THE council's Conservative group has a new leader after the incumbent was ousted by just one vote in a ballot after last week’s local elections.
At the elections on Friday, May 4, the ruling Conservative group gained two seats on Epping Forest District Council, giving them a total of 39 out of 58 council seats and bucking the national trend, that saw 300 Tory seats across the country lost.
After the result Epping Lindsay and Thornwood Common councillor Chris Whitbread launched a leadership challenge, and successfully ousted councillor Lesley Wagland from the position she has held for one year.
Waltham Abbey High Beach councillor Syd Stavrou also replaced Theydon Bois councillor John Phillip as deputy council leader.
Cllr Whitbread said: “I have been in the Conservative group for 15 years, and have held the post of deputy council leader, so feel that I can do a good job for the district.
“I think that the big issues over the next year will be the St John’s consultation in Epping, the local economy and ensuring that it prospers and drawing up a new local plan for the area.
“Keeping people involved is the key to everything. I think on the St John’s issue I think it is really important that people listen to the majority view and I will be fighting hard to ensure that Essex County Council do.”
The Loughton Residents Association (LRA), strengthened their position as the council’s opposition party gaining two new seats , including Loughton Broadway, where Leon Girling beat the district’s one British National Party (BNP) councillor, Pat Richardson.
David Linnell, who is a committee member for the LRA, said: “We are not just a local pressure group, like independents on councils throughout the country we have a duty to look at the wider picture but balance that with our duty to our constituents.
“I think the root of our success is that we know about and focus on the local issues that people really care about. We try to be a residents association who get back to people when they contact us and not a group of councillors acting in isolation.”
The BNP’s loss is a sharp turnaround in fortunes for a party that in 2006 held six council seats.
Cllr Whitbread is expected to be announced as the new leader of Epping Forest District council at a full council meeting on May 22.
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