Success in College Ward

The Focus team in College Ward ran a successful campaign in the borough elections 2019 with David Gulland and Julie Morris both elected as councillors and André Kubicek missing out by a mere 11 votes. The election result was not an unusual one, but the number of "split" votes was most definitely unusual. There were hundreds. Some residents had voted for one Lib Dem, one RA and one Conservative. Does this voting pattern reflect a desire on the part of residents for all the parties to work together? Most certainly the candidates being listed on the ballot paper in the alphabetical order of their surname influenced the result. With the Euro elections upon us, there is just one X required on the ballot paper on 23rd May, not three as there were in the borough elections.

Julie has been elected "group leader" (yes, it's still a group even if there are only two) and both councillors are involved in training and induction processes, after which they will know which Committees they will sit on. Despite the RA controlled council stating many times in its guide to being a local councillor that meetings are mostly in the evenings because it recognises that councillors may work, most of this training and induction has been in the daytime. Proportionality comes into play with Committee places and since the RA have 32 councillors out of 38, they get most of the seats on Committees.

College Focus team efforts will continue with the issue of regular newsletters, a proposed "environmental" column and the College ward team will be conducting mobile surgeries on a regular basis. There are also plans for much greater use of social media. Focus teams in other areas of Epsom will also be continuing to operate and issuing Focus on a regular basis.

Liberal Democrats were successful across Surrey, gaining control of Mole Valley and nationally the results were very pleasing. Certainly more than just protest votes, as reported by some national tabloids.