Conservatives elated over gains in district

They gained six seats to take their control to an unassailable 42 councillors out of 56.

This has given them three times as many councillors as all their opponents '“ nine Lib Dems, three Labour and two Independents '“ put together.

Voters turned to the party in force to put it in a position unseen since the heyday of Thatcherism in the mid to late-Eighties with a 28-strong majority.

The Conservatives even gained a seat in both Marine and Bersted wards around Bognor to complement their expected clean sweep of areas such as Aldwick, Felpham, Barnham, Pagham and Rose Green and Middleton.

This has meant the political map of the district is as blue as the sea off the beach with the occasional island of, mainly Liberal Democrat, opposition.

Those opponents who remain on the council are concentrated around the town centres of Bognor and Littlehampton.

The Lib Dems held their own amid the overwhelming turnout for the Conservatives with a same-again nine seats.

Both Hotham and Orchard wards provided solid successes for the Lib Dems to maintain their presence in those areas. Two losses around Bognor '“- of Martin Lury (Bersted) and Ian Harding (Marine) '“ were balanced by gains in the Littlehampton area.

Labour was the biggest loser in the elections. The party's eight seats in the last elections four years ago were reduced to just three. All of those are in the Littlehampton area.

Bognor's sole Labour councillor, Jan Cosgrove (Pevensey), the party's group leader on Arun, was among those rejected by voters.

In contrast, the Bognor area has both of the district council's Independents. Long-serving Bersted councillor Sylvia Olliver just held on to her seat, after contesting it for the first time free of political affiliation, by just ten votes from Mr Lury 733-723.

She will be joined on the district council by newcomer Jim Brooks. He comfortably finished 37 votes ahead of Conservative candidate Simon Fyfe in Marine ward.

The British National Party made its electoral debut in the Arun district in the elections. Its high point was a third place for Albert Bodle in Orchard ward. He was well behind, by 174 votes, the two elected candidates but he did enough to climb above his two Conservative opponents with Labour in the bottom two places. Pevensey ward saw the BNP come fifth and seventh out of the eight candidates.

United Kingdom Independence Party's Don Porter finished just one place out of the three elected positions in Pagham and Rose Green to prove the party's relative strength. His backing far outstripped that of Labour and the Lib Dems but he trailed far behind the trio of elected Tories.

The elections were the first to be counted during the day time. A break with tradition caused by longer polling station opening hours and working time restrictions meant that Arun's returning officer, and chief executive, Ian Sumnall decided to stop the tradition of holding the count late at night immediately after the polling booths had closed.

There were plenty of votes to count. The turnout around Bognor last Thursday varied from a healthy 45.26 per cent in Aldwick East to 30.21 per cent in Orchard.

Those piles of votes began to be sorted at 9am last Friday and were finished at about 3pm. It gave a new feel to the election process but it produced the same result for Arun '“ run by the Conservatives as it has been since its formation in 1973.