Council elections: Follow our live blog for minute by minute coverage
VOTERS go to the polls on Thursday, May 5, for the Eastbourne Borough Council elections.
Polling stations will be open from 7am until 10am for residents to elect 27 councillors to sit on the borough council at the Town Hall.
There are 94 candidates from the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green and UK Independence parties vying for seats in nine wards across the town.
Three councillors will be elected in each of the nine wards – Devonshire, Hampden Park, Langney, Meads, Old Town, Ratton, St Anthony’s, Sovereign and Upperton.
At present the Liberal Democrats have the majority at Eastbourne Borough Council after a landslide victory in May 2007, when the Conservatives lost control of the council and key seats.
There are currently seven Conservative councillors and 20 Liberal Democrats.
This year, a number of long-serving councillors are stepping down including Conservatives Barbara Goodall and Graham Marsden, who are retiring from Ratton and Upperton wards respectively.
Liberal Democrat stalwarts Mary Pooley and Olive Woodhall, in Hampden Park, are also stepping down, as are a number of their party colleagues who were elected in 2007.
They include Old Town councillors Greg Szanto, a previous mayor, and Andrew Goodwin, Langney councillor Dan Purchase, Sovereign Liberal Democrats Michael Bloom and Susan Tarrant and Upperton councillor and chair of planning Rebecca Madell.
The crucial seats are seen as Sovereign and Old Town.
Both were taken from the Conservatives by the Liberal Democrats at the last election, in 2007.
Other key seats are in Upperton, where two Conservative seats were lost, and Hampden Park, which has been Liberal Democrat for some years but is now wide open.
• For live election coverage from the Eastbourne Herald visit www.eastbourneheraldlive.wordpress.com or click on the external link above right.
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Weather for Eastbourne
Tuesday 21 May 2013
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 10 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 5 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North west
