Voters Back Conservatives To Carry On In Control Of Hampshire

Conservatives achieved a magnificent success in the CountyElections on 4th June 2009

51 Conservatives out of 78 councillors were elected.  This is an increase of 6 on the old Council whilst liberal Democrats had a net loss of 3 as did Labour.

Labour now has just one councillor on the County Council.

Conservative gains were in New Forest, Test Valley, East Hampshire, Basingstoke, Gosport and Havant- in other words across the County.


Hampshire Conservatives have been entrusted with  decisions that affect more than 1.2 million residents with a budget of about £1.7 billion on an authority which earlier this year was judged by the Audit Commission to be the best performing in the land and giving good value for money

Since 2001 Hampshire has operated a Leader with Cabinet structure and one of the key items on the agenda was the election of a Leader.  Councillor Ken Thornber was voted in as Leader of the County Council for a fourth term.  He was unable to be present at the meeting as he is recuperating following an accident at home and is recovering well.

New and returning councillors were welcomed by Deputy Leader Councillor Roy Perry.  He said:  Despite the events in Westminster that surrounded these elections and the profound damage done to the democratic process by certain MPs actions creating difficulties for all political parties, there is still  no method that beats democratic elections and those old fashioned ballot boxes with the votes for the electors are what give us our authority.”

We are looking forward to a positive and very active four years maintaining the traditional high standards of the County Council,” he said.

Appointments to Cabinet were ratified. It's the Leader and Cabinet with its nine executive members acting individually who take the executive decisions that create policies on services affecting  over 5,000 miles of roads, the care and support received by more than 100,000 elderly or vulnerable residents, the education of around 170,000 pupils in 540 schools, on libraries and waste.

The Cabinet members were confirmed as Cllr Roy Perry, Cllr Ray Ellis, Cllr Jonathan Glen, Cllr Felicity Hindson, Cllr Mel Kendal, Cllr David Kirk, Cllr Margaret Snaith and Cllr Colin Davidovitz.

Councillor Tim Knight (Fareham Crofton) was elected Chairman of the County Council and Councillor Carol Leversha (Farnborough West) was elected Vice Chairman.

Councillors were also appointed to the independent scrutiny function which holds the executive members to account for their decisions, as well as helping them make decisions by examining issues beforehand and making recommendations.

The political make-up of the Council is now 51 Conservatives, 25 Liberal Democrats, one Labour and one  independent Community Campaign (Hart). After the 2005 elections the make-up was 46 Conservatives, 28 Liberal Democrats and 4 Labour.