Blackpool South by-election to take place in May

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces a by-election test in May in the marginal constituency of Blackpool South.

Scott Benton, who was sitting as an independent MP for the area, announced his resignation on Monday.

He had been suspended from the Conservatives after a lobbying scandal and was facing a recall vote to boot him out next month.

The by-election is set to take place on the same day as local elections on 2 May.

Government Chief Whip Simon Hart issued the writ for the vacant seat in the House of Commons.

Today was also the last date the government could have announced a general election on 2 May but the prime minister had already ruled this out, saying it is still likely to be in the second half of the year.

Mr Sunak will not be relishing the prospect of another by-election as he tries to shore up his party's prospects in the general election, in the face of poor opinion poll ratings.

Blackpool South will be the fourth by-election this year, and the 13th since Mr Sunak entered No 10, with only one of those seats being won by the Tories.

Scott Benton became MP there in 2019 with a slender 3,690 majority over Labour, which had held the seat since 1997.

He was secretly filmed saying he could lobby ministers to undercover Times reporters posing as gambling industry investors.

The MP had been sitting as an independent MP since losing the Tory whip in April last year.

He lost an appeal against a suspension, after a Commons investigation found he had caused "significant damage" to Parliament's reputation.

This triggered a recall petition, where local voters would have had until 22 April to decide whether to sack him as their MP.

Instead, he announced his departure on Facebook, saying being an MP "had been the honour of a lifetime".

MPs are not technically allowed to resign and instead have to be appointed Steward of either the Chiltern Hundreds, or of the Manor of Northstead, as Mr Benton has been, on an alternating basis.

This appointment disqualifies them from being an MP and each new appointment revokes the previous, so Mr Benton has displaced Chris Pincher, who quit last year after a sex scandal, as Steward of the Manor of Northstead.

That allows a process, known as moving the writ, to start a countdown with a polling day between 21 and 27 working days later.

The writ is an order for the election be held, sent from the Speaker to the constituency returning officer, who then sets the date.

The Blackpool South by-election will be the 23rd in this Parliament, which started in 2019, and this is the most by-elections in one parliament since 24 were held in the 1987-1992 Parliament.