After a sweeping victory by Reform UK at the recent Durham County Council elections, it was left to Spennymoor independent councillors to buck the national and local trend by claiming three of the four seats available in the Spennymoor and Tudhoe divisions, with the remaining seat going to the party now in control of the local authority.
Cllrs Liz Maddison and Pete Molloy retained their independent seats in Spennymoor, while Cllt Billy McAloon also retained his in Tudhoe, where he was joined by Cllr Nicola Lyons of Reform UK.
Overall, in what was seen by many as a shock result, the party swept the boards, taking 65 of the available 98 seats at the newly restructured County Hall while the traditional establishment parties were almost completely wiped out.
Labour returned just four councillors, down from 53 at the previous election in 2021 and down from 94 councillors in the 126-seat council just twelve years ago.
The Conservative Party held on to just one seat, having won 24 seats four years ago.
The Liberal Democracts, meanwhile, went from 17 seats to 14, while the Green Party gained one to double their representation to two seats.
The remaining twelve seats were won by independents who had secured a combined total of 31 seats in 2021 in a chamber that was controlled for the past four years by a coalition of all parties to shut out Labour, who had secured the most seats but not enough to form a majority.
This time there will be no need for coalitions with Reform taking over two thirds of all seats.
Speaking to Spennymoor News in the immediate aftermath of the result, Cllr Liz Maddison attributed her relection to hard work: “We do a lot of work for the Spennymoor Division,” she said, “and that has resulted in a lot of projects and captial investment being delivered. And most imprtantly, we work for the people.”
Cllr Molloy added: “I would echo Cllr Maddison’s comments. Because we are independents, we are here for the people and can represent them as they want to be heard, rather than members of a political party who have to do what the leadership say.
“People can see, especially in the town centre, what we have been able to achieve, and a couple of our projects are not yet completed, so we will be chasing them up as soon as we are back at County Hall.”
On the boundary changes which has resulted in a reduction of the number of county councillors representing Spennymoor from three to two,
Cllr Maddison added: “We still have a lot of work to do and now have two new areas to serve, which we will with the same 100% energy as we have until now.”
Spennymoor's local community newspaper.
