Plaid Cymru gain council seat from Labour in Wrexham as by-elections resume after pandemic pause

Plaid Cymru have gained a council seat from Wrexham in a by-election in the town, in one of the first Welsh elections since the start of the pandemic.

Rebecca Martin won the Maes-y-Dre seat for the party with 30.7% of the vote. Labour saw their vote fall -17%. It was the first time Plaid Cymru had stood in the ward.

Plaid Cymru also held the Corwen seat in Denbighshire with 65.8% of the vote.

Becca Martin, 33, was selected to stand in Maes-y-Dre after the ward’s Labour councillor Paul Jones, who won the seat in 2017, announced he was resigning for family reasons in September.

She currently works as a gemstone specialist in a town centre jewellery shop, where she’s been employed since leaving school, and is a mother to three-year-old Charlie.

Queensway Plaid Cymru Councillor and Senedd candidate Carrie Harper posted on Twitter to say: “The last two county council by-elections in Wrexham have been won by Plaid Cymru… something’s afoot.

“It’s also now a majority women council group.”

Results

Maes-y-Dre had sat empty since September until the Welsh Government gave the go-ahead in January for by-elections to resume.

Corwen was empty since the death of Huw ‘Chick’ Jones in February. He had been elected unopposed in 2017.

The full result in Maesydre was:

PC: 30.7% (+30.7)

Lab: 27.2% (-17.0)

Con: 25.2% (+0.9)

Lib Dem: 9.6% (-11.5)

Independent: 7.4% (+7.4)

The Corwen result was:

PC: 65.8%

Lab: 20.3%

Lib Dem: 14.0%