Labour Party announces Tom Plater as its candidate for Herts Police and Crime Commissioner election on May 2, 2024
The Labour Party has announced its candidate for the forthcoming election to serve as Hertfordshire Police and crime commissioner.
Tom Plater is a Labour district councillor for Letchworth Wilbury on North Herts Council.
He said he was looking forward to setting out his priorities for policing in the county over the coming months, which will include tackling violence against women and girls, county lines gangs, drug crime and antisocial behaviour.
Cllr Plater said: “It is a real privilege to be selected as the Labour Party candidate for Hertfordshire's Police and Crime Commissioner. I look forward to working hard over the next few months to set out my vision for a constabulary that will be an effective force against the criminal challenges we face now and into the future.”
Votes to select 41 PCCs in England and Wales are scheduled every four years, but the last poll was delayed until 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was won by Conservative David Lloyd, re-elected for a third term and the only person ever to have held the role.
The commissioner is responsible for the way policing is delivered in the county. They decide how funding is allocated and draw up a Police and Crime Plan which sets the force's strategic direction and objectives. They can also fire the chief constable.
Mr Lloyd was elected using the supplementary vote system in which electors rank their two favoured candidates on the ballot paper as a first and a second choice. If a candidate wins 50% or more of the first preference votes, they win outright. If not, all but the top two candidates are eliminated and the second-preference votes of eliminated candidates are reallocated. The candidate with the highest total resulting from this count is elected.
In the county-wide poll, Mr Lloyd received 155,114 (48.5%) first-preference votes, beating Liberal Democrat Sam North with 87,524 (27.4%) and Labour's Philip Ross with 76,941 (24.1%). Mr Lloyd received 12,761 second-preference votes, making a total of 167,875, while Mr North got 48,172 and 135,696 overall.
But it was clear that thousands of voters were confused. A total of 9,318 ballot papers were rejected at the first count: 7,198 because they were unmarked or void for uncertainty, 1,840 because more than one first-preference vote was cast, 279 because something was written or marked on the paper that could identify the voter and one because it did not bear the official mark. The count of second-preference votes saw 16,008 rejected because they were unmarked or void for uncertainty.
On Thursday May 2 next year, the PCC elections will switch to a first-past-the-post system like the General Election.
