INDEPENDENT councillor Quentin Abel is hoping to make a difference after taking one of the Conservative seats on Cheshire East in Knutsford.

Quentin was a hair’s breadth from coming out on top in the eight-candidate fight for the three seats on the council.

He ended just 20 votes behind Conservative Stewart Gardiner, who was re-elected along with Conservative Tony Dean, with Conservative challenger Peter Coan coming in fourth place.

Quentin said: “I am very keen that we make change happen.

“I stood as an Independent because I think local politics should be independently-minded people coming together for the community.

“I don’t see why we should have party politics and don’t see why people should be telling us what to do. We should form our own ideas and work on those.”

Quentin has lived in Knutsford since 1989, and said it was very flattering to have received the number of votes that he did.

He said: “However I am just pleased to be elected so I can start doing something and hopefully make a difference.”

He said he didn’t consider himself to be a politician, and suspected many people who had voted for him had thought ‘a plague upon everybody’s house’ [the two main political parties].

One of the issues he felt needed to be addressed was ‘this wretched problem of potholes’.

He said: “We don’t seem to have a plan anywhere in the country to do the job right the first time and not having it repeat and repeat.”

Stewart Gardiner came out top of the Knutsford poll with 1,310 votes, 15.3 per cent, ahead of Quentin on 1,290, 15.1 and Tony Dean on 1,243, 14.5 per cent.

Peter Coan polled 1,174 votes, ahead of Green candidate Charlie Abbott Booth on 917, Lib Dem Christopher Wetherell on 912, Joe Godden for Labour on 848 and Independent Helen Rogers on 830.

Quentin polled only 1.9 per cent of the votes in the 2017 General Election in the Tatton constituency as an Independent candidate.