Liberal Democrats lose Southampton (From This is Hampshire)

Liberal Democrats lose Southampton

5:01am Friday 4th May 2007 in News By Matt Smith, Politics and business reporter

THE Liberal Decocrats suffered a bloody night in Southampton last night when they lost control of the city council.

Their four year-old administration came crashing down with the loss of four seats as Conservatives and Labour picked up two gains each.

The Tories were the winners on the night taking nine of the 17 seats up for grabs.

The results, which saw no big political scalps, left Labour on par with Tories with 18 setas while Lib Dems dropped to 12 seats.

However for the sixth time running, no political group won an overall majority on the 48-seat council.

It now means that both Labour and Counservative wil wrestle for control of the local authority.

Don't miss four pages of election coverage in the Daily Echo today.

Keep up to date with election results in Winchester and New Forest on-line as they are declared during Friday.

It now puts a huge question mark over Liberal Democrat plans, including placing laser lights from the civic centre clock and a controversial travellers' camp in Swaythling.

Also uncertain now are plans to privatise a number of local authority services which would have lost 600 council jobs.

Click here to read the results...