The Ashfield Independent Party comfortably won the Hucknall Central by-election held yesterday (Wednesday 23 November).

Nick Parvin amassed 710 votes, just over a 54% share of the vote, to hold the seat for the controlling party on the council.

Labour's John Wilkinson was second with 397 and Jan Lees of the Conservative Party was third with 195.

There was an incredibly low turnout with just 23.6% of the electorate choosing to cast their vote.

The by-election was called by residents following the sad passing of Ashfield Independent Councillor Jim Blagden at the end of July.

This latest victory comes hot on the heels of the Ashfield Independent Party, in their guise as The Independent Alliance, winning a County Council by-election in Eastwood earlier this month which saw their candidate Kane Oliver triumph by just 41 votes.

It means that five of Hucknall's ten District Council seats are held by the Ashfield Independents and across the district they hold 30 of the 35 council seats, giving them a commanding majority.

Mr Parvin was absent from the count due to work commitments. However, the leader and deputy leader of the council, Councillor Jason Zadrozny and Councillor Helen-Ann Smith were there to watch the results come in.

Councillor Zadrozny spoke exclusively to Hucknall Nub News in the immediate aftermath of the result.

He said: "Well I'm obviously delighted. We've increased our share of the vote by nearly 20% and we've increased our actual vote based on 2019. I think it was because people in Hucknall responded to a positive campaign, the others were mired in busy fighting us, and we were busy fighting for Hucknall people, so I think that speaks volumes. I think we had a record to show, and we had a positive campaign to put forward and I think people in Hucknall have reacted to that."

On the absence of Mr Parvin, he added: "He's at work tonight. He's very delighted, I've just messaged him. He works now at the brain trauma trust in Hucknall. Obviously we didn't know what night this election was going to be on and it's a very serious job. He's very keen to be entirely dedicated to the role.

"I hope Jim Blagden's smiling down on us because he cared very much about Hucknall Central, and I'm pleased that we've got someone who's going to at least try to be positive in the way Jim was."