Hillingdon Conservatives successfully defended two seats in the Hillingdon West by-election held on Thursday, June 19. Councillors Adam Bennett and Reeta Chamdal were re-elected after the contest was delayed from the original date of May 7 due to the death of Shaun Cooling, the Reform UK candidate.
Despite retaining the seats, the Conservative vote share fell by 10 percentage points compared to the 2022 local elections. Labour's vote share also dropped by 14.9 percentage points. Labour candidate Tiffany Beales finished third, just 37 votes ahead of Reform UK, but remained nearly 500 votes behind the winning Conservatives.
Reform UK candidate Margaret Forrest secured 433 votes, giving the party an overall 18% share. The Green Party fielded one candidate, Alicia Windsor, who finished close to Labour and saw a 4.3 percentage point increase in vote share from 2022.
In a Facebook post, the victorious Hillingdon Conservatives stated: "The dust has settled, Hillingdon Conservatives have increased our number of councillors, Labour has had another disappointing set of results, and Reform's campaign has ended with some devastating outcomes under Andrew Retter's leadership. He is set to be sacked by Nigel Farage in the morning."
Andrew Retter, the Reform UK leader in Hillingdon and a former Conservative councillor, described the statement as "silly and puerile." He added: "I'm not in politics to play childish games. I'm in politics to actually do something to make the lives of our residents in Hillingdon better, and that means to say, resolving the horrendous financial crisis that this council is in."
Full Results
- Reform UK - James Anderson - 347
- Labour - Tiffany Beales - 470
- Conservative - Adam Bennett - 1,084
- Conservative - Reeta Chamdal - 949
- Reform UK - Margaret Edith Elizabeth Forrest - 433
- Liberal Democrats - Muhammad Saqib Iqbal - 63
- Labour - Imran Razak - 362
- Liberal Democrats - Gautam Dilip Sabarwal - 49
- Green Party - Alicia Windsor - 341
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