Tories back in control of borough
THE Conservatives now have overall control of Surrey Heath Borough Council after gaining a seat from the Liberal Democrats in a by-election.
The Frimley Green by-election was won by Stuart Black with a 19.6% swing compared to 2019, and now gives the Conservative Party a majority of seats on the borough council. Mr Black won by 19 votes.
The Tory candidate took 48.5% of the vote, with the Lib Dems polling 47.4% and Labour third with 4.1%. The local Liberal Democrats said they were “disappointed” with the result.
Michael Gove, the MP for Surrey Heath, congratulated Cllr Black on Twitter, saying: “Congratulations to the brilliant Stuart Black on his election and commiserations to the other candidates. I know
Stuart will be a superb councillor”.
Cllr Sashi Mylvaganam, the Liberal Democrat group leader, said: “Obviously we are very disappointed to lose the by-election by just 19 votes out of the 1,800-plus cast – especially with such an outstanding candidate like Jacques Olmo who is a fine community activist. Our data tells us that we would have won very clearly without the postal voting, so that is an area that we shall be looking at for the future.
“Postal votes were cast a couple of weeks ago and I suspect that quite a few people who voted Conservative back then would have behaved rather differently in view of the very strong campaign we put together right up to polling day itself.”
The result sees the Conservatives increase their majority on the borough council. In the last election UKIP took 12.9% of the vote and the Pirate Party took 9.1%.
Guildford borough councillor Paul Spooner, (Conservative, Ash South & Tongham) said: “Great to see Surrey Heath Borough Council back under Conservative control and congrats to newly-elected Cllr Stuart Black. Quite a swing!”