Local elections: Lib Dems win first ever majority on Oxfordshire County Council

The party won 36 seats in the Oxfordshire County Council local elections with 35 needed for a majority with the count taking place at the Vale of White Horse Leisure Centre at Audlett Drive in Abingdon on Friday May 2.

The Conservatives saw a significant drop in their seat share, going from 19 councillors before the election to just 10, while Labour went from 14 to 12 councillors.

It is the second county council election running that the Conservatives have lost out after the party lost its 16-year majority in 2021 to a Liberal Democrat, Green and Labour group alliance.

This year saw the rise of Reform UK which came second in a number of divisions and managed to win one seat in Didcot South.

The Green group also increased their share of councillors from three to seven.

The anti-LTN Independent Oxford Alliance also won their first seat, with David Henwood being elected to represent Rose Hill & Littlemore.

The current Liberal Democrat leader of the county council Liz Leffman said she was “absolutely elated” about the results.

She said: “It’s actually beyond my expectations. I thought we might make it to 35 but to have 36 councillors elected is absolutely phenomenal.

“I think [people] want to see more of what we did as the administration over the last four years.

“I think people are very conscious that we need to clean up our air, we need to make our traffic go better, we need to provide people with better buses, the ability to cycle and walk safely, all of those things.

“If you take things like the 20mph speed limits, people love them.

“We said we wanted to make Oxfordshire greener, fairer and healthier, and that’s what we’re going to carry on doing.

“We will obviously be having meetings with the other groups.

“We’ve done that consistently over the last four years, so that will continue.

“All the opposition members will have a chance to have a say on everything that the administration is doing.”

This comes after the Lib Dems had great success in the General Election in July, winning four parliamentary seats in the county.

While the Lib Dems did well in the county as a whole, they only won two of the seats in Oxford.

Roz Smith and the county’s transport chief Andrew Gant were re-elected to Headington & Quarry and Wolvercote & Cutteslowe respectively.

When asked about this discrepancy, Ms Leffman said: “I think it’s always been the case that people in the city have tended towards voting for Labour. That’s clearly still the case.

“The truth is that Labour councillors have a good following in the city, so it’s quite difficult to dislodge people who are doing a good job.

“I would say that the councillors we do have in the city such as Roz Smith and Andrew Gant are councillors doing an absolutely fantastic job.”

The leader of the Conservative group Eddie Reeves was among those within his party who lost his seat.