Two new SNP councillors have been elected in Fife after by-election votes.
The polls, held on Thursday, returned SNP representatives with a majority of at least 300 votes.
Derek Glen was selected to represent the Dunfermline Central ward, while former councillor Sharon Green-Wilson won back her seat in Rosyth after slumping to fourth place in 2017.
READ MORE: Church of Scotland minister who heckled Jeremy Corbyn suspended over racist and homophobic tweets
The wins push the SNP majority on Fife Council to six, with 30 councillors now representing the party, after one of the seats won was taken from the Conservatives.
Labour are the closest party to the SNP with 24 representatives.
The contest was under the Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system, meaning voters were asked to rank the candidates in order of preference.
Mr Glen took 1,526 first choice votes in his ward, ahead of Tory candidate Chloe Dodds in second with 1,142, increasing the SNP share of the vote by more than 9%.
Liberal Democrat candidate Aude Boubaker-Calder increased his party’s share of the vote by nearly 14%, taking the total number of first choice votes cast to 1,050.
Ms Boubaker-Calder also managed to come within two total votes of Mr Glen, despite being more than 500 first choice selections behind.
Meanwhile, Sharon Green-Wilson won a resounding victory in Rosyth with 1,347 votes, with her nearest challenger – Tory Margaret Fairgrieve – receiving 768.
READ MORE: Sir Rod Stewart says it would be a shame if Scotland became independent
The councillor increased the share of the vote for her party in the ward by 16.5%.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon congratulated the new councillors on Twitter, saying: “Many congratulations to @theSNP two newest councillors – @sharonwilsonsnp in Rosyth and @derekgglen in Dunfermline.”
Ms Green-Wilson previously won her Rosyth seat in 2015 through a by-election before defeat in 2017.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel