I've just come back from the count for the Whitehouse Ward Town Council by-election in Rayleigh. The result was:
Conservatives : 488 - 69 percent
Lib Dems (Corey Vost) 166 - 23 percent
BNP 57 - 8 percent
There was a 22 percent turnout.
So, a clear win for the Conservatives - and we offered our congratulations to Mr Ward (now Councillor Ward!).
Not a good result for the BNP.
But rather encouragingly, a better result for us than in the last District Council election here last year, which was:
Conservatives 641 - 56 percent
English Democrats 312 - 27 percent
Lib Dems 184 - 16 percent
(the last Town Council election was contested on the same day as the District election by 3 Conservatives and 1 Labour, the Tories winning with 809, 770, 744 and Labour getting 264)
