Okay, let’s face it, the local elections are not the most glamorous in the calendar but they are, in some ways, the most relevant to our everyday lives.
(this post now updated with the results fron the 4 May local elections)
Turnout in local elections rarely exceeds half that seen for national elections and the big issues are always, of course, reserved for higher authorities but these local elections are about as close as ordinary electors get to the democratic process. There’s a decent chance you’ll know some of your local councillors and, once elected, they do have real power – especially in planning.
So here’s everything you need to know about the 4 May local elections in Hertsmere, including the results for Aldenham Parish Council and for the two Radlett wards in Hertsmere Borough Council.
Did you remember your ID?
This was the first election for which Britons were required to produce photo ID. Polling suggested that one in four voters didn’t know they needed ID before the elections and evidence is coming in that turnout was affected in a statistically significant way by the new requirements. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was in the cabinet at the time the voter ID law was passed, says the new rules were a form of ‘gerrymandering’ (wrong word but we know what he means). This will make it harder to secure continued support for this and the governmemt may have to at least modify the acceptable ID list, which is the focus for unhappiness about this measure.
Which elections?
Here in Radlett, we voted in two elections, for Hertsmere Borough Council and for Aldenham Parish Council (there are no Hertfordshire County Council elections until 2025).
Hertsmere Borough Council consists of 16 wards; in Elstree and Borehamwood, Bushey, Potters Bar, Shenley and Aldenham (which is made up of Radlett and the small settlements of Letchmore Heath and Aldenham). Each ward returns either two or three councillors, for a total of 39. Aldenham is divided into two wards. Most of Radlett’s area, including the bustling downtown area, is in Aldenham East (map) and Aldenham West is mostly rural, stretching out to take in Aldenham, Letchmore Heath and the aerodrome (map). The Borough Council meets at the council offices in Borehamwood. From Radlett we send a total of four councillors to the Borough Council, two from each ward.
Borough councillors are not paid for their work but can claim an allowance – and it can be quite substantial. In 2020-21 (the most recent published year), for instance, Morris Bright MBE, leader of Hertsmere Borough Council and friend to the stars, received an allowance of £44,523 for his service to the Borough. Deputy Leader Caroline Clapper received £20,509.23 (details on the Hertsmere web site). You may also know Ms Clapper as Radlett’s County Councillor – she’s a hard-working representative for the Watling ward that takes in the whole of Radlett and Elstree. For that role she received an additional alowance of £22,607.04 in financial year 2022-23 (details on the HCC web site).
All Borough councillors can claim a basic allowance of £6,045 per year and there are additional payments for cabinet responsibilities, travel and so on, so a number of Labour and Liberal councillors will now be seeing a substantial increase in their allowances. The rules are on the Hertsmere web site.
As a result of the elections, Hertsmere has a new Mayor – Labour Borough councillor Chris Myers. He and his deputy are of the old-fahioned, chain-bearing, ceremonial variety, though, elected by their fellow councillors, not the thrusting new kind of directly-elected Mayor. Councillor Chris Myers was chosen by other councillors at a meeting last week.
Previous Mayor John Graham was a long-serving Hertsmere Borough councillor from the Aldenham East ward and sat as a representative of Hertsmere Borough Council on Aldenham Parish Council, where he is Vice Chair to new Chair Helen Jones.
Aldenham Parish Council is divided into two wards and they are the same as the Borough Council wards – Aldenham East and Aldenham West. The Parish Council meets in the offices above Radlett library. In the Parish we elect a total of 12 councillors, six for each ward. Eight of these councillors are elected here in the Parish and four are appointed as representatives of Hertsmere Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council.
The parties
Both of the councils in which we voted on 4 May are historically controlled by the Conservatives but Hertsmere has, for the first time in over 20 years, changed hands and is thus ‘no overall control’. The Conservatives are still the largest party but power will now be shared by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Hertsmere now has a Labour leader and a Labour Mayor and Deputy.
