Lib Dem success in Reigate Constituency 2006.

9.20.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sat 6th May 2006

Steve Kulka has been re-elected as ward Councillor for Meadvale and St.Johns. He won Meadvale and St. Johns with 80 more votes than when he was last elected in 2002. Steve commented "I am really pleased to have been re-elected to serve all the residents of Meadvale & St. Johns".

The Liberal Democrats did particularly well at the Reigate 2006 local elections, winning Meadvale & St. Johns ward, coming second in 10 wards and third in one. The votes cast and percentages for each party was as follows.

Lib Dem 6427 25%

Labour 2441 10%

UKIP 1565 6%

Green 1007 4%

Others 129 1%

Conservative 13743 54%

This resulted in the following number of Council seats per party.

Conservative 39

Lib Dem 4

Labour 2

Others 6

It is interesting to note that if the total number of votes were translated into Council seats on a proportional basis, as the Labour Party promised in the 1997 election manifesto, the number of Councillors would be as follows.

Conservative 28

Lib Dems 12

Labour 4

Others 5

A message from Ming Campbell includes the following.

It's been quite a year for our party so far. I don't imagine that many people outside the Liberal Democrats would have predicted back in January that on May 4th we would out-poll Labour, win 27% of the vote and make net gains in the local elections!

Every Liberal Democrat vote in every ward contributed to this dramatic turnaround. This success is down to your hard work, determination, belief and your unswerving will to win. I am deeply grateful to you and extremely proud of our Party.

We set out to win more councils and more councillors and we have succeeded. There were some dramatic wins on local election night - winning control of St Albans from under the nose of the Tory MP, increasing our majority on Newcastle City Council, gaining Richmond from the Conservatives, gaining 19 seats in Brent and winning control of South Lakeland with 9 gains including one swing of 47% from the Conservatives!

There were many more outstanding successes besides - including depriving Labour of their long-standing majority in Warrington and making gains in Derby.

I was particularly pleased to see how effective we have been in limiting the BNP - after all the hype beforehand, it was little reported that in Burnley we gained 5 seats and now are equal to Labour there, with the BNP left with only a handful of councillors.

Ming, Leader, Liberal Democrats.