Labour’s Lisa Jones has won the Bedwas Trethomas and Machen by-election to take a seat on Caerphilly County Borough Council.
Cllr Jones got 1,002 votes, with Plaid Cymru’s Ron Davies coming second with 509 votes in the poll yesterday, September 3.
With a turnout of 28%, Bobby Douglas, who was dropped as the UKIP candidate last week after making offensive and Islamophobic remarks on Facebook, got 223 votes.
Although on the ballot as a UKIP candidate Mr Douglas has resigned from the party.
Independent John Dew James got 184 votes, while the Conservative candidate Rita Lukins received 119 votes.
Ray Davies, standing as an Independent got 106 votes in the by-election that was called after death of veteran Labour councillor Ray Davies earlier this year.
Cllr Jones said: “I’m delighted with the outcome. I will be building on the work I’ve been doing as a community councillor and supporting the management group at the workman’s hall.
“I’m also supporting the speeding campaign in Machen and will be attending a meeting on September 17 for the 20’s plenty campaign.”
There was also an election for a councillor for the Trecenydd ward of Penyrheol, Trecenydd and Energlyn Community Council.
Plaid Cymru’s Jon Scriven was elected with 435 votes, UKIP’s Marco Cullen came second with 256 votes and Labour’s Michelle Jones received 189 votes in a turnout of 20%.
A pitiful 28% turnout is poor, are these low turnouts a sad indictment of todays lazy attitude towards everything, is it really too much effort now for the majority of people to get off their lazy backsides and go and vote, I dare say these folk will have a strong opinion about what goes on in their area, and will whine on forever more about things, but they can’t be bothered to actually do anything about it. If the turnout is less than 51% nobody should be elected.
No! Someone should be elected no matter what the turnout (as daft as that sounds) because the council already pays polling station staff in excess of ~£100 for their 15 hours of work on election days, multiply this by 3 (staff per station) and we’re already on a total of £300 just for 1 polling station! Multiply this £300 by the number of polling stations and a bill of over £1,000 is easily racked up.
By having a threshold turnout of 51% the council will be throwing money away left, right and centre.
The turnout in the Trecenydd was was dismal. Congratulations to Plaid, but where were Labour? Labour were whitewashed by UKIP in the Welsh valleys.
Labour’s Michelle Jones lost by 246 votes to Plaid and a whopping 67 to UKIP! (Official CCBC website reports UKIP had 256 votes, it would help if the bias Caerphilly Observer at least tried to obscure their views by reporting accurate figures). A fantastic job they did in Bedwas to a lacklustre one in Trecenydd. Heads need to roll at the campaign managers within the Labour party!
Hi Michael. Thanks for spotting the error. We have now updated the UKIP vote to correctly read 256 and not 236 as was previously stated.