Reform UK takes seat in second Welsh council following by-election
Lewis Smith – Local Democracy reporter
Reform UK have won a seat on a second Welsh council following a by-election in south Wales.
The by-election was held for the Pyle, Kenfig Hill and Cefn Cribwr ward in Bridgend on May 1, 2025, after the resignation of former Labour councillor Mike Kearn.
The vacant seat was won by newly elected Reform councillor, Owain Clatworthy, 20, who clinched it with a narrow margin of only 30 votes.
He edged out the second placed Labour candidate Gary Chappell who ended the night with 667 votes and the third placed Independent candidate Rhys Watkins with 351 votes.
Win
Following the shock result he will now join two sitting Labour members for the ward – current deputy leader of the council, Cllr Jane Gebbie, and former council leader Cllr Huw David.
He also takes his place as the second Reform politician in Wales to have won an election following a win at a Torfaen Borough Council by-election earlier this year.
Following the results, Cllr Clatworthy said: “I’m incredibly humbled and it’s a true honour to have been elected. I ran a campaign based on people because many are fed up of being ignored and want to see change.
“The work begins now to build a better future for everyone in the ward and I will stand up for the community and put people first.”
The full results for Pyle, Kenfig Hill and Cefn Cribwr:
Owain Clatworthy, Reform UK – 697 (Elected)
Gary Chappell Welsh Labour – 667
Rhys Watkins, Independent – 351
Andy Moss, Plaid Cymru – 154
Byron Davies, Welsh Conservatives – 55
Debra Cooper, Wales Green Party – 54
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
No surprise that Owain Clatworthy is a recent member of the Conservative Party. I bet he didn’t raise that much when campaigning in Cefn Cribwr.
I say this with the no happiness but another awful result for Plaid in a working class south Wales ward. I really hope they are doing some soul searching.
They don’t need to do any soul searching. They need to do some actual grassroots work and sort out moribund constituency committees across the south.
If this trend continues, Plaid has no chance in South Wales next year.
Wasn’t this a new area for Plaid Cymru?
Serious question.
Are you really serious? Plaid is celebrating 100 years this year!
I don’t know about now, but there was a very strong branch there in the 70s. So the grassroots feelings may still be there
Oh whoopee doo. One seat. Who’s waiting for the flypast by Nigel Farage with a banner proposing a new Bank Holiday celebrating himself. All I see in this lineup are those who would sell Wales down the river to please their cult leader Nigel Farage. They are merely sheeple led by their noses. Conservatives collaborators. The very same mindset opposed devolution in 1979. Again in 1997. They also hostile towards and likely voted against Wales having a legislative powers in 2012. They opposed the increase in Senedd members from 60 to 96 , ironically a change that increased their chance… Read more »
One seat too many.
When Mike Kearn won the seat for Labour (5 May 2022), he did so with 1,308 votes. There was no Reform candidate then. Now the Labour candidate gets 667 votes and Reform gets elected with 697.
Btw, the best placed Tory candidate last time got 367 and this time? 55. And neither Plaid nor the Greens stood here last time.
https://www.bridgend.gov.uk/media/3vxfvkav/pyle-kenfig-hill-and-cefn-cribwr-declaration-of-result-of-poll.pdf
Another successful Plaid election
As a welsh socialist it grieves me that a party that wants to privatise our public services, that’s led by privately educated millionaires and that was born out of the most fanatical union jack waving elements of the tory party is probably set to be the biggest party in Wales’ parliament next year. And everyone that believes in a just and compassionate Wales needs to ask ourselves how such a terrible prospect as Reform possibly forming a welsh govt has come to pass? Certainly its a shocking indictment of Wales governing class for the last 25 years. A governing class… Read more »
Presumably Reform don’t have a leader in Wales because they don’t need one just for a county of England.
The Cons are the same, they only have a group leader in the Senedd rather than a party leader in Wales:
https://nation.cymru/news/andrew-rt-davies-criticised-for-falsely-claiming-hes-leader-of-the-welsh-conservatives/
Good point I think that will affect their credibility in Cymru. Then again are Reform’s UK nation specific?
