Five candidates will vie to replace Danny Thorpe as Shooters Hill councillor when the by-election is held on November 14.
The former Labour council leader announced three weeks ago that he was standing down after 20 years as a councillor. He led the council for four years until 2022.
Labour will be hoping that Raja Zeeshan will succeed Thorpe in Shooters Hill. Zeeshan stood for Labour in Eltham Town & Avery Hill in the 2022 elections but missed out on a seat by 85 votes, losing to Conservative Pat Greenwell.
Shooters Hill was comfortably by Labour in 2022, with Thorpe winning 1,878 votes and Ivis Williams picking up 1,757 votes. The Green candidate Tamasin Rhymes came a very distant second in the last election – on 475 votes – and she returns for the by-election.
Ezra Aydin, who works in robotics for Ocado, will be standing for the Conservatives, while Kirstie Shedden, the local party chair, will stand again for the Liberal Democrats. Alan Cecil will represent Reform UK.
Residents need to be registered to vote by October 29 at gov.uk/register-to-vote.
Thorpe said he was standing down because of “some changes in my life since the election”. After losing the council leadership to Anthony Okereke he joined the housing association Clarion, where he was recently promoted to director of communications.
Shooters Hill ward stretches from the affluent streets around Shrewsbury Park to the Barnfield Estate in Plumstead and the old Royal Military Academy development on Woolwich Common. It also includes the Greenwich Equestrian Centre, which closed in the summer, and the street where 15-year-old Daejaun Campbell was killed with a zombie knife last month.
The poll will be the second by-election in four weeks, following Charlie Davis’s win for the Tories in Eltham Town & Avery Hill last Thursday.
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