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Manchester Evening News

National

Chris Gee

Labour celebrate becoming largest party on Bolton Council as Tories endure election losses in night of high drama

Bolton Council Bolton David Grant Martyn Cox Horwich

Labour are now the largest party on Bolton Council after a night of high drama at ‘all out’ elections to decide who runs the borough. They gained seats from the Conservatives to finish the night with 26 councillors, the Tories, who previously controlled the council lost 10 seats and now have 16.

At the count held at Bolton Arena, the Liberal Democrats gained a seat to leave them with six councillors and Horwich and Blackrod Independent’s swept the board in the town to leave them with six members, tripling their group’s number at the Town Hall. One Kearsley took all three seats in the Kearsley ward and Farnworth and Kearsley First now have two members, down from three.

There is one independent member, Derek Bullock, who was nominated as a Conservative but was later ditched from the party and will not retain the Tory whip at council meetings. Labour took two seats from the Conservatives in Rumworth ward and gained other seats from them in Astley Bridge, Hulton and Breightmet.

Cabinet member Toby Hewitt lost his seat in Hulton but other leading Conservatives including current council leader Martyn Cox and cabinet members Andy Morgan, Adele Warren, Nadim Muslim and Hilary Fairclough retained their councillor status.

The former leader of Oldham Council, Sean Fielding made his political comeback by being being elected as a Labour councillor for Breightmet. Despite Labour being the largest party when the final results were called at around 5am today, the council remains in no overall control as they fell short of the 31 member number needed for an overall majority of the 60-strong authority.

Asked if he expects to lead the council, Labour leader Nick Peel, said: “I will say to the independent parties and Lib Dems that the public of Bolton profoundly rejected the Tories. “Please don’t prop up a lame duck Tory administration that has now been rejected.

“If they do that then yes I do expect to form an administration.”
He added that the results had been ‘bitter sweet’ for his party.

He said: “I think we made nine gains but we just lost two to the independents in Horwich so it’s a net increase of seven. “Clearly where it was a Labour versus Conservative battleground we’ve done very well, where we were up against independents, less so.

“We were aware of this during the campaign and failed to get our message across that it was the independents who were propping up a Conservative council.” Conservative leader Martyn Cox said earlier in the evening it had been a ‘lively election’ and thanked his ‘fabulous team’ for their efforts during the campaign.

It was a resoundingly successful night for Horwich and Blackrod First Independents, who gained seats from both Labour and Conservatives to win all the six seats up for grabs in that area.

Their leader David Grant, said: “The people of Horwich have shown they will not go along with the rhetoric of the main parties. “They have put faith in localism as they have seen it work with the two previous councillors and wanted to see what we could do with six.

“This will give us a platform to get investment into Horwich and Blackrod and give us a bigger say.”
Coun Grant said that in four years Labour had not had discussions with his party and that ‘the ball is in their court if they want to speak to us’.

Informal discussions are now expected to take place between the parties before the council elects a new leader at its annual general meeting at a date to be decided later this month.

You can see the results in full below.