Exeter’s electors go to the polls on Thursday to elect thirteen people to represent them on the city council, one in each electoral ward.
At the same time voters across the country will elect 2,623 other council seats as well as eleven mayors, 37 police and crime commissioners and the London Assembly.
Our 2024 Exeter local elections guide covers who’s standing where, wards to watch and the backdrop to this year’s city ballot, which promises to be the most unpredictable contest in years.
The Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats are each fielding thirteen candidates, as is Labour, which has not published candidate profiles on its website this year.
In four of the city’s thirteen electoral wards there is a four-way contest between these parties: Duryard & St James, St David’s, St Loye’s and Topsham.
Exeter Independent Group is fielding candidates against them in eight city council wards: Alphington, Heavitree, Mincinglake & Whipton, Newtown & St Leonard’s, Pennsylvania, Pinhoe, Priory and St Thomas.
An additional independent candidate, who previously stood for the now-dissolved far-right For Britain Movement, is also standing in Exwick.
Local party manifestos are available for the Conservatives, Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats as is a complete list of the 61 candidates that are standing.
Exeter Independent Group, which is campaigning under the slogan “people over politics”, has not published a manifesto. It says its candidates share common aims including greater transparency and scrutiny, better use of public money and more social and affordable housing.
Six of the group’s candidates also oppose the Heavitree Low Traffic Neighbourhood scheme.
Subscribe free to The Exeter Digest, our free email newsletter, for more local election coverage including full election results from the count early on Friday morning and our snap analysis of their significance.
As last year, we will run a rolling results service complete with graphical analysis of vote shares and swings as the winners and losers are announced on the night. Follow us @exeterobserver to stay in the loop.
Our 2024 elections briefing covers when, where and how to vote as well as voting by proxy, voter ID requirements and new regulations that apply to postal votes.
Exeter City Council electoral wards. Contains Ordnance Survey and National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right
There are 39 seats on Exeter City Council and 90,000 registered voters in the city. Each of thirteen electoral wards of between 6,300 and 8,000 electors is represented by three councillors.
A third of the seats, one in each ward, is normally contested in each of three consecutive years, with county council elections held in the fourth year. Each city councillor normally serves a four year term.
Exeter’s wards have been arranged this way since boundary changes prompted the exceptional election of the whole council at the same time in 2016, when 30 Labour councillors were elected.
The party had already been in control of the council for four years. It has now been in this position for twelve, making Exeter what the Electoral Reform Society calls a “one party council” with “weak electoral accountability” which greatly increases the likelihood of cronyism, corruption and spending decisions which offer poor value for public money.
It lost ground at each subsequent election until last year. But last May’s ballot confirmed that changes in the city’s political landscape that had begun the previous year, including the replacement of the Conservatives as the official opposition by the Progressive Group of Green and Liberal Democrat councillors, with the help of an Independent, were set to continue.
The council’s composition then changed again, following last May’s results. Labour enters this ballot fielding just two incumbents. Two of its councillors whose terms come to an end on Thursday have left the party, another has resigned their seat and a fourth has been suspended pending an investigation. Three more are standing down and one has not been reselected.
As a result the party now holds 22 seats on the council, six of which it is directly defending. It has to win four to stay in control for another two years: the next city council election is scheduled for 2026 with the county council elections taking place next year.
David Harvey was the first Labour councillor to go in May 2022, since when he has represented Pinhoe as an Independent. He is standing down this year.
Rob Hannaford resigned at the beginning of January this year after what he described as “many years of abusive, aggressive, controlling, discriminatory, unacceptable behaviour from some Labour city and county councillors” which he said had “escalated into formalised gaslighting, harassment and more bullying”.
He has been a city councillor for twenty years and a county councillor for nineteen. He is standing in his St Thomas seat on Thursday as an Exeter Independent.
Emma Morse resigned her Mincinglake & Whipton seat, and Executive city development portfolio holder role, in March. Barbara Denning, also an Executive portfolio holder, was not selected to stand again, either in her Heavitree seat or elsewhere.
