A conservative party candidate has been elected to represent the east ward of Witney.

Conservative candidate Darren Thomas took the victory in the election of a town councillor for Witney East Ward.

Mr Thomas won out with 552 votes, whilst the labour candidate Andrew Lyon came in with 421, Lib Dem candidate Hannah Bailey received 107 votes and Green Party candidate Sandra Simpson saw 240 votes.

The byelection took place on August 25 to represent the Witney East Ward.

The Liberal Democrats campaigned to rebuild the Oxford-Eynsham-Witney-Carterton rail link, put pressure on Thames Water to do more to clean up local rivers and waterways, calling on them to increase the capacity of sewage treatment works and to be more transparent with the monitoring of discharges.

Read more: Hero pensioner nominated for community award

Andrew Lyon was the Labour candidate; he’s lived in Witney for 25 years and is involved in many community initiatives.

Sandra Simpson was running for the Green party. She has lived in Witney for over 20 years.

She was a lecturer at the Open University and the University of Hertfordshire where she was Head of Continuing Studies, supporting mature students.

She has also taught in prison and helped unemployed people in Witney and Oxford with English, Maths and preparing their CVs.

Mr Thomas remarked before the election that Labour – who have been running Witney Town Council for nearly four years – have nothing to show for it other than hiking up council tax to record levels and increasing Town Hall costs.

 

Read more from this author

This story was written by Matthew Norman, he joined the team in 2022 as a Facebook community reporter.

Matthew covers Bicester and focuses on finding stories from diverse communities.

Get in touch with him by emailing: Matthew.norman@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @OxMailMattN1

A message from our Editor

Thank you for reading this story and supporting the Oxford Mail.

If you like what we do please consider getting a subscription for the Oxford Mail and in return we’ll give you unrestricted access with less adverts across our website from the latest news, investigations, features, and sport.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok for more. 

You can also join the conversation in our Facebook groups: stay ahead of traffic alerts here, keep up to date with the latest from court here, share your favourite memories of Oxford here, get your daily dose of celebrity news here and take some time out with news that will make you smile. 

If you’ve got a story for our reporters, send us your news here. You can also list an event for free here.