Green Party make further gains in local elections

Locally we had a good series of results in the four wards in which we stood, coming second in Gowy from nowhere. We still have a lot of work to do and we need to build up a stronger local campaigning party.

In the wider North West, Hilary Robinson was elected to Alsager Town Council; our first Green Councillor in Cheshire, and John Coyne retained his seat in Liverpool which had seemed vulnerable to a resurgent Labour. In Lancaster we had a disappointing result losing 4 councillors to Labour who had a good result in the north of England - totally underserved given the cuts they had planned in public services and the privatisation of the NHS which they had already started upon before the general election last year.

Nationally, we went into our election campaign with 116 councillors on 42 councils and have come out of it with 130 on 43 councils, a gain of 14 seats.

Norwich fought off Labour in two wards, as well as gaining an additional seat in Thorpe Hamlet, to bring their total seats on the council to 15 - adding to its tally of city councillors at every election since 2002. We also gained seats in Bolsover, Bristol, Herefordshire, Kings Lynn and West Norfolk, Malvern Hills, Mid Suffolk, Reigate, Solihull, South Hams, Stafford and St Albans! The outstanding Brighton results were also a real highlight: we gained 10 more seats, taking our total to 23 and making the Greens the largest party on the council.