Martin Pearce, another Labour Executive portfolio holder, was suspended by the party at the beginning of this month, pending the outcome of an investigation. He had been widely expected to lose his Duryard & St James seat to the Liberal Democrats, and had been nominated to stand in Alphington instead, where Steve Warwick is standing down, before his nomination was withdrawn.
Richard Branston is standing down in Newtown & St Leonard’s after 24 years on the city council.
Zion Lights is also standing down, in Pennsylvania, after a single term. She has attended only seven public council meetings since last May’s ballot, fewer than any other councillor and one third of the 21 meetings at which she was expected.
Marina Asvachin attended all 40 and Michael Mitchell attended all 39 of the public meetings at which each were expected last year.
Safe bets
When Diana Moore won the Green Party’s first Exeter seat in St David’s in 2019 she polled the largest number of votes of any candidate standing in any ward, the largest margin of victory across the city and the city’s largest vote share.
After the 2020 poll was postponed because of the pandemic, the Greens won again in the ward in 2021 and again in 2022, establishing St David’s as a party stronghold, with Diana Moore holding her seat with an increased majority last year.
Amy Sparling is now standing down after a three-year term to start a family. James Banyard is expected to succeed her.
Similarly sure of victory for Labour are the party’s two incumbents, among only a handful left from the 30 elected in 2016.
Council leader Phil Bialyk is expected to hold Exwick, from where co-living blocks and perpetual arterial congestion seem like faraway problems and his party sits essentially unchallenged by the opposition.
Labour stalwart Tony Wardle, who has served the city for sixteen years, is expected to hold Priory comfortably, notwithstanding controversy surrounding Exeter Independent candidate Tal Abdulrazaq, who is also standing in the ward.
Labour expectations
Labour expects to hold Pinhoe, having increased its lead over the Conservatives, previously its nearest ward rivals, at the past three elections.
But its candidate Jakir Hussain, who previously stood in St David’s in 2022, doesn’t have a track record there. And his campaign leads with a promise to deliver a long-delayed community hub that was budgeted before the build cost increases that have seen many of the council’s capital projects shelved.
Exeter Independent Sue Simmonds is hoping to benefit from the impact of the Heavitree Low Traffic Neighbourhood, perceived or real, on significant congestion on local roads while community campaigner Kate Jago is likely to make a mark for the Greens.
Labour also expects to hold Alphington despite its decision to first parachute Martin Pearce into the ward, replacing the party’s first choice of all-women shortlist candidate, then withdraw his nomination at the eleventh hour.
The Conservatives’ Katherine New, who came within less than a hundred votes of unseating Steve Warwick in 2021, could nevertheless challenge Labour’s assumption that the seat is safe. The noise caused by the South West Exeter extension is getting much louder at the Alphington Village end of the ward, with motor vehicle impact again a major bone of contention, and some of the claims made in last-minute Labour pick Rob Harding’s leaflets are prompting complaints.
Meanwhile, Labour is hoping to gain its third Topsham seat in three years at the Conservatives’ expense. The biggest surprise of the 2022 Exeter local elections, not least to the candidate himself, was newcomer Joshua Ellis-Jones’s win here after the Conservatives had held all three seats comfortably for more than twenty years. Matthew Williams then won for the party again last year.
Conservative incumbent Andrew Leadbetter has stepped down, presumably to concentrate on his county council cabinet portfolio which includes responsibility for the county’s troubled SEND and children’s services.
Standing in his stead is Cynthia Thompson, who previously represented Pinhoe on the city council for eight years. Labour’s Gemma Rolstone, whose thousand votes were not enough to unseat the Green’s Carol Bennett in Heavitree last May, is probably feeling confident.
Progressive prospects
Like Labour in Topsham, the Liberal Democrats are hoping to make it a hat-trick in Duryard & St James. They are apparently such an electoral force in the ward that Martin Pearce, it would seem, fled his seat there in search of safety on the other side of the city before disappearing from the ballot altogether.
