I am very grateful to the forty percent of Nevilles Cross voters who cast their vote for me to represent them again.

It is a community that I am proud to have called my home for over 50 years, and that I will, for another four years serve to the best of my abilities.

You have elected not just me, but I am very pleased to say, an increased Liberal Democrat team of six in Nevilles Cross. 

It is a very diverse Liberal Democrat team, with my experience alongside your current County Councillors Liz Brown and Elizabeth Scott, second term councillor Alan Doig, and new faces in Nicola Brown (daughter of Liz), and Susan Walker, with a Green Party and Labour candidate making up the councillors for Nevilles Cross.

Like many of you, I have watched the results coming in all weekend and been stunned at times, to see many hard-working experienced councillors from across the political spectrum lost their seats.

So it has been a long hard wait, with Nevilles Cross being the last election to be counted in County Durham on Sunday tea time.

I was very pleased with the outcome, as it is not one, as any of the Liberal Democrat team will agree, I allow them to ever take for granted.

Politics is full of surprises.  Two struck me from this election in Durham City, as Roger Cornwall and John Ashby did not retain their seats, John by just 6 votes.  Both have been hard-working Parish Councillors, and I thank them for their contribution to the council which will be missed by me, in particular, in Planning.

John’s result in particular brings up what my polling agent has been saying for nearly two weeks.  He works numbers, not politics, and an 88% increase in the postal vote against a low return, and high rejected ballots would likely in a tight election cause a problem for someone.

Just 6 of the rejected ballots being counted would have swung Gilesgate for John, and given the tie and drawing of lots to decide the final seat on the council, 1 ballot would have helped the Liberal Democrat Ed Johnson-Williams who did not get elected. 

With 41 rejected ballots on the day in Gilesgate, let alone the rejected postal votes, and the horrible thought of ‘how many postal votes did not arrive back in time to be counted?’, it shows the importance of your vote being counted.

Rejected ballots we can do nothing about apart from say again PLEASE CAST YOUR VOTE CAREFULLY. Postal voters not receiving the vote in time we can, and for all the candidates, whether they won or, lost, I will be ensuring the County Council investigation into the postal voting problems in Nevilles Cross is made public.

Lessons must be learned, and if that is to bring forward election timelines, to allow for more printing/delivery time, then that should be done. The council did have only a matter of days from final candidates being confirmed in all its elections, to printing and delivery of postal ballots (increased in number by the pandemic), and against a full national election, it seems not if, but in which divisions these issues would happen.

I will be making a statement later in the week on my goals for the year ahead as you have given a mandate to your 11 Liberal Democrat candidates to help guide, alongside our Labour and Green Party colleagues, the City through the next stage of the pandemic recovery.