The Liberal Democrats have taken full control of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, winning 22 of the 39 seats after governing in coalition with other parties for the past two years.
The new council has been slimmed down from 48 to 39 members and is now made up of:
Lib Dems 22 (was 17 in old council)
Conservatives 7 (was 11)
Labour 5 (was 7)
TW Alliance 4 (was 9)
Independents for TW 1 (was 2)
In Southborough and Bidborough, all 3 Liberal Democrats were elected: Mark Ellis, Brendon Le Page and Joe Opara (shown below).
The Liberal Democrats were generally dominant in the core town areas of Tunbridge Wells, winning a clean sweep in Culverden, St Johns, St James, Pantiles and Park wards, which gave the Lib Dems a strong base of 14 seats.
It was a big success for the Liberal Democrat leader, Ben Chapelard (pictured below), who is also leader of the council.
On the other hand the Liberal Democrats were much less successful in the 3 most rural easterly wards, where seats were divided between Conservatives (6) and Alliance (3).
Meanwhile in the new smaller single member seat of High Brooms, Dianne Hill (shown below), retained her place on the council for Labour with a dominant 56% of the vote.
The new larger wards appear to have benefited the larger parties with wider resources for campaigning over a bigger area. An established independent councillor in Paddock Wood, Rodney Atkins, failed to win, with all 3 seats there going to the Lib Dems.
The Tunbridge Wells Alliance saw one of its leading figures, Nick Pope, defeated in Park Ward. Its remaining councillors are Matthew Sankey (Rusthall & Speldhurst), Nancy Warne (Cranbrook), David Knight (Rural Tunbridge Wells) and Ellen Neville (Hawkhurst).
The Independents for Tunbridge Wells party leader, David Hayward (below) won the party’s only seat in Pembury & Capel.
The Conservative leader, Tom Dawlings, retained his seat – as the Conservatives won 2 of the 3 seats in Cranbrook, Sissingurst & Frittenden.
The Labour leader, Hugo Pound, also retained his seat – as Labour won 2 of the 3 seats in Sherwood, with Conservatives taking the third.
Rusthall and Speldhurst returned 2 Labour councillors (Jayne Sharratt and Alex Britcher-Allan) and 1 Alliance councillor (Matthew Sankey).
Here is a link to comments after the election from Lib Dem Council leader Ben Chapelard and Nick Pope from the Tunbridge Wells Alliance
Southborough News 
Jane, Alex and Matthew will be a brilliant local team for this area. Well done on Lib Dem gains in Tory stronghold. 👏👏👏
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It will be interesting to see if the Liberals will still support proportional representation in Tunbridge Wells where they won only 34% of the votes but the majority of the seats. Are they willing to have a cross party committee based on all divergent parties or will the hog the control – which they usually complain that others do?
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