From the Liberal Democrat administration that took the council outright in 2024, to Reform UK’s full-slate insurgent push, from the Tunbridge Wells Alliance veterans of the Calverley Square fight to the breakaway Independents for Tunbridge Wells — every option facing borough voters when polls open tomorrow morning, and the Local Government Reorganisation overhang that hangs over the result.

The vote — and why it might be the last full TWBC ballot

Polling stations across Tunbridge Wells Borough open from 7am to 10pm on Thursday 7 May 2026. Fifteen seats are being contested across thirteen wards. Most wards return one councillor; Sherwood and Southborough & Bidborough each elect two. Voters need an accepted form of photo ID to cast a ballot; the council issued free Voter Authority Certificates for residents without ID and ran a government-approved early-voting hub pilot at Royal Victoria Place, Cranbrook Vestry Hall and Paddock Wood Community Centre on the weekend of 2–3 May.

This is the only local election anywhere in Kent this year. It is also, on current trajectory, the second-to-last whole-council ballot Tunbridge Wells will hold. The councillors elected tomorrow will sit on a borough authority that the Government has already announced will be abolished and replaced by a new unitary council under the Local Government Reorganisation programme. Tunbridge Wells Borough Council’s own preferred option, agreed on 17 November 2025, is “Option 3a” — a merger with Sevenoaks, Tonbridge & Malling and Maidstone into one of three new Kent unitaries. Government ministers ran a public consultation on the competing proposals from 5 February 2026 to 26 March 2026; a final decision is expected in summer 2026 and the new unitary system is due to come into force in April 2028. In practical terms that means most of the candidates on tomorrow’s ballot are competing for what may be a two-year term, not the standard four.

How Tunbridge Wells is run today

Tunbridge Wells is a borough council — the lower of two tiers, sitting beneath Kent County Council. KCC handles social care, schools, county-wide highways and trading standards; the borough handles planning, housing, refuse collection, parks, leisure and council tax billing. Decisions on big-ticket strategic items — the Local Plan, the borough budget, executive arrangements — sit at the borough.

The council has 39 seats across 13 wards, serving four-year terms (subject to the LGR caveat above). The 2 May 2024 all-out election on revised ward boundaries returned: Liberal Democrats 22, Conservatives 7, Labour 5, Tunbridge Wells Alliance 4, Independents for Tunbridge Wells 1. The Liberal Democrats took outright control of the council that night for the first time, with Cllr Ben Chapelard continuing as council leader after his prior role heading the no-overall-control “Borough Partnership” administration of Lib Dem, TWA, Labour and one independent. Defections and vacancies in the eighteen months since have shifted the sitting body to Liberal Democrats 21, Conservatives 8, Labour 4, Tunbridge Wells Alliance 3, Independents for Tunbridge Wells 1, with two seats currently vacant — those vacancies, in Sherwood and in Southborough & Bidborough, being filled by by-election alongside the regular thirds-cycle ward elections tomorrow, which is why those two wards each elect two councillors rather than one.

Since taking the majority, the Lib Dems have largely retained the cabinet partnership format — Tunbridge Wells Alliance and Labour councillors continue to hold cabinet portfolios despite the Lib Dems no longer needing their votes for a working majority. The biggest single piece of business of the current term has been the borough’s Local Plan 2020–2038, adopted by the council with 27 votes in favour, four against and four abstentions, allocating around 4,500 homes across the borough — most heavily in the Capel and Paddock Wood area. Because the council started work on the Plan before the Labour government’s revised housing targets came into force, Tunbridge Wells’s annual housing requirement is grandfathered at 678 homes a year rather than the 1,098 the new methodology would otherwise impose, a 66% saving the administration has highlighted as a procedural win.

Your party options on the ballot

What follows is a neutral, sourced guide to each party Tunbridge Wells voters will encounter on tomorrow’s ballot. For each, briefly: who they are; their pitch; what they have actually done in office locally where the record exists; and where to find their material in full.

Liberal Democrats — the incumbent administration

The Liberal Democrats are defending the largest position on the borough, with 22 of 39 sitting seats and the council leadership under Cllr Ben Chapelard. They are standing candidates in every ward contested tomorrow. Incumbents seeking re-election include Cllr David Osborne (Culverden), Cllr Pamela Wilkinson (Pantiles), Cllr Richard Brown (Park) and Cllr Courtney Souper (Sherwood).