The green surge in the local elections, which saw the Green Party’s representation grow by more than any other party in the local elections, did not touch Hertsmere but there are now Green councillors in neighbouring districts. The Green Party is benefiting from its ‘clean hands’ – they’re not touched by the Tories’ catastrophic national performance nor by ambivalence about Starmer’s careful triangulation, so some voters consider them an attractive option.
Hertsmere Borough Council is presently divided like so:
| Party | Seats |
|---|---|
| Conservative | 16 |
| Labour (and Cooperative) | 14 |
| Liberal Democrat | 9 |
| 39 |
All four of the Borough councillors returned from the two Radlett wards are still Conservatives and, let’s face it, will be until the end of time.
After the 2019 elections the picture looked very different:
| Party | Seats |
|---|---|
| Conservative | 29 |
| Labour | 7 |
| Liberal Democrat | 3 |
| 39 |
At the Parish level it’s simpler – all twelve councillors are Conservatives. Other parties do stand (see the lists below) and politics in Hertsmere is active and disputatious but, let’s be real, Radlett is a prosperous Home Counties town and is likely to be Tory forever.
Who was elected?
Here are all the candidates elected in the Parish and Borough Council elections on 4 May, starting with Hertsmere Borough Council. Incumbent candidates, re-elected at this election, are shown in bold.
Mark Cherry, who was an Aldenham Parish Councillor and Chair of the Council’s planning committee, stood down. Mister Cherry recently withdrew a planning application for a widely-opposed development of eight homes in the centre of Radlett. Jackie Lefton, Aldenham East Councillor and one-time Chair of the Parish Council, also stood down.
Hertsmere Borough Council, Aldenham East ward, 4 May 2023 (re-elected in bold)
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denton-Cardew, Ben | Lib Dem | 311 | N |
| Goldman, Joshua Jack Nathan | Lab | 179 | N |
| Howard, Stuart John | Lib Dem | 300 | N |
| Rosehill, Brett Ashley | Con | 853 | Y |
| Selby, Lucy | Con | 967 | Y |
| Treves Brown, Julian Patrick | Lab | 167 | N |
Hertsmere Borough Council, Aldenham West ward, 4 May 2023 (re-elected in bold)
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Al-Saadoon, Saif Madid | Lib Dem | 214 | N |
| Clapper, Caroline Sara | Con | 882 | Y |
| Dhadra, Ronan Dash | Lab | 171 | N |
| Huff, Sandra Ann | Lab | 200 | N |
| Lambert, David Stephen | Con | 752 | Y |
| May, Jon | Lib Dem | 186 | N |
Aldenham Parish Council, Aldenham East ward, 4 May 2023 (re-elected in bold)
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ali, Sahil Singh | Con | 853 | Y |
| Benjamin, Sandra Ruth | Con | 922 | Y |
| Graham, John | Con | 955 | Y |
| Jones, Helen | Con | 901 | Y |
| Rosehill, Romy Michelle | Con | 860 | Y |
| Samuelson, Estelle | Con | 973 | Y |
| Treves Brown, Julian Patrick | Lab | 396 | N |
Aldenham Parish Council, Aldenham West ward, 4 May 2023 (re-elected in bold)
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Butwick, Anthony | Con | 758 | Y |
| Diskin, Clare | Con | 753 | Y |
| Huff, Sandra Ann | Lab | 363 | N |
| Khawaja, Saleem | Con | 646 | Y |
| Lambert, David Stephen | Con | 789 | Y |
| Nygate, Daniel William | Con | 671 | Y |
| Woolf, Carl Elliott | Con | 729 | Y |
Previous elections
Here are the results of the 2019 elections, for our Hertsmere Borough Council seats and for Aldenham Parish Council. The councillors with a ‘Yes’ in the ‘Elected?’ were elected and you can learn more about them by clicking on their names.
