There were two principal council elections held on the 28th August. The Tories held one seat and Labour the other seat. There was one Parish council and one town council result reported to ALDC where the Lib Dems made a gain from an Independent and lost one to the Tories.
In the Pim Hill ward of Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council, the Liberal Democrats came from nowhere to within 10 votes of taking the seat off the Conservatives. The last time the seat was fought it was a two-horse contest between the Tories and Labour, with the Tories gaining 80.6% of the votes. In the by-election Labour did not stand leaving it as a four-way fight between the Lib Dems, Tories, BNP and an Anti Incinerator candidate.
After a slow start, the campaign picked up pace with three leaflets and lots of canvassing being achieved, if the campaign had been started earlier and with one more piece of literature being delivered we could have achieved the 11 votes needed to win this seat. In by-elections extra effort is needed to be put in and more pieces of literature than you would deliver in a normal election is required to win, especially when we are coming from a standing start.
In the Wickersley Ward of Rotherham MBC by-election, we stood a candidate and with one leaflet achieved 6.8% vote share, the BNP had 19.2% of the vote.
It was really good to see that we had a candidate, meaning that 191 people who wanted to vote Liberal Democrat had the opportunity; this gives a good base to build on and with some hard work, at the next election we could pick up a lot of the protest vote that is in the BNP vote. This could put us in a position to challenge for the seat.