Labour have held on to control of Caerphilly County Borough Council.
The group won 50 out of 73 seats across 33 wards, while Plaid Cymru won 18 seats – down two from the 2012 local election.
Cllr Dave Poole, deputy leader of the council, said Labour’s victory was a tribute to late council leader Keith Reynolds, who passed away last month.
He said: “Labour had the vision for the future and Plaid Cymru didn’t. Their leaflets were looking at the past.
“Keith lay the groundwork for this. We were forced to cut £52 million from the budget, yet we didn’t cut services and we spent more money on social services and education. He was the architect of that and this is a fitting tribute to him.”
Labour have taken seats from Plaid Cymru in the Newbridge and Morgan Jones wards and seats from independents in Risca West and Nelson.
Lindsay Whittle, a former leader of the Caerphilly Plaid Cymru group, said voting had been affected by the upcoming General Election.
He said: “This was a local election and I must say I’m very disappointed that so many Conservative candidates stood and made no effort.”
He added: “Labour have won and they have given carte blanche now.”
Turnout for the election was 37.48%.
The Labour group is set to have a meeting on Monday to elect a new council leader.
Well done to all the people who voted in Labour again, will you never learn i hope you are prepared for more of the same.
It really does beggar belief, Labour can do whatever they like in Caerphilly and still they get voted back in, what about the £2.5 million pounds of taxpayers money that has been wasted by Labour on the ongoing senior officers pay scandal, it just goes to show a card board cut out could stand for Labour in Caerphilly and still get voted in.
People say if you put a donkey to stand for Labour in the valleys it would get voted in – but in this case the donkeys are the voters .
No good complaining in a few months time about how the council are wasting your council tax
I wonder what happened to Ukip?
Their supporters lent their vote to the conservatives in order to give Teresa May her mandate to leave the EU.
I voted ukip where possible and Tory as a second choice and not at all when the options were red or green.
Whilst my political view is slightly left of centre, I still think that to have such a huge majority is not good for the area. It appears voters are happy enough to overlook the huge amounts of our money wasted by the senior officers pay scandal. Its a shame that other parties cant make inroads here as I think that Labour in Caerphilly are far too complacent, and they need more challenge put to them when making decisions.
To true, those who have yet again voted in a poorly performing inefficient Labour council are sending them the wrong message, they’ve now given them free reign to do as they please because they know they will simply be voted in time after time. The other parties should be also held accountable for allowing this to happen, they appear to accept that they have no chance of being voted in so don’t even bother putting up a fight. Caerphilly Council gave them plenty of ammunition to use but none of them had the balls to mount a serious challenge, only a few independents were prepared to make the effort but their problem is that they don’t have the unlimited financial resources the local Labour party has.
I agree that such dominance, by any party, is not healthy. The major problem as I see it is voter apathy. Much less than half the electorate bother to vote which is of great concern to me, as I have stated many times in comments to The Observer.