Former Newcastle Liberal Democrat councillor Gerry Keating will be aiming to take a seat in North Jesmond at next month’s by-election, JesmondLocal has learned.

Keating will be standing for the seat vacated by Peter Andras, who has moved to take a job at Keele University. Keating will be campaigning against candidates from four other parties – Labour, the Conservatives, the Green Party and UKIP – half of whom stood for election in May’s scheduled vote.

The Labour party confirmed Peter Smith, who lost to the Liberal Democrat candidate (now councillor) Catherine Walker by 32 votes in May, will once again campaign for election to the council. The Green party has declared their candidate as Shehla Navqi, a humanistic psychotherapist with a private practice in Jesmond.

UKIP will field Daniel Thompson, who stood in the May elections in West Gosforth for UKIP, and finished fourth with an 11.5% share of the vote, while local businessman Duncan Crute, owner of Crutes La Mar, will return to stand for the Conservatives after campaigning for election in May.

Smaller parties and, to a lesser extent, Labour have taken vote share from the Liberal Democrats in the North Jesmond ward since 2006:

The by-election will be held on August 28th; JesmondLocal will be profiling the candidates on JesmondLocal.com the week of August 18th.