WAVERLEY Borough Council leader Julia Potts has vowed to “re-connect” with residents after her ruling Conservative group suffered one of the party’s worst defeats nationally at last week’s bruising local elections.

Having gone from winning 53 of the 57 seats on offer at Waverley in 2015, the borough council’s Tory group now consists of just 23 members – and suffered many high-profile casualties along the way, among them Waverley mayor Denise Le Gal, deputy leader Ged Hall and executive members Jim Edwards, Carole King and Chris Storey.

But council leader Julia Potts survived – having traded her seat in Upper Hale for Frensham, Dockenfield and Tilford – and speaking to the Herald at the count last Friday said the time had come for the Conservatives “to carefully listen to our residents and re-connect”.

“I’m clearly very, very disappointed and think it’s a great shame for a number of reasons, but ultimately the electorate have decided that they want to go in a very different direction,” she added.

“I do feel that a lot of it was to do with the national picture. But there can be no doubt as well that within some of the towns there are some specific local issues that have contributed as well and we need to take stock and we need to understand those.

“There is a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done of the party itself. There can be no doubt that in the areas in the borough where we’ve really suffered one of the key concerns has been around planning and infrastructure – and to a certain extent our hands have been tied.”

Miss Potts added she is proud to have got Waverley’s Local Plan “over the line” during her four-year administration, as well as adopting the council’s Community Infrastructure Levy. But added these have “come forward quite late in the day for us”.

“Unfortunately in some areas we’ve had some quite inappropriate development,” she continued. “That’s not helped and what hasn’t helped also is some of the decisions we’ve seen lately on some of the planning appeals, certainly in Farnham, where we understood we’ve got a strong Neighbourhood Plan, we’ve got a strong Local Plan – and still that was overridden by the Planning Inspectorate.”

Miss Potts paid tribute to all of her party’s candidates for their efforts in the run-up to the election, and wished her fellow councillors “all the best”, adding “we’re all there to serve our residents regardless of our party”.