A CLOSE run election battle between the Liberal Democrats' Steve Webb and Luke Hall has come to a conclusion with Luke Hall elected as the MP for Thornbury and Yate.

With an impressive turnout of 74 per cent, Steve Webb's majority of more than 7,000 votes was lost with the Mr Hall winning with a majority of more than 1,000.

After the announcement the other four candidates all passed on their congratulations to Luke Hall who in turn thanked Mr Webb for his work as the area's MP since 1997.

He said: "Firstly, I'd like to pass on my thanks to Steve Webb for his many years of surface here.

"I'm absolutely over the moon, it's been a long, hard campaign and it went right down to the wire.

"I knew how hard fought it would be but this is where I live and I wouldn't want to stand anywhere else. I would have continued fighting here even if it took me four terms."

Steve Webb was first elected as MP for the then-Northavon constituency in 1997 beating the Conservative MP John Cope.

He said that it had been an honour to represent and thanked everyone for their support over the years.

"First of all I'd like to wish Luke well and thank all my supporters for their help during this campaign.

"People seemed to be supportive of what we were saying but there was always that little but and more often than not that little but was a national issue.

"I think as we've seen tonight people have voted generally for what they want on a national level."

The final vote count was:

  • Luke Hall (Conservative Party): 19,924
  • Steve Webb (Liberal Democrats): 18,429
  • Russ Martin (UKIP): 5,126
  • Hadleigh Roberts (Labour Party): 3,775
  • Iain Hamilton (Green Party): 1,316
  • Spoiled ballots: 163