SWANSEA has a new councillor, Beth Rowe, following a by-election in Fairwood.
Cllr Rowe won the seat for the Liberal Democrats with Labour in second place.
“I was hopeful but it was a lovely surprise,” the mother-of-three said of the victory. “We had a nice response on the doorstep, and quite a lot of people already knew me.”
Cllr Rowe grew up in Killay and said she spent a lot of time at her grandparents’ house in Upper Killay, which is in the Fairwood ward.
Fairwood is mainly a rural area on the eastern side of Gower and somewhere close to Cllr Rowe’s heart.
“I’ve worked on various farms and kept horses all my life in Gower,” she said. “I’m passionate about the area. I just want to do my bit to keep it nice for years to come.”
She works as a groom, owns four horses, and is also vice-chairwoman of Gower Commons safety action group, which campaigns to protect roaming livestock and improve road safety.
She said animal collision deaths were coming down in Gower but said speeding was still a problem, along with people littering and feeding livestock. She explained that people could unwittingly harm animals by feeding them and also encourage them closer to roads.
Cllr Rowe, 34, stood for the Lib-Dems in the Dunvant and Killay ward in the 2022 council elections and came sixth out of 13 candidates.
She said it would take a bit of time to settle into her new role and that she would like to serve on committees or groups tasked with preserving Gower, which has national landscape status.
Cllr Rowe, who lives with her partner and has children aged six, four and two, said her priorities would be listening to constituents and addressing local issues. She thanked Dunvant and Killay councillors Mary and Jeff Jones for their support.
The Fairwood seat was available following the death of long-serving Conservative councillor and former Lord Mayor of Swansea Paxton Hood-Williams.
Reform UK came third in the by-election, followed by Independent candidate Paul Dennis, the Conservatives, and unaffiliated candidate Matthew Ward.
Cllr Chris Holley, leader of Swansea Liberal Democrats, which now has 14 councillors, said: “I am absolutely delighted for Beth. She’s a really good candidate and is well-known and respected.” Cllr Holley also said “knocking Reform into third place” was important in terms of a “positive politics of change”.
