Local elections 2023: Greens become the biggest party on East Herts Council

The local elections have seen the Greens becoming the largest party on East Hertfordshire Council, ousting the Conservatives. What made people change their vote?

East Herts District Council includes the county town of Hertford and nearby Ware, plus Bishop's Stortford and other towns and villages in acres of rolling Hertfordshire countryside.

It is a very green area but until Thursday, it was under Conservative control with the Tories having 39 of the 50 seats. It is now a hung council.

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsey visited the authority last month, boldly claiming he wanted 10 seats.

Now his party has 19 seats, up from the two they won in 2019, with the Tories on 16.

The newly elected Green councillor for Ware Trinity ward, Nick Cox, says he feels the change came because his party "listened to voters' concerns".

The 61-year-old, who has been a parish councillor for six years, says he is "absolutely over the moon" about the turnaround.

"I am surprised but there's been so much hard work put in and at last it's paying off so I'm pleased for myself, pleased for my colleagues and pleased for Hertfordshire," he says.

"We've got the right policies for the right time, we've got beautiful countryside here and it was all green belt protected.

"The previous council took the countryside out of the green belt and has been handing it over to property developers."

He says other concerns were that "valuable" chalk streams in the area were being depleted and there was not enough sewage capacity.

"There was some tactical voting but I think, more importantly, we listened to the people," he says.

"We do live in this community, we share their concerns and we understood their concerns and I think that made the biggest difference."

"Hopefully it means we can save the countryside for them."

What swung people's vote in Buntingford, where the three candidates elected were all from the Green Party?

Ian Stephens, 60, is semi-retired and says that in the past he has been a "reasonably committed Conservative voter" but since the 2016 Brexit referendum he thinks they have "drifted so far to the right that I find it very difficult to accept suddenly a lot of their social policies".

"I certainly find their attitude to immigration very difficult to square," he says. "I basically see immigration generally in Britain's history as being a positive thing and I have seen the benefits they have brought to this country."

He adds he also "struggles with the constant antagonism with the rest of the European Union" and their "paper-thin economic arguments" in terms of trying to arrange trade deals with countries thousands of miles away when we "still have a large growing market right on our doorstep".

"I think most definitely the Conservative Party have left me behind," he says.

"I think there are a lot of people I know in this area and elsewhere who traditionally would have considered themselves to be Conservative voters but do feel now rather politically orphaned... and I think that's why there are a lot of people who are looking for a viable alternative."

He says he was "very impressed" that all three of the Green candidates were local.

"I think that that local presence was incredibly important," he says.

"If you give somebody a local viable alternative then there's a very good chance that they're going to take it."

Diane Lovegrove says she thought Buntingford "needed someone different to put a bit more oomph into the town".

The 59-year-old says they "need to improve things in a different way from what the previous parties had done".

"Mine was a positive vote not a protest vote," she says.

Her friend, Jacky Danagher, 55, who has lived in the town for 22 years, says: "I've always voted Labour but nobody from Labour ever shows up in Buntingford.

"I voted Green because we need to change and I definitely wouldn't vote Tory. I've always been a socialist."

Mell Trewin, 57, said her Green vote was "a positive vote for an alternative".

"One of our close friends was one of the candidates and we just wanted a change, we're fed up with Conservatives in Buntingford," she says.

"Everybody is complaining constantly about all the stiff they are doing, people are asking questions of the Conservatives and never getting any answers and they're not making the changes we want.

"I hope the Greens will listen to the people and answer their questions and make the changes."

Neil McDougall, 60, says he had been "Liberal Democrat for some time" but there "hasn't been much of an offer locally from the Lib Dems".

"In terms of the voting, it's more about what's going on here and all three of the people involved for the Greens are people I have known and worked with on a volunteer basis locally," he says.

"They are very active and they're very positive about the town so I suppose for me the decision was more about the local activity not necessarily about general UK activity.

"However, I'm also rather negative about he Conservatives at the moment."

He adds that while his vote was a "bit of a protest against the way things are going with the Conservatives", locally it was "very much a positive vote".

The Greens are "very keen on controlling traffic in the area", he says.

"This particular High Street has a lot of traffic so one of their campaigns is to remove some of the parking and reduce some of the speeding," he says.

"It's got a lot of character here and we'd like to keep it that way."

Forty-one year-old Polly Frearson says she cannot remember voting Green before but she did this time firstly because she "would never vote Tory".

"I used to vote Labour until they ousted Jeremy Corbyn and I don't trust the Lib Dems," she says.

"And I'm sick of the world being run by old men to be honest and two of the candidates of the three Greens who got in are female which is great - and I'm just desperate for change."

• Who won in my area?

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