Six years after Brexit was blamed for the collapse of her husband’s family firm, Sarah Pochin is standing as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK candidate in the 1 May 2025 Runcorn and Helsby by-election.
Brexit caused the family firm to fail
Pochin’s Ltd, the Cheshire firm that built the Princeway Health Centre in Frodsham, were working on a £15.7mn dementia care village at City Road in Chester when the 120 year old firm collapsed into administration.
They were locked in a legal dispute with DeTrafford Construction Ltd over completion of apartments in Manchester.
Place North West, a property intelligence service, reported trouble at the 13-storey Sky Gardens and 11-storey City Gardens:
Brexit has impacted on import prices. Most materials come from Europe, and with the pound worth 20% less, imports have become more expensive and supply competitive.
Work on 162 apartments at Sky Gardens had started in 2017, the year after the Brexit referendum vote, when hundreds of skilled Polish and Hungarian craftsmen never came back to their jobs in Manchester after the Christmas holiday.
Jessica Middleton-Pugh reported for Place NW:
Manchester has become a victim of its own success; 78 sites under construction, including tall and dense development by prolific developers such as Renaker. Sub-contractors and materials are in short supply.
According to one architect, ‘there’s a shortage of brickies, and if someone offers them 50p more per brick to go to a different site, then they’re off.’ One Manchester city centre developer said sub-contractors walking off site mid-contract for a better offer had become common. The result: contractors are having to pay more to keep staff, eroding an already delicate profit margin.
Sarah Pochin stood for the Conservative Party in Bolton
In the June 2017 general election, Sarah Pochin stood for the Conservative Party in the safe Labour seat of Bolton South East, taking a creditable 29.7% share of the vote, despite prime-minister Theresa May’s disastrous “Brexit means Brexit” campaign.
In that year Pochin’s reported a pre-tax loss of £3.4 million on revenue of £59 million to February 2018.
Pochin Construction Ltd went into administration on August 5, 2018, owing suppliers and sub-contractors nearly £9mn and £11.6mn to inter-company creditors with a pension deficit of £25mn.
Four years later their client, DeTrafford City Gardens Ltd collapsed with three associated firms owing £40 million to suppliers and insurers.
Jonathan Pochin, Sarah’s husband, told Cheshire Live in 2019:
“The business was set up by my grandfather, Arthur, and his brother, Cedric, back in 1934.
“When the business was taken private in 2014 we sold our shareholding to the Nicholson family, Cedric’s descendants. We were sad to lose our ownership but proud that the name continued.”
Jonathan Pochin was managing director until 2015.
The old family firm went to the receivers
James “Jim” William Pochin Nicholson then ploughed another £1.5 million of family money into the firm.
Pochin’s had de-listed from the stock exchange in 2014, eighty years after the two grandfathers started their joinery workshop under railway arches at Castlefield in Manchester.
Arthur and Cedric manufactured army ammunition boxes during the Second World War under the arches that are barely half a mile from the disastrous Sky and City apartment projects on Chester Road that doomed the firm. Pochin’s later headquarters at Middlewich was sold by receivers for £6.6 million.
In her own business career Sarah Pochin worked for Shell International, for Caradon plc and for Heywood Williams plc, Britain’s biggest manufacturer of door and window frames.
Expelled from the Conservative Party and the Independents
She was councillor for the Bunbury ward of Cheshire East council between 2015 and 2023, but the Conservative group expelled her in 2020 after she had agreed to a proposal from Labour and Independent councillors to serve as the ceremonial mayor of Cheshire East from 2021 to 2022.
Two years later, the Independents expelled her for rejoining the national Conservative Party to acquire a vote in their leadership elections after the resignation of Boris Johnson.
Without ever revealing whether she had voted for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, Sarah Pochin told the Independents in a leaked email:
I took up membership of the Tory Party once again in order to be able to vote in the leadership election – a forgivable offence, I would argue, as there weren’t enough sensible folk allowed to vote in that crucial election as it was.
I could have offered to resign my membership of the Tory Party as I had achieved my aim of voting in the Tory Party leadership contest, but I was not given that opportunity.
Pochin then joined Reform UK
Last year, Sarah Pochin joined Reform UK, the party founded and originally owned by the architect of Brexit, Nigel Farage.
Nigel Farage introduced Sarah Pochin, after the unexpected downfall of the Labour MP at Runcorn and Helsby, as “a great candidate who has enjoyed a successful career in private business and has represented the local community as a magistrate for the past twenty years.”
Twenty years as magistrate but not without controversy
But no sooner had Nigel Farage referred to Sarah Pochin’s 20-year service as a justice of the peace than Dan Haygarth of the Liverpool Echo revealed that in 2018 the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office [JCIO] had investigated her conduct after a complaint from a councillor at Cheshire East.
The Echo published a JCIO statement:
The Lord Chancellor and Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb on behalf of the Lord Chief Justice have made a finding of misconduct against Ms Sarah Pochin, a magistrate assigned to the Cheshire area, for using her status as a magistrate to influence the views of her colleagues in a political context.
In addition, she breached confidentiality by publicising the complaint made against her. The Lord Chancellor and Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb considered that Ms Pochin’s behaviour fell below the standards expected of a magistrate and have issued her with formal advice.
Reform UK defend their candidate
This matter had nothing to do with Sarah Pochin’s conduct as presiding justice in court. The comment was made in a private meeting and was used by the Conservative Party as a political attack. No further action was taken.
Sarah went on to serve a further seven years with great distinction as a magistrate in the Chester and Crewe courts. In March this year she honourably resigned as a Presiding Justice to campaign in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election and was thanked for her past service to the magistracy. This speaks for itself.
Sarah Pochin is one of the three candidates at Runcorn and Helsby who refused an offer from North West Bylines to answer “ten questions to better understand their plans for the constituency and the country.”
