A co-founder of the proposed Marlow Film Studios development has taken his seat in the House of Lords after winning an all-male aristocratic by-election.

William Stonor, now Lord Camoys, will sit as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords after seeing off 13 other candidates in an eight-round election that eventually saw him draw in 133 of 236 votes cast in the last round.

Lord Camoys, who is the custodian of Stonor Park in Henley alongside acting as co-founder and director of Marlow Film Studios, took his seat following a by-election triggered by the death of Lord Brougham and Vaux in August.

In his candidate statement, he wrote: “My 26 years’ experience in investment and foreign affairs, including running my own business advising on Western engagement in China (based in Beijing from 2010-15) follows my time in the Foreign Office (Afghanistan, Iran, India and Counter Terrorism).

“A founder of the UK’s premier film studio planned for Marlow and chairman of a Nepalese nature conservation charity, I would look to contribute on foreign affairs, finance, nature conservation and the creative economy.”

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Lord Camoys’ father, who died in January this year, was the first Catholic Lord Chamberlain since the Reformation, and sat in the House of Lords as an independent crossbench peer from 1976 until House of Lords reform in 1999.

That law cut the number of hereditary peers down to a fixed number of 92.

Ever since, every time a hereditary peer dies or retires from the house, there has been a by-election among those eligible to sit as a hereditary peer.

There have been repeated demands for the Lords to scrap these contests, including from former Labour minister Lord Grocott, who usually gives a short speech condemning this process after a by-election result is announced in the chamber.

Local Planning Authority Buckinghamshire Council voted to defer a decision on the Marlow Film Studios proposal until March 2024 in a meeting last month.

This followed statements and petitions from studio developers and oppositional environmental campaigners.

The deferral will allow further analyses of the environmental and traffic impacts of the studio to take place ahead of an approval or rejection of the application next year.