The Tories have won the Hazlemere by-election by just 33 votes as the Lib Dems were accused of lying during the campaign.
Steven John Roy was elected as a Buckinghamshire unitary councillor for the ward on Thursday evening with 687 votes.
The Conservative and Unionist Party candidate edged his rival, the Independent Leigh Anthony Casey, a local fireman, who received 654 votes.
Liberal Democrats candidate Mark Titterington finished third with 426 votes, while Labour’s Adam Christopher Dale was last with 113.
The by-election was triggered by the death of Conservative Bucks councillor Ron Gaffney last year.
The newly elected Cllr Roy shares the Hazlemere ward with fellow Tory Cllr Catherine Oliver and the Independent Cllr Ed Gemmell, who leads the Climate Party.
Cllr Gemmell claimed that the Lib Dems had diverted key votes away from the Independent candidate to the Lib Dems by stating on a campaign leaflet: ‘Only Mark Titterington can win in Hazlemere’.
The councillor said this was a lie due to the Lib Dems finishing third in the by-election and performing poorly in the 2021 local elections.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “They are never going to win because they would have to get four and a half times their vote from last time. It is an absolute untruth.”
Cllr Gemmell also accused the centrist party of ‘distortion’ in its campaign materials by ‘mixing Amersham and Chesham in with the Hazlemere election’.
A Liberal Democrat party spokesperson claimed the election was ‘strongly contested’ on all sides.
They said: “Our team fought an energetic campaign on issues that matter to residents in Hazlemere and Mark would have worked hard for the area as Hazlemere’s Councillor.
“As Cllr Gemmell noted, we spoke to many residents in our campaign, and the story we heard on doorsteps day after day was that people were fed up of the Conservatives, and they were turning to the Liberal Democrats, both for the council by-election and for the general election.”
The spokesperson claimed this was shown in Thursday’s result, where the Lib Dems was the only party to increase its votes in Hazlemere compared with 2021.
“We took a positive message out to residents. We’d like to thank all those who gave us such a warm welcome on the doorsteps and voted for Mark.”
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