High turnout for elections
Tuesday May 18, 2010
A night of wildly unpredictable election results in Britain and a massive turnout in the local council election resulted in very little change in the borough's political scene.
In fact, the biggest change occurred before election night as the borough's two previous MPs had their electoral boundaries changed.
In the north of the borough, Labour's Andy Slaughter (who formerly represented the Ealing, Acton and Shepherds Bush constituency) won the new Hammersmith seat - which includes all Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) wards above Lillie Road.
The Hammersmith votes were counted by an army of staff in the Assembly Hall in Hammersmith Town Hall.
In the south of the borough, Greg Hands (who won the Hammersmith & Fulham parliamentary seat for the Conservatives in 2005) won the newly-created Chelsea & Fulham constituency - which includes all H&F wards south of Lillie Road and parts of neighbouring Chelsea.
The Chelsea & Fulham votes were counted in the courtyard of the town hall in a marquee.
The Hammersmith seat was declared first with Andy Slaughter beating the Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey to the post with a majority of more than 3,500. Mr Slaughter secured 20,810 votes against Mr Bailey's 17,261, while Liberal Democrat candidate Merlene Emerson won 7,567 votes.
Independent candidate Stephen Brennan secured 135 votes, UKIP representative Vanessa Crichton got 551, Green Party candidate Rollo Miles won 696 and the BNP representative, James Searle, managed 432.
Mr Slaughter said: "I would like to thank the electoral services team and it is a very humbling experience to receive a mandate to represent Hammersmith for the next five years."
In the borough's other new constituency, Greg Hands raced to victory with a majority of almost 17,000.
Labour's Alex Hilton came second with 7,371 votes, with Liberal Democrat candidate Dirk Hazell following close behind with 6,473. The Green candidate Julia Stephenson won 671 votes, Roland Courtenay of the New Independent Conservatives managed 196, UKIP's Tim Gittos collected 478, Brian McDonald for the BNP achieved 388, George Roseman for the English Democrats managed 169, and Godfrey Spickernell, founder of the Blue Environment Party, got 17 votes.
Addressing the throngs of counters and political activists in Hammersmith Town Hall just before 6am on Friday, May 7, Mr Hands said: "I would like to thank the council's excellent electoral services team for organising a superb election count and also thank my opponents for running a good clean campaign."
In the local council election, turnout increased to an impressive 62 per cent - up 22 per cent on 2006.
The high turnout was put down to the fact that both the general and council elections were held on the same day in London for the first time in living memory.
The Conservatives won 31 council seats, compared to Labour's 15, with the Liberal Democrats and other parties failing to get any councillors into the town hall.
The Conservatives won nearly 30,000 more votes than four years ago - 94,246 compared to 64,711 in 2006 - but lost two councillors to Labour as their share of the vote went down from 49.2 per cent in 2006 to 43.4 per cent this year.
Although there were no problems with voters being turned away from polling stations in the borough, there was anger in other areas of London as the massive turnout saw many unable to cast votes as they were not issued a ballot paper before the 10pm deadline due to long queues.
Full results: www.lbhf.gov.uk/elections.
Download the h&f news Election 2010 supplement» (pdf, 1.8MB)
