A blue town in a hung council

KEYNSHAM has turned completely blue as the Tories won all three seats in the town.

They won one of the seats in Keynsham South which had been held by Labour’s long-standing councillor Adrian Inker who stepped down at these elections after serving 20 years.

It means the Tories now hold both seats in each of Keynsham’s three wards.

Overall, the Liberal Democrats bucked the national trend which saw them suffering heavy defeats by picking up three seats while the Tories lost three.

It means the council is still hung but the Lib Dems and Tories now hold 29 seats each.

Labour now has only five seats while there are also two Independents. Talks will now be held in private between the main parties to decide who will run the council. They have until May 19 when the new administration will have to be agreed at a full council meeting.

Lib Dem leader Paul Crossley described the three extra seats as “very satisfying”.

He said they had been able to convince the electorate that these elections were about local issues – not the policies of the Coalition Government.

He said they had been working on encouraging voters to back the party since before the Coalition Government was formed.

In Keynsham, these local issues were mostly about regenerating the town in the wake of the decision by Kraft to close down the Cadbury’s factory at Somerdale.

The factory closure is the reason why the council has put forward plans for a £33 million regeneration scheme for the town centre.