On behalf of all our candidates and activists, I'd like to thank all the residents of Waltham Forest who voted for the Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in the council elections last week. This number is way in excess of what we expected and shows the depth of feeling there is against the austerity forced upon us by the ConDem government and, unfortunately, the Labour council.

While Labour won a comfortable majority, they should not think that we are going away; far from it! We will continue to campaign against the cuts, for rent controls and the services working-class people deserve. To that end, we will be organising regular committee and public meetings, with the aim of standing in the general election next year and any other elections that are called. Anybody interested in joining our campaign can contact us at walthamforesttusc.com and leave a message.

Finally, can I thank the staff at the count for their heroic efforts in sorting the European and council elections' ballot papers and then counting, a task that took 16 and a half hours from close of polling to the final declaration? In my opinion, this is too long for the counting staff, the candidates and their supporters.

I understand that the problems were caused by a large influx of late postal votes and the council not being prepared enough for the huge increase in split voting, but I would urge LBWF to look at using extra staff and counting space particularly when there are double elections taking place.

Kevin Parslow Agent, Waltham Forest TUSC