The local pitch leans on competence and partnership: a year of outright administration after two terms of coalition leadership, the Local Plan over the line, Kent’s first early-voting pilot delivered on time, and Option 3a chosen as the borough’s preferred LGR shape. The national platform — proportional representation, planning reform, NHS investment, EU re-engagement — sits behind that local record but is not the campaign focus.

The record voters can weigh against the rhetoric is the one being defended directly. Under Lib Dem leadership the council adopted a Local Plan that opponents — including some of the parties profiled below — argue concentrates housing growth on rural communities around Capel and Paddock Wood while sparing the central town. The administration’s procedural choice to push the Plan through under the older 678-homes-a-year target, rather than restart under the higher 1,098 figure, is presented as a pragmatic shield for the borough; critics argue it locked in housing locations that newer evidence might otherwise have moved. On Local Government Reorganisation, the Lib Dem-led council is openly campaigning for a specific outcome (Option 3a) which would, if adopted, dissolve the very authority they currently lead.

Their material is at twlibdems.org.uk.

Conservative — the formal opposition, and former dominant party

The Conservatives sit as the official opposition with 7 seats, fielding candidates in every contested ward. Incumbents seeking re-election include Cllr David Knight (Rural Tunbridge Wells) and Cllr Christian Atwood (Sherwood).

The pitch is familiar nationally: lower tax, smaller state, opposition to the Labour government’s revised housing targets, and a strong local-services emphasis. The Conservatives are explicit that they would push back harder than the current administration on top-down housing numbers and on green-belt release.

For voters trying to weigh that pitch against the actual record, the Conservative group has the longest single body of evidence on Tunbridge Wells Borough Council of any party on the ballot. The Conservatives held an unbroken majority on the council for more than two decades up to 2022, and were the administration that drove the original Calverley Square scheme — a £108 million proposal for a new 1,200-seat theatre, council offices and underground car park on the edge of Calverley Grounds, championed by then-Conservative cabinet member Cllr David Scott. The scheme was voted down in October 2019 after a cross-party revolt that included Conservative councillors breaking with their own leadership; the Tunbridge Wells Alliance (see below) was formed predominantly to fight it. The same Conservative administrations that now criticise the housing trajectory of the borough also started the housing strategy that culminated in the current Local Plan, including the Capel and Paddock Wood allocations that have proved most contentious. The Conservative loss of the borough majority in 2022 was widely attributed at the time to the combination of those two issues — the abandoned theatre project and the housing plans for Capel — rather than to any single new policy from the opposition.

Their material is at tunbridgewellsconservatives.com.

Reform UK — the full-slate insurgent

Reform UK is contesting all 15 seats on tomorrow’s ballot — its first borough-wide standing slate in Tunbridge Wells. The party currently holds no seats on the borough council. Candidates include Tina Seymour (Culverden), John Spence (Hawkhurst, Sandhurst & Benenden), Begnat Robichaud (Paddock Wood), Kristof Niewolski (Pantiles), Michael Jerrom (Park), Val Dachille (Pembury & Capel), Dennis Deane (Rural Tunbridge Wells), Rob Grundley (Rusthall & Speldhurst), Chris Hoare and Oliver Kinkade (Sherwood, both seats), Stephen Humphreys and Robert Mayall (Southborough & Bidborough, both seats), Philip Dwyer (St James’), Chris Pendleton (St John’s) and Matthew Beattie (Cranbrook, Sissinghurst & Frittenden).

The pitch is national in tone — low tax, small state, strict immigration control, opposition to net-zero policy, and a robust anti-establishment posture against both the main parties. Local material is comparatively thin; the borough branch website is a recent build.

