Saturday Morning 6 am

Woke up with a start. First thoughts "where are we today?" Then sat back and relaxed and thought about the last three days.

Local elections are one of the points in time where people make a decision to play their part in helping make our democracy work, this year with the added drama of a General Election the people of Pontefract voted in one of the highest turnouts for a local election in WMDC’s 36 year history and at just after 10am on Friday the result for Pontefract South was confirmed.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the public who on May the 6th voted at the ballot box, or by post, in the district council elections. I would also like to give a personal thank you to the election personnel manning the polling stations for a 16 hour shift who worked so hard and the counting agents who laboured through the night to make the local election work.

Finally a special thanks to those across the ward who supported our campaign and helped get our key messages across to the electors, in the months and weeks leading up to the election.

I look forward, having been re-elected, to working with my other Conservative colleagues, Philip, Mark and Phil to continue the fight to get more of a say, defend the interests and to work to improve the quality of life for the people in our part of the world.

The other piece of outstanding business has been played out over the last five days and we now know that a coalition has been forged between us Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

I sincerely hope that those involved work to give their best efforts to making a success of government. We need to see things coming back under control and there will be clearly significant challenges ahead.

Normal local service will be resumed shortly but I will also be posting up more information as I find it about our new government.

Geoff