Labour hold Halton despite bridge row
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LABOUR held onto all its seats in Halton despite speculation that the unpopularity of the Mersey Gateway tolls could have influenced the vote.
The tolls have been one of the borough’s most contentious issues since the Gateway crossing opened in October 2017, and opposition parties have made various promises to fight against them.
UKIP, which put forward seven candidates but won no seats, said it is strictly anti-tolls, while the Liberal Democrats, who also put forward seven candidates and held one seat, said they would call for a review of the tolls.
However, there has been no change in the balance of power in Runcorn and Widnes, as Labour held on to all of its seats.
Eighteen seats were up for grabs in 17 wards in the local election, because there was a vacancy in Halton View, which meant there were two seats available.
Labour controlled 17 of those seats, while the Lib Dems controlled one in Heath Ward.
Both parties have held onto the seats they controlled, although it was a close call in some areas.
In Hale Village, deputy leader of ● Halton Council Mike Wharton won his seat – which was uncontested the last time he stood for election in 2014, by 80 votes.
Cllr Wharton won 468 votes, while Independent candidate Luke Trevaskis, who is a Hale Parish Councillor, came second and won 388 votes.
Mr Trevaskis, said he was happy with the outcome, because it ‘sent a message to Halton that no uncontested seat was safe’.
He added that he hoped the result would be a ‘wake up call’ to Mr Wharton because he had managed to gain a large proportion of the vote by doing ‘the bare minimum’.
He said: “I think I came out with a healthy result of 44% considering i’ve never entered local elections before.”
Leader of Halton Council Cllr Rob Polhill, who said he was ‘really pleased’ with the overall results, blamed ‘misinformation’ issued by the opposition on the close call in Hale.
Mr Wharton said: “I am absolutely delighted. It is an honour and a privilege to represent Hale. I will always do my best for the village where I live.
“I have represented Hale now for 16 years.
“As a village, I hope we can now get back together and work as a community.”
The Lib Dems and the Tories are still the borough’s second largest parties and hold two seats each.
The Lib Dems have two seats in Heath ward, and Cllr Chris Rowe was up for election.
He won by a margin of 180 votes, which he described as a ‘closer call’ than he was expecting.
However he said was happy with the result, and added that he hadn’t necessarily expected the party to make gains in Halton this year.
He said over the last four years the Liberal Democrats were still suffering from the unpopularity of the Coalition Government, but that he thought next year could see some changes.
The Conservatives hold two seats in Daresbury, which is a two seat ward so neither of those candidates were up for election.
Other close results included Birchfield, where Labour’s Mike Fry just held off Tory challenger John Powell by 185 votes.
The voter turn out in Halton was 26.08%
Cllr Polhill said: “I’m really pleased about the results. We’re never complacent in Halton but to expect to win and not lose any is a really good result.”
He said that he hadn’t expected the anti-toll sentiment, or the recent TPT ruling that said the Gateway tolls could be illegal , to make a difference to the vote.
He said: “If you look at the Halton people, 99.6% of them get free travel. That’s 99.6% that are happy.
“I can understand people from outside the borough being unhappy with that because nobody wants to pay tolls, but we never wanted to have a tolled bridge either, the Government insisted on that.”
The council leader said that he would never be complacent even with such a large majority, and vowed to continue looking after the borough’s most vulnerable.
He said: “We’re not complacent and we have to move forward and deal with the challenges that this government have set up for us with the severe cuts that they keep on giving us and we’ll endeavour to try and do our best for that.”