East Lindsey left with hung council after district elections

Just after 5am when the final results were announced it was clear that the Conservatives had remained the largest group – winning 26 seats against the 15 won by the Independents, who nearly doubled their success on the previous election.

Leader Coun Craig Leyland, who won his seat at Woodhall Spa, is now faced with a hung council having lost seats but said he was “relieved” the Conservatives had remained the largest group.

He said: "We have to wait for the dust settle to see what’s what, but given the carnage that we’ve heard across Lincolnshire I’m quite satisfied with how we’ve done.”

Amongst the ‘carnage’ he referred to, former Boston Conservative leader Paul Skinner lost his seat in the district council elections.

Coun Leyland said being a Conservative at the moment was ‘a hard sell’. “We have gone out to the electorate asking that they trust us for the next four years,” he said.

"We know we have done good things residents know that but the national picture is impinging on our ability to sell that message.”

However, in spite of the results, he said they would still be an ambitious council: “We have new councillors on board who may have a different view on where we should be going but we still retain control, we are still going to be ambitious with the external funding,, deprivation issue, flooding, our market towns – it’s going to be back to work.”