Hertsmere Borough Council, Aldenham East ward, 2 May 2019
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI-Saadoon, Saif Madid | Lib Dem | 204 | N |
| Dickson, Sue | Ind | 251 | N |
| Graham, John | Con | 1,058 | Y |
| Harris, David Johnathan | Lab | 160 | N |
| Huff, Sandra Ann | Lab | 143 | N |
| Selby, Lucy | Con | 1,097 | Y |
| Turnout 40.28% |
Hertsmere Borough Council, Aldenham West ward, 2 May 2019
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clapper, Caroline Sara | Con | 1,001 | Y |
| Kirk, Richard Arthur | Lab | 175 | N |
| Lambert, David | Con | 845 | Y |
| Maizels, John Henry | Lab | 160 | N |
| Watson, Paul | Lib Dem | 197 | N |
| Turnout 33.2% |
Aldenham Parish Council, Aldenham East ward, 2 May 2019
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Al-Saadoon, Tariq Saif | Lab | 214 | N |
| Bass, Diana Mary | Lab | 208 | N |
| de Skuba, Przemek | Con | 865 | Y (resigned January 2021) |
| Dogan, Zeynep | Lab | 201 | N |
| Harris, David Johnathan | Lab | 244 | N |
| Huff, Sandra Ann | Lab | 224 | N |
| Jones, Helen | Con | 1,093 | Y |
| Khawaja, Saleem | Con | 971 | Y |
| Kilhams, Catherine | Con | 1,096 | Y |
| Lefton, Jacquelina | Con | 1,109 | Y |
| Wickham, Dermot | Con | 1,082 | Y |
| Wood, Lee | Ind | 378 | N |
| Turnout 39.8% |
Aldenham Parish Council, Aldenham West ward, 2 May 2019
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Elected? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cherry, Mark | Con | 816 | Y |
| Evans, Ben | Con | 864 | Y |
| Kirk, Richard Arthur | Lab | 214 | N |
| Lambert, David Stephen | Con | 839 | Y |
| Maizels, John Henry | Lab | 210 | N |
| Pownall-Harris, Melanie Francesca | Lab | 223 | N |
| Walton, Garry Robert | Con | 792 | Y |
| Samuelson, Estelle | Con | 831 | Y |
| Walton, Garry Robert | Con | 845 | Y |
| Turnout 33.6% |
Meanwhile, would you like a professional Mayor?
Hertsmere could have a directly elected Mayor. In fact, any local authority at the District level or above can decide to have a directly-elected Mayor and it could be up to us, the electors.
The government’s process for switching to an elected Mayor (this only applies in England) involves either a vote by the elected councillors or a referendum which would be held alongside a local election in the Borough. To trigger a referendum 5% of the electorate of the Borough must sign a petition – in Hertsmere that’s currently calculated to be 3,921 people. Don’t hold your breath, though. Elected Mayors are not popular. So far, most referendums held in England have voted ‘no’ and there are only three Borough Councils in England with elected Mayors – Bedford, Copeland and Watford.
Elected Mayors are professional, full-time administrators and the job attracts a salary. Watford’s Mayor is paid £73,607. The logic of switching to this more ‘Presidential’ model is that a professional Mayor, working for the area’s interests, can provide some additional visibility and prestige and advance the big causes. Elected Metro Mayors at the top level – Andy Street, Sadiq Khan, Andy Burnham etc. have brought some coherence to local government and raised the visibility of their cities and regions. It’s not at all certain that this would work at the town or district level, though.
This report from the House of Commons Library is an excellent overview, in case you’re thinking of gathering some signatures.
See also
Elections in Hertsmere – including general elections – are administered by the excellent elections team at Hertsmere Borough Council. They maintain the information web site and make sure that notices of elections, lists of candidates and results are posted online in a timely way. Most of the data in this post comes from their published documents.
Data. We’ve added all the numbers in this post to a public spreadsheet (Google Sheets). It also includes general election results, going back all the way to the first in Hertsmere, held when the constituency was created, in 1983. This data is all obtainable online, of course, but this is really the only place you’ll find it all in one document – feel free to download and use the data if you need it. There’s also a fantasically-useful open source spreadsheet of all the 2023 local election results.
Maps. You can find accurate maps of the Parish, Borough, County and Parliamentary constituencies on the MapIt web site, maintained by MySociety, the excellent not-for-profit that also runs the indispensible They Work For You.
History. Our post about Hertsmere elections covers the whole electoral history of the Parliamentary constituency.