Nigel Martin

Nominations for the County Durham Council elections on 1 May closed at midday today. While final details of nominations have still to appear on the web for three of the seven districts, it looks as though we will have around 90 candidates.

Lib Dems have full slates in Durham City (22 seats) and Wear Valley (16). In Chester-le-Street (14) we have 8 candidates, Easington (24) we have 19, Derwentside (22) we have 15 and in Sedgefield (22) we have 14. The remaining 6 seats are in Teesdale where we decided not to contest for strategic reasons.

The notable change is our challenge in Easington where we are fielding a large slate for the first time in many years. Indeed, if we had not stood, there would have been 4 areas where Labour would have been elected unopposed. Indeed, so bad has it been in the past out there that in the District Elections last May around 40 Labour councillors were elected unopposed. Well now they have to fight for their seats and a good thing too.

On a grimmer matter, however, for the very first time there are BNP candidates putting up in Durham City district, a total of 8 in 5 wards. Interestingly half of them have addresses in Shildon.

While I always urge everyone to use their vote (after all if you don’t vote you cannot complain), I hope that this extreme right wing bunch will be well and truly shunned by everyone in the areas concerned.