Lib Dems hold Holywell

See the full by-election results

The Liberal Democrats have won the Holywell by-election, retaining their second council seat for this ward.

Mark Mills, a student at Teddy Hall and the Lib Dem candidate, won with 183 votes.

Polls were open 7am-10pm for the by-election, which was triggered by Lib Dem councillor Richard Huzzey’s resignation.

Richard Huzzey stood down just days after the local elections, announcing he had been offered a post-doctoral research fellowship at Yale University, which he described as “too good to miss”.

Mr Huzzey was elected in 2006, and was not up for re-election in 2008 as Oxford City Council is elected in halves, with one of the two seats for each ward elected every two years.

At the time, Mr Huzzey said: “It’s been fantastic to work with Holywell residents over the past two years, and I’d have liked to continue for the rest of my four-year term.

“Yet an academic job at Yale is just too good to miss.”

Lib Dem success

The win will be heartening for the Lib Dems, who lost administrative control over the City Council after the local elections in May, when they lost ground to Labour.

The Council, however, still remains under no overall control.

The Lib Dems are likely to have benefited from the timing of the poll, as most students were still eligible to vote. However, many were sitting exams.

In the local elections recently held, the Lib Dems performed well in the two main student wards, Carfax and Holywell, but fared poorly elsewhere.

Lib Dem candidate Nathan Pyle won his Holywell ward seat with more than twice the votes of the second place Conservative candidate, Alex Stafford.

Familiar faces

Apart from the Lib Dems, the other party’s candidates were all familiar faces, having all lost in the May local elections.

Paul Sargent, who defected to the Conservatives from the Lib Dems during his term, and subsequently lost his council seat to Lib Dem Stephen Brown at the beginning of May, came second place in the by-election.

Green candidate Chip Sherwood also had a second attempt, having come third in the race for the other Holywell seat in May.

Sarah Hutchinson, a graduate student, stood for Labour, having lost in the Carfax elections in May.

Canvassing

Many students experienced heavy campaigning in the run-up to the by-election.

On the day, the parties were canvassing outside many of the Holywell ward colleges as well as the King’s Arms crossroads. Despite this, voter turnout was just 11.7%. At the local elections in May, turnout was 26.9% for Holywell.

At Teddy Hall, the college of winning candidate Mark Mills, a JCR motion was passed on Sunday banning all door-to-door canvassing.

Results

Turnout: 11.7%