It’s reasonable to assume their light blue approach to Wales will be based on the long-standing dark blue approach which was neatly summarised in that article last year: >>> A Welsh Conservative source, who did not wish to be identified, said: “Andrew may like to think he’s the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, but he isn’t. Unlike in the case of the Scottish Conservatives, which is a fully-fledged entity in its own respect, there is no stand-alone Welsh Conservative Party, with its own constitution. The Welsh party is essentially an offshoot of the English party, and It would therefore be… Read more »
‘The vacant seat was won by newly elected Reform councillor, Owain Clatworthy, 20, who clinched it with a narrow margin of only 30 votes.’ Sign of the times, it appears – sadly. This phenomenon might turn out to have run its course before the next Westminster election, probably more than four years away, but I don’t think there’s any chance of it doing so before our next Senedd election only a year away. I think we may yet have to face our own ‘Trump experience’ here in Wales, though fortunately there’s a pretty good chance that we won’t get anything… Read more »
New rules in next years election but I haven’t quite parsed them yet.
Meanwhile in other news, AfD have been deemed right wing extremists by Germany security service, and a threat to that nation. That same AfD that gave Reforms owner a standing ovation.
‘New rules in next years election but I haven’t quite parsed them yet.’ If I’ve understood correctly, we’ll be asked to vote for a party ‘ticket’ rather than for individuals, and the possibility, should you choose, of voting for different parties on the constituency and on the regional list will be gone. While I back the expansion of the number of MSes – too few backbenchers under the present system for a healthily functioning democracy – I’m less happy with ‘list’ elections. There’s a value in being represented by a specific member rather than by a ‘batch’. As for AfD,… Read more »
Vance is a nasty bit of work. He screams free speech abuse in the UK but is shutting it down in the US free speech. He attacks a president that is trying to defend a country but defends a president that dodged the draft.
If trump pops his clogs in office, vance is a truly nasty bit of work to step up to the plate.
So I don’t rate anything he says.
Agree entirely.
We can only put this down to a lack of confidence within our own people in Wales. The perception of there being a ceiling to our ambitions. That we should always accept our fate as second class citizens in our own country of Wales and therefore always accept what the UK English/British state (ie. English government) hands down and dictates to us and even with their own political parties and society. Well, that should not be the case and should never have ever been accepted. Only our people: you and me, can change things, not the English/British state and not… Read more »
Jenkyns was saying Reform wants to take the UK back to the glory days. That was when there was no devolution. Guess what the very next question every single reporter in Wales needs to be asking reform.
It’s ironic then that she’s only in power because of devolution.
If Reform UK continue the success, they have had in the English local elections, at next years Senedd elections, it will confirm, Wales, politically, is nothing but a West English county. That’s what you get from useless, Welsh Labour governments, and a party/parties, that put their political careers, before our nation. I despair, where our nation of Wales, is heading.
Nothing is given because Reform now have enough rope to permanently harm themselves because they have to deliver public services on the ground. The Fakebook army of bored retirees will be very quick to highlight when things go wrong in their local area.
You have a real point, in that Reform UK in a great many places has needed to ramp itself up rapidly from pretty much of a standing start. And that must mean that in rather a lot of those places they will have had to recruit candidates quickly, and inevitably without much prior scrutiny and due diligence in many instances. And while they will have certainly recruited some ex-councillors and former supporters of other parties who have a degree of local government experience and knowledge, my bet is that a large majority of their newly successful candidates will have no… Read more »
And it’s not just what will go wrong that’ll shock. It’s the cover-ups and other potentially unethical activities they might resort to in order to avoid embarrassing The Leader with failure. Will illegal immigrants get blamed when nosy journalists start disappearing? That’s anyone’s guess.
Might well be.
It’s only one seat, but one seat too many. It’s appalling that there’s enough people with such disdain for Wales to elect such a candidate.
He is going to teach the voters a lesson. Far too young and immature. I don’t think reform expected that win. He has no policy no experience. A wasted vote other than to teach the current body a lesson.