craig.
The result was an excellent one, showing clear progress from the last London Borough elections, with a 10% swing to us:
Liberal Democrat (Charlie Clinton): 1743 (48.5%, +2.0%)
Labour: 827 (23.0%, -18.3%)
Conservative: 740 (20.6%, +8.4%)
Reform: 286 (8.0%, new)
Our winning Lib Dem Candidate, Charlie Clinton said:
“I am beyond grateful for everyone who helped deliver this fantastic result – from anyone who knocked on a single door to the ALDC for their generous support, it all added up to brilliant start to the year for Brent & London Lib Dems.
“But now the hard work starts – not only to deliver the investment Alperton desperately needs, but also to build the Liberal Democrat brand across Brent ahead of the 2026 local elections.
“We haven’t had an opportunity to take the fight to Labour like this since 2006 – so to any Labour facing council candidates with elections coming up I would say get out there and make the most of it! Many of Labour’s voters are looking for a new home.”