Senior Conservative puts Hucknall defeats down to people 'believing the hype'

The Conservatives were defending all three Hucknall seats going into Thursday’s vote, but the Ashfield Independents took all three – part of an overall clean sweep of the Ashfield district’s 10 county seats by the party.

Kevin Rostance who lost out in Hucknall North to John Willmott of the Independents, said: “I think voters probably believed everything that came through their doors from the Ashfield Independents.

"They must have pushed about 30 leaflets through people’s doors overall and knocked on every door as well.

"I don’t think the voters wanted a change as such, they just believed everything the Independents said, they created a bit of a fear factor about us and sadly people didn’t believe us and there’s nothing we can do about it now at the end of the day.”

Phil Rostance and Jan Lees were the other Conservatives in Hucknall, standing in Hucknall West and Hucknall South respectively, but they were beaten by David Shaw and Lee Waters for the Independents, with Lees ending up third behind Labour’s Ria Cash.

Overall, however, Mr Rostance, who is also the Conservative group leader at Ashfield District Counci, was delighted by the final result of the election which saw the Conservatives take 37 seats and win overall control of the council.

He said: “It’s been a great result, they’ve done very well and while it’s sad we’ve lost in Hucknall, that’s politics and we’ll come back to fight another day.”