Liberal Democrat candidate Tammy Palmer was an experienced campaigner and councillor in London before moving to Exeter. The university’s uncontested expansion at both ends of the ward and, in particular, the prospect of a high-density co-living block in the heart of St James has presented her with a more or less open goal.
However last year’s winning margin of less than 7% means nothing is certain here.
The Progressive Group will also be looking to win again in Newtown & St Leonard’s. It was formed in 2019 with primary school teacher Jemima Moore, a local resident with no prior political experience, as an inaugural member following her handsome win as an Independent candidate there.
Her victory followed a campaign to save the green space surrounding the Clifton Hill sports centre site, the future of which is still uncertain following the collapse of Exeter City Living.
Julian Cabrera hopes to retain the seat for Labour while Lynn Wetenhall hopes to win for the Greens. His party won there in 2021 and 2022 but lost to the Greens’ Andy Ketchin by a near-13% vote share margin last year.
Matt Vizard will be awaiting the result anxiously, which is also likely to be close: he’s next in line to defend the ward for the party in 2026.
His colleague Josie Parkhouse is in the same position in Pennsylvania, where Green support has surged since the party overtook the Conservatives in the ward to take second place in 2022.
Labour’s Zion Lights is vacating the seat. Were her party’s vote share to continue to fall as it has since 2021, and the Green’s continue to rise, Labour’s Zoë Hughes would lose to the Greens’ Jack Vickers by a margin of around 3.5% of the vote. Another one to watch.
Tricky calls
Heavitree, at the heart of the divisive row over the county council’s Low Traffic Neighbourhood scheme, is even more difficult to call.
Exeter Independent Lucy Haigh is the only member of her group to have stood as a candidate in last year’s local elections, when she received the support of 10% of the ward’s voters. It appears she took equal bites from Labour and Conservative support, well before the row blew up to the point that County Hall’s committee suite couldn’t cope with the crowds attending public meetings about the scheme and the national press got involved.
Dave Mutton will be hoping he can prevent her taking a bigger share from Labour this year in the ward, which the Greens have won twice in two years, with Joan Collacott in the same position for the Conservatives, who also say they want to scrap the scheme.
Jack Eade may be poised to win for the third time in a row for the Greens, but the scheme’s impact on the local public sphere cannot be overestimated.
Despite Labour’s previously commanding position in Mincinglake & Whipton, the same is true there too. The ward both butts up against the scheme pilot area on one side and is impinged upon by two very unpopular greenfield housing developments on the other.
The council recently approved detailed development plans for 93 dwellings on ten acres of open fields alongside Celia Crescent, which will include nearly 180 off-street parking spaces and a motor vehicle access route being driven across Juniper Green, a council-owned public green space beside Spruce Close. Outline permission for the site was granted at appeal in 2022.
Outline permission was also granted at appeal last year for another 100 homes on nearby fields north of Pendragon Road.
The council’s inability to demonstrate that enough housing would be delivered in Exeter during the following five years was given substantial weight in both appeal decisions, following its failure to renegotiate government targets based on faulty population growth projections that were distorted by the city’s disproportionately large student population.
Labour candidate Liz Pole was selected to fight the seat after Emma Morse resigned in March. She previously stood for the party in Tiverton & Honiton on a “save our farms” platform. Among other roles, she is doubling up as the party’s returning officer in Exeter this year.
Her campaign leads on the claim that Labour will refuse to sell a ransom strip of land the council owns between Pendragon Road and the development site, without which the development could not go ahead as no other vehicle access to the site is available.
However this is rather undermined by the council’s decision to alter the city’s urban boundary to include the Pendragon Road fields as a development site long before the appeal hearing took place.
It has also postponed its decision about the sale of this land, which was originally supposed to take place in February, to shortly after the local elections will have taken place.
Exeter Independent Clive Hutchings, who has recently joined a long line of people who have learned that caution is well-advised when posting on social media, stands ready to benefit from widespread disaffection with Labour in the ward.