For voters trying to weigh the campaign rhetoric against an actual record in office, the most useful test case sits next door. Reform UK won outright control of Kent County Council in May 2025 and are now twelve months into administration there. Their record at KCC so far includes formally rescinding the previous climate emergency declaration and declaring an immigration emergency — both symbolic moves with limited concrete effect, since local-authority powers over Home Office dispersal and national energy policy are narrow. On the substantive issues that touch Tunbridge Wells residents most directly, the picture is less easy to distinguish from the parties Reform replaced: KCC under Reform has continued to back broadly the same Local Government Reorganisation direction (the unitary reorg that TWBC is also being asked to accept), and has set council tax at the upper end of what is permitted without a triggering referendum. Reform’s national parent has also been through a turbulent twelve months — internal splits, the formation of the breakaway Restore Britain, and continuing questions about candidate vetting — that are likely to shape how voters read the local slate.

Their material is at reformtunbridgewells.com and the national party at reformparty.uk.

Labour — the cabinet partner

Labour holds 5 borough seats and continues to sit in cabinet under the Borough Partnership arrangement carried over from the no-overall-control years before 2024. Candidates standing tomorrow include Aleksander Klimanski (Culverden), Dominic Nutland Frankel (Pantiles), Stephen Burgess (Park), Anne Musker (Rural Tunbridge Wells), Greg Holder (Rusthall & Speldhurst), Tina Kesterton (Sherwood), Nick Maltby (St James’) and Lorna Blackmore (St John’s).

The local pitch is largely shared cabinet credit — Local Plan adoption, the early-voting pilot, partnership stability under Lib Dem leadership — combined with the national party message on housing investment, public services and economic competence under the Starmer government.

The record voters can weigh is genuinely shared with the Liberal Democrats: the same Local Plan, the same procedural decision to grandfather the lower housing target, the same Option 3a LGR preference. Voters who agree with the direction of the current borough administration will find Labour as plausible an option as the Lib Dems for endorsing it; voters who do not should note that on the substantive borough decisions of this term Labour has voted with the administration, not against it. Labour’s national record under the new Government — the housing-target rise itself, planning system reform, NHS spending choices — is likely to do more to shape voter perception than anything specifically attributable to the borough group.

Their material is at tunbridgewells.laboursites.org.

Tunbridge Wells Alliance — the local-first veterans

The Tunbridge Wells Alliance currently holds 4 borough seats (down to 3 sitting members after a 2023 defection — see below), and is in cabinet under the Borough Partnership. Cllr Ellen Neville is defending Hawkhurst, Sandhurst & Benenden tomorrow as the most prominent TWA incumbent on the ballot.

The pitch is straightforwardly local: a registered party that takes no national whip, focused exclusively on borough-level decisions, with a stated commitment to scrutiny of major capital projects and to defending the character of Tunbridge Wells’ centre and conservation areas.

The record is by any measure the most distinctive on the ballot. The Alliance was formed in the run-up to the 2018 borough election predominantly to oppose the then-Conservative leadership’s £108m Calverley Square theatre and civic-complex scheme. After winning five new seats at the 2019 borough election alongside one already held, the Alliance was instrumental in the cross-party vote that scrapped Calverley Square in October 2019 — the project was duly cancelled. After the 2022 elections left the council in no overall control, TWA accepted a cabinet role in the Borough Partnership coalition under Lib Dem leadership, a decision its then-leader David Hayward later described publicly as a mistake — see the next entry. Voters who valued the original anti-Calverley scrutiny role can reasonably ask whether the cabinet partnership has changed that posture; voters who valued the partnership stability that produced the Local Plan will count the same fact differently.

Their material is at twalliance.org.

Independents for Tunbridge Wells — the breakaway

Independents for Tunbridge Wells is a registered local-first party formed in August 2023 by Cllr David Hayward, the former leader of the Tunbridge Wells Alliance, after he left TWA over its Borough Partnership role. Hayward holds the party’s single sitting seat, in Pembury & Capel, and is defending it tomorrow.

Hayward’s stated argument for the split was that the Alliance had become “shackled and subservient to the Lib Dems” through the cabinet arrangement, and that there was “growing desire for genuinely independent candidates” who would not be bound by any group whip — coalition or otherwise. The party platform, in essence, is the same local-first, scrutiny-led posture TWA originally took, with the cabinet-distance restored.

The record to weigh is short, given the party’s youth and single-seat presence. Hayward’s own record on the borough goes back to before the split, and includes the Calverley Square period as a TWA councillor. With one seat to defend tomorrow and one candidate on the ballot, the practical question for Pembury & Capel voters is straightforward: a vote for Hayward as a standalone independent voice, against five other candidates from the larger parties.

