Labour decimated as all Valley seats go to Tories
THE Rossendale Labour Party have been left without a single county council seat after the Tories succeeded in winning a clean sweep in the LCC elections.
Notable scalps have been claimed with an extremely tight margin by the Conservatives, including the county seat of Rossendale council leader Alyson Barnes which was claimed by Conservative David Foxcroft by a tiny margin of just eight votes.
Across the county the Conservatives took back control of county hall following the elections on Thursday, May 4.
In Rossendale, Labour incumbents Jackie Oakes for Rossendale East and Sean Serridge for Whitworth and Bacup were both unseated by their Tory opponents Jimmy Eaton and Peter Steen.
Conservative candidates who were standing for re-election, Anne Cheetham for Rossendale South and David Stansfield for Rossendale West, were voted back in with increased majorities.
The Tories were especially jubilant at the win of their youngest candidate, David Foxcroft, 27, who took the Mid Rossendle seat from Labour’s parliamentary candidate Alyson Barnes with 2,194 votes to 2,186. The seat also saw the highest turnout of the borough, 39.3 per cent.
It was a good day for those in the Valley wearing blue, and party leader Anne Cheetham celebrated the win, adding it was ‘practice’ for the forthcoming general election.
She said: “It is quite an exciting day, it is a good four years since we have had a clean sweep and hopefully with five Conservative county councillors working together we can make things possible and bring about the improvements we want.
“All my colleagues will be returning to Preston with me, and we have got a new little kid on the block who is coming with us and I am glad that we will have five county councillors from Rossendale to Preston and we will be able to make sure that this borough of Rossendale gets its fair ratio of investment.”
Conceding the loss, borough council leader councillor Barnes said: “It is a disappointing day for us but when you think about the costs that we have sustained - it is a fact that Rossendale Borough Council had £12million a year to spend back in 2010, it has £9million to spend now so the impacts are obvious there. At county the situation is much bigger and it’s not helped us that we have been doling out those cuts.
“The background in terms of the politics has been very difficult and with the announcement of the General Election all of that has flowed into our local campaign.
“I would like to wish many of our new councillors well in their roles and I am hoping that they can put party politics aside once we have got the elections over and done with and concentrate on doing what’s right for Rossendale to work with the borough councillors to make sure this borough gets what it needs.”