Open questions
Might long-serving ex-Labour councillor Rob Hannaford also do well as an Exeter Independent in St Thomas, where his high profile among local voters could carry him over the line ahead of Labour’s Deborah Darling? She lost last year to Liberal Democrat Adrian Fullam, who previously held the ward for twelve years and was city council leader for two.
Or might former city and county councillor Vanessa Newcombe win again for the Liberal Democrats on the back of divided Labour support in the ward?
And to what extent is the national political picture likely to affect the local Conservative vote in wards in which the party is in with a chance? Conservative group leader Anne Jobson, who is defending her seat in St Loye’s, may find out.
She faces strong competition from Jake Bonetta, who became the first Labour councillor to sit on East Devon District Council for more than twenty years, and also its youngest councillor at the age of nineteen, after winning a 2021 by-election.
He was also elected to Honiton Town Council two months earlier, and stood for election to Devon County Council in the same year, when he significantly increased the Labour vote share.
National commentary on this year’s local elections often cites predictions that the Conservatives could lose as many as 500 council seats, around half of those they hold, because most of those being contested were last elected in 2021 when the government was benefiting from the delivery of its pandemic vaccine programme.
However this shift in public opinion was no more reflected in Exeter’s local elections in 2021 than the increase in national Labour support has been reflected in the two elections that have been held here since, with local issues and changing demographics appearing to be much more influential.
Exeter’s Conservatives will nevertheless be fearing the loss of both the seats they are defending. If Anne Jobson holds on to hers the local party will have done well, despite being reduced to just three seats in a single ward. It hasn’t held so few in Exeter since 1999.
2021 Devon & Cornwall Police and Crime commissioner election results.
Source: Wikipedia under Creative Commons license
Police and Crime Commissioner
Exeter’s electors, alongside those across the rest of Devon and Cornwall, will also be able to cast a vote in the 2024 Devon & Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner election on Thursday.
Conservative incumbent Alison Hernandez is standing against Steve Lodge for the Liberal Democrats and Daniel Steel for Labour.
As only Exeter and Plymouth are also holding council elections this year in Devon and Cornwall – apart from a handful of district by-elections – and both cities have comparatively small Conservative-supporting electorates, some think the opposition candidates may do rather better this year than last time.
However Alison Hernandez was only 141 votes short of winning after the first round in 2021, under a supplementary voting system that has been replaced with first-past-the-post at this year’s elections following the Elections Act 2022.
An old political saw applies, as well as the advantages this voting system will confer on her candidacy: never underestimate the Conservative postal vote.
Methodology note
As the 2016 city council elections were held using the multiple non-transferable vote system each voter was allowed to cast up to three votes which were not ranked in any order of preference.
Because not all voters cast all three of their votes a precise vote share for individual candidates cannot be derived from the recorded results.
This also applies to two individual ward elections held since then, in Priory in 2019 and Mincinglake & Whipton in 2021, when voters were invited to cast up to two votes to elect two councillors at the same time, and in Exwick, Heavitree, Pennsylvania and Priory in 2022.
Calculating comparative party vote shares in Exeter City Council elections over time is further complicated because the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats stood aside for independent candidate Jemima Moore in Newtown & St Leonard’s in 2019, then formed a cross-party alliance which led to them standing aside for each other in a total of six wards across the city in 2021.
Consequently, a proportional share of the ballots cast for the leading candidate in each party in each ward in which the party stood has been used to compare major party support in the principal city council elections that have taken place since 2016.
We believe this is the best available method to enable statistically meaningful comparisons between the major parties in the city. Mid-year by-elections have been excluded.
Candidates from other parties, as well as independent candidates, have also stood in each of these elections.
UKIP contested most, but not all, of the city’s wards in 2016 and again in 2019, but not in 2018. The Women’s Equality Party also contested city council elections in Duryard & St James in 2018, 2019 and 2021. Candidates have also represented other small parties in some years.
All these smaller parties have been grouped together to simplify comparison. Where more than one non-major party stood in a multiple non-transferable vote election the best performing candidate has been included in the analysis.
Independent candidates, when they have stood, have been presented separately. In 2019 two stood at the same time and have been presented together.
