Reform UK and the Green Party both ate into Labour’s majority at Barking Town Hall but neither did enough to topple the administration, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter
Labour has kept control of Barking and Dagenham Council – but has lost 13 seats to Reform UK and the Green Party.
The party kept a firm grip on the town hall, although with a reduced majority of 38 councillors. Reform UK won nine and the Greens took four.
In his victory speech Labour council leader Dominic Twomey said: “This should be a really happy time because we have won control of this council – but we have lost some really strong, hardworking councillors.”
The result is better than many had been expecting for Labour, with some analysts speculating that Reform UK could actually take control of the borough.
However, the result still marks the first time in 16 years that anyone has been elected in opposition to Labour.
Until today, Labour had won a clean sweep in every council election here since 2010 – taking all 51 of council seats. It ran the borough without opposition until September last year, when three of its councillors defected to the Greens.
Cllr Twomey said Labour had run the council “in incredibly difficult circumstances”.
He said the council had faced “15 years of austerity under a Tory-led government” and said Reform UK was now “led by Tory ex-party members”.
Cllr Twomey added that Labour would “redouble our efforts in this borough”.
He said: “There’s no foothold for Reform in this borough. They’ll collapse quickly. We wil expose them for the charlatans that they are.
“All they will do is continue the division they sow across the country.”
He added: “I was here when we got rid of the BNP. It’s my first ambition to rid this borough of Reform.”
Of Reform UK’s nine new councillors, two were elected in Eastbrook and Rush Green, three in Goresbrook, three in Parsloes and one in Valence.
Two of the Green Party’s candidates were elected in Gascoigne ward, and two were elected in Longbridge.
Newly-elected Reform UK councillor Ben Suter told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the party had been “hoping for more”.
However, he added: “We have made complete history here. We’ve elected the first opposition in Barking and Dagenham Council in 16 years and we’re proud of that achievement”.
He added: “This is not the end, this is just the beginning.”
Cllr Suter added that in some cases Reform candidates had lost out to Labour by small margins.
In Alibon ward for example Labour candidate Muazzim Sandhu won with just eleven more votes than Reform candidate Tracey Jane Sullivan-Sparks.
Cllr Suter said that Reform could have won more candidates if more of its supporters had turned out to vote.
He said: “A lot of people just didn’t have the belief that Reform could win so a lot of our people stayed home.
“For Twomey to say we don’t have a foothold when we’ve just elected nine councillors and could have elected more – he’s completely wrong”.
Cllr Suter said that Reform will be “an opposition that stands up for residents” and “tackle the council on all issues”. He said it would not “just be an opposition for opposition’s sake”.