The party does not currently maintain a single consolidated website; voter information is via the official Statement of Persons Nominated.

Green Party

The Greens hold no current seats on Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and lost their previous Wincheap seat in late 2025. They are standing candidates in most contested wards tomorrow — including Paul Froome (Cranbrook, Sissinghurst & Frittenden), Mark McBennett (Culverden), Trevor Bisdee (Paddock Wood), Joe Mattei (Pantiles), Alasdair Fraser (Park), Sue Lovell (Pembury & Capel), Helen Yeo (Rural Tunbridge Wells), Stephanie Gandon (Rusthall & Speldhurst), Eben Lenton and Kate Sergeant (Sherwood), Maria Gavin and Iqbal Sidhu (Southborough & Bidborough), Lucy Miller (St James’) and Lewis Jenkins (St John’s).

The pitch is environmental — opposition to the Local Plan’s allocation pattern on green-belt-adjacent rural sites, support for active travel investment, energy retrofit, and planning rules that prioritise green space and biodiversity. The party also takes a distinctive position on Local Government Reorganisation, with national Green guidance generally favouring the smallest plausible unitary footprint to preserve community accountability — a different instinct from the larger merger options on the table.

With no sitting seats, the Greens have no recent voting record at borough level to weigh against the rhetoric. Their published material is at tunbridgewells.greenparty.org.uk.

Other independents and minor parties

Two further candidates fall outside the established party slates. Ahsan Ahmad is standing as an Independent in Culverden against five major-party rivals — voters considering an independent vote there will need to consult the local Statement of Persons Nominated for the candidate’s own platform, since there is no central party material to cross-reference. Aaron Brand is standing in Southborough & Bidborough as the candidate for the English Democrats, a small registered national party with a platform centred on English political identity and constitutional change; a single-candidate campaign of this kind has no recent voting record at TWBC to assess against the pitch.

The LGR question, in plain terms

Every councillor elected tomorrow will be sitting on a council the Government intends to abolish. That single fact reshapes how to read every party’s manifesto.

Under the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, the existing two-tier system in Kent — Kent County Council on top, twelve borough and district councils underneath, plus the Medway unitary alongside — will be replaced by a smaller number of single-tier unitary councils, each handling everything KCC and the borough currently do between them. Five separate proposals are on the consultation table, ranging from a single Kent-and-Medway unitary at one extreme to a five-unitary structure at the other. Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, on a vote in November 2025, formally backed Option 3a — a three-unitary structure in which Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks, Tonbridge & Malling and Maidstone merge into one new west-Kent unitary. Other parties on tomorrow’s ballot may have different preferences within the consultation; voters who care about which option is adopted should ask each candidate directly.

The Government’s expected timetable is a final decision in summer 2026 and the new unitary system going live in April 2028, with shadow authorities running in parallel during the transition. In practical terms, the councillors elected tomorrow will most likely serve a two-year term rather than the standard four — long enough to take the next set of major borough decisions, but not long enough to see them through to delivery. That makes scrutiny of those decisions disproportionately important for this particular cycle.

What to do as a voter

Three practical steps that apply regardless of which party you are leaning toward:

  • Check you are registered — at gov.uk/register-to-vote. The deadline to register for tomorrow’s ballot has passed, but checking ahead matters for the next cycle.
  • Bring photo ID — passport, driving licence, older-person bus pass and several other forms are accepted; the full list is on the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council elections page. If you do not have an accepted form, you should already have applied for a free Voter Authority Certificate; the deadline for tomorrow’s ballot has now passed, but the borough’s recent early-voting pilot highlighted the issue and the council expects continued ID enforcement at every future election.
  • Find your polling station — your poll card lists it; if you have lost the card, the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council elections team can confirm your station by phone, and whocanivotefor.co.uk shows your full local ballot once you enter your postcode.

Polling stations are open from 7am to 10pm on Thursday 7 May 2026. Results are expected to be declared overnight into Friday 8 May, with the borough’s count typically completed by mid-morning.

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Tunbridge Wells Borough Council elections: your complete voter’s guide Quiz

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