Votes are being counted today (Friday, 7th May) in the Sefton Council Local Elections.
The results will be announced throughout today.
The results will be revealed through the Stand Up For Southport website.
Voting took place yesterday (Thursday) with 22 seats on the local authority being contested. By-elections also took place for Blundellsands and Derby wards.
Residents will be voting for the seats which were set to be contested in the 2020 local elections process but were postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are a total of 66 seats on Sefton Council. The borough is divided into 22 wards and each ward is represented by 3 Councillors who are appointed for a term of 4 years.
Labour is currently in overall control of Sefton Council, with 41 councillors; Liberal Democrats have 12; Conservatives have 6; there are 5 Independents.
The votes are being counted at Aintree Racecourse.
Sefton’s Deputy Returning Officer Andrea Watts began today by discussing how this morning’s section of the count will progress.
Over 42,000 people signed up for a postal vote ahead of the coming Sefton Local Elections.
While every measure taken to ensure Sefton’s polling stations were COVID-19 secure, residents were able to apply for either a postal or proxy voting pack if they could not or did not want to physically attend a polling station.
Dwayne Johnson, Chief Executive of Sefton Council and the authority’s Returning Officer, said: “Absent voting is a key element of every election and it is not uncommon for thousands of postal and proxy votes to be submitted.
“However this year’s elections demonstrated an even greater desire for residents to be able to cast their votes safely, securely and remotely.
“Nevertheless we have been working extremely hard to ensure our 132 polling stations across the borough were COVID-19 secure and we had measures in place to ensure safe and secure in-person voting.”
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