Conservatives celebrate as they edge closer to Peterborough City Council majority

Peterborough’s Conservative Party were delighted by their gains at this year’s local election.

Paul Bristow, Peterborough’s Conservative MP, and Shailesh Vara, North-West Cambridgeshire’s Conservative MP, were among those present to cheer on their party’s Peterborough City Council (PCC) candidates as votes were counted.

Their surprise double-win in Park ward, the only ward with two seats up for election, means the Conservatives now hold 50 per cent of seats on the council.

This means they’re just one off a majority (30 rather than 31), compared to their previous 28 and PCC remains under no overall control.

One of the party’s new additions, Raja Ahmed, who won in Labour-held Ravensthorpe, said that “gaining a seat at a bad time is a big achievement”.

The Conservative Party “is not doing well” in the opinion polls, he said, but he’s delighted to have won in Peterborough.

PCC leader, Wayne Fitzgerald, agreed that “the Labour vote has gone up elsewhere in the country” but that in Peterborough the Conservatives are “very much in charge right now”.

It was a tougher night for Labour, which had previously held both Park seats (although they were left vacant by the resignations of former party leader Shaz Nawaz and Ikra Yasin).

They also lost Ravensthorpe, but gained Bretton, North ward and Fletton and Woodston.

The latter two seats were held by Labour defectors – one an Independent and one Green.

Party leader Dennis Jones said that they were “always starting from a long way back”, with the most seats up for election of any party this year – PCC holds its elections by thirds, meaning around two-thirds of councillors weren’t required to defend their seat.

The Green Party kept the rest of their seats up for election, including Orton Waterville, seat of party leader Nicola Day, and Orton Longueville, seat of Heather Skibsted – another Labour defector.

The party believes she is the first person on the council to have been re-elected as a Green after switching to Labour.

Councillor Skibsted said that her win was “the best victory I’ve ever had”, while councillor Day said that the Greens’ effort this year was “the biggest campaign we’ve ever run”.

Meanwhile, it was Werrington First’s Judy Fox who had the most decisive victory on an individual level, polling more than 1,300 votes ahead of her nearest rival.

But it was a quiet night for the Liberal Democrats, who neither lost nor gained seats.

Party leader Christian Hogg is already looking forward to the future, though, saying: “It’s all about framing ourselves for next year where we could be looking at three gains in wards that we currently have councillors in.”

This year’s vote count took place at Peterborough Town Hall. Turnout at the polls was recorded as 30.46 per cent.