Greens win all 3 seats in Kirkburton Parish By Elections

We won all 3 seats in the Kirkburton Parish By Elections last night. In Shepley Ian Lumb topped the poll with 293 votes and in Kirkburton Rae Thomas and Peter Pankhurst were elected with 364 and 330 votes respectively. This brings the Green Party total on the Parish Council up to 14 out of 25 Councillors. All 3 candidates and their teams worked hard during the campaign and were worthy winners.

Of course we didn't want these by elections in the first place. Ironically it was the Conservatives who instigated the By Elections by collecting the 10 signatures needed to trigger them. They have cost the Parish Council £8000 out of our £122,000 budget. The even greater irony is that the Conservative Candidate for one of the Kirkburton seats was Kirklees Councillor Adrian Murphy who is up for re-election in May. It did seem that they had called these by elections as an ill judged tactic to give them a boost in the run up to the Kirklees Elections in May. It is a tactic which has misfired for them rather spectacularly. The low turnout reflects the lack of wisdom, in calling these by elections and a good proportion of the turnout was made up of postal votes. A by election on a cold February day during half term holidays was never going to encourage voter participation. Here's the results

Shepley Ward

Ian Lumb - Green Party - 293 - ELECTED
John Taylor - Conservative - 238
Jan Thornton - Labour - 32

Turnout - 25.9%

Kirkburton Ward ( 2 seats)

Mike Greetham - Labour - 199
Adrian Murphy - Conservative - 261
Peter Pankhurst - Green Party - 330 - ELECTED
Rae Thomas - Green Party - 364 -  ELECTED

Turnout 19.85%