The Scottish National Party has ten representatives at Moray Council following victory for their candidate Kirsty Reid in the Elgin City North by-election.
At a tense count in Elgin Town Hall this morning Reid led the field after the first round with 728 votes against 472 recorded by the Independent candidate Sandy Cooper.
Green candidate Morvern Forrest was the first to be eliminated with just 77 votes while the UKIP Candidate Ramsay Urquhart soon followed.
By the fourth round of counting Reid’s vote stood at 773 against Cooper’s 595 and at that stage the Labour candidate Craig Graham was eliminated having gathered 368 votes.
In the final round of counting under the transferable voting system the SNP candidate achieved 850 votes – enough to confirm her place on the opposition side of the local authority.
It is a significant victory for the SNP, who now go into a crunch meeting of the Full Council on Wednesday seeking to block Councillor Allan Wright from becoming Convener with a vote of no confidence in the current Leader of the Council having been tabled last week.
The turnout at the by-election was just 20.9%.
How the council now looks:
11 Independents
10 SNP
2 Scottish Conservative (in opposition)
2 Labour
1 Scottish Conservative