LOCAL ELECTIONS: THE Conservatives were today the largest party on Swindon Council following a dramatic election night victory over Labour.
The Tory group was just one seat and 29 votes away from winning overall control of the council following last night's count.
But council leader Kevin Small (Lab, Western) remained tight-lipped about whether his Labour group would relinquish overall control of the authority to the Tories, who gained six seats and are now the majority party.
That will ultimately be decided at the next meeting of the council on Friday, May 16 when Coun Small, who has only been leader of the council for six months, is likely to concede defeat and hand control to Conservative leader Mike Bawden (Old Town and Lawns) who will become the fourth leader in a year.
The shock of the night came when the lead member for education and Walcot councillor for three years, Chris Eley, lost his Walcot seat to Laura Holiday (Con).
He said: "I'm very disappointed because we've done a lot of things for Walcot like the street wardens, regenerations and seeing Churchfields School out of special measures. This may be just a mixture of the mid-term blues and national issues, but there was no indication from the doorstep. Walcot was a seat that we expected to win, but it's been a Conservative seat in the past."
In the borough, 20 of Swindon Council's 59 seats were being disputed. In total the Labour group lost six seats, the Conservatives gained six seats while the Liberal Democrats stood still with eight seats.
Coun Small said: "I'm very disappointed because the people of Swindon have rejected us and the Conservatives will now benefit from our hard work and extra resources. We were brave enough to put council tax up by 15.5 per cent and we will see improvements, but that's simply because of the work we have done."
Among the new Conservative faces on the council, 23-year-old Christopher Van Roon held St Margaret ward, while 26-year-old Deborah Baylies gained St Philip ward from the Labour group chairman Eriqua (Ray) Ballman.
However, there was a small amount of joy for the Labour group when Maureen Caton held Moredon with just 28 votes.
The Conservatives also gained Covingham and Nythe (Glenn Smith), Toothill and Westlea (Steve Wakefield) and Dorcan where Andrew Albinson defeated Pete Brown (Lab) by just 41 votes.
As the night began, Swindon Council was made up of 28 Labour seats, 23 Conservative seats, and eight Liberal Democrats seats. The night ended with Labour in control of 22 seats, Conservatives 29 and Liberal Democrats eight.
This was the second year that Swindon had been involved in a pilot scheme to introduce electronic voting, but it did nothing to prevent chronic voter apathy. Last year, total turnout for the election was 31.2 per cent of Swindon's 180,000 population and 6,321 votes were cast via the internet or telephone. This year turnout was just 29.82 per cent with 11,055 people taking advantage of alternative voting methods.
On North Wiltshire District Council, where the council has been run as a minority Liberal Democrat administration, all the seats were up for re-election, but council leader David Packham (Lib Dem) lost his seat.
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