Plaid holds on to Dyfed-Powys role as Labour wins elsewhere
DYFEDPOWYS returned the only non-Labour police and crime commissioner after last week’s vote.
Dafydd Llywelyn was re-elected for another term as elsewhere Welsh Labour added to a successful round of elections by winning the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner’s role from Plaid Cymru and holding the Gwent and South Wales roles.
Policing is not devolved to Wales.
Introduced in 2012 by the Conservative-led UK Government, the responsibilities of PCCs are “to secure the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force within their area, and to hold the chief constable to account for the delivery of the police and crime plan”.
Opposition parties were against the creation of the new role, fearing it risked politicising police forces.
Nevertheless, they participate in commissioner elections.
PCCs are elected by a system known as the Supplementary Vote, under which voters put across against their top two favourite candidates on the ballot paper.
If one of the candidates wins more than 50% of the total vote,
they are elected.
But if no candidate reaches that threshold, all but the top two are eliminated, and voters’ second preferences are added in if that candidate remains in the contest.
In Dyfed-Powys, the Conservative candidate Jon Burns led after the first round, with 69,112 votes.
Plaid Cymru’s incumbent Dafydd Llywelyn, a former intelligence analyst and lecturer in criminology at Aberystwyth University, was not far behind with 68,208 votes, while Labour’s Philippa Thompson was on 48,033; and the Liberal Democrats’ Tomos Preston had 17,649.
But Mr Llywelyn leapfrogged Mr Burns in the second round of counting, to win by 94,488 votes to 77,408.