Seven candidates are hoping to win a seat for the Bitterne Park ward in the city council election, which takes place on Thursday, May 22, 2014.
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As well as what used to be seen as the three ‘main’ parties, this time Bitterne Parkers can choose between a Green, a Trade Unionist and Socialist Against Cuts, a UKIP candidate and an independent.
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Bitterne Park, which is one of 16 city wards, has three ward councillors (currently all Conservative) who are each appointed for a four-year term and elected in ‘thirds’. This means every year for three years one councillor is put up for election – this time John Inglis, who won Phil Williams' old seat in 2012 after he resigned.
As in 2012, we’ll be asking each of the candidates to tell us about their policies on bitternepark.info (if any candidate doesn’t receive our invitation over the next few days we invite them to contact us). [Now online here]
But in the meantime, who are our candidates?
In alphabetical order, the list looks like this:
BLUEMEL Lindsi, The Green Party
BOULTON Linda, Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts
COOK Adrian, UKIP
COOPER, Trevor James, Labour Party Candidate ,
INGLIS John, The Conservative Party Candidate
MACGILLIVRAY Ann, Independent
READ James Arnold, Liberal Democrat
So how did we vote at the last local election in 2012? You can read the results in our report here.
European elections
Just to complicate matters, there are also European Parliamentary elections on the same day. The council’s website explains:
“MEPs are elected under a proportional representation system (d.Hondt). In the UK you have one vote to elect all of your MEPs. Each party puts forward a list of candidates called a 'regional list' and you vote for one of these lists or for an independent candidate.
The parties are then allocated a number of MEPs according to their share of the vote.”
You can download a list of all the candidates and their parties as a PDF from a link on Southampton City Council’s website on this page.
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