LABOUR candidate Ribia Nisa is the new Handforth town councillor for the south ward after winning Thursday’s by-election by just 25 votes.

The 29-year-old from Wilmslow polled 139 votes, while her opponent, Barry Cooke, polled 114.

She now holds the seat formerly held by Brian Tolver.

It was Mr Tolver who told stand-in clerk Jackie Weaver she had ‘no authority here’ during the infamous parish council meeting on Zoom which went viral after it descended into chaos last December.

Cllr Nisa said it is her aim to show ‘that video’ was not what Handforth was like.

“The people of Handforth are brilliant,” she said.

She said councillors will be working hard for the local area.

“We want to impact people's lives in a positive way and do what we can within our powers,” she said.

“That will be my priority and, of course, I want to collaborate with other councillors to see the changes we can make.”

The new councillor said several issues were raised during her campaign.

“When I was door knocking, quite a lot of local issues were mentioned to me, especially around the planning permissions, the road surfaces - and the big one was actually street lighting around the train station.”

She said she hoped to work with Cheshire East on this, as a town councillor has limited powers.

Cllr Nisa has worked in the legal sector for the past 10 years.

For the past three years she has worked in the information commissioner’s office and last December she was promoted to role of manager there and says December is obviously her lucky month.

Cllr Nisa first became involved with politics at university when she was elected vice president of the student union.

Most recently, in 2019, she stood in the Wilmslow Lacey Green ward as the Labour candidate in the Cheshire East Council elections.

She said she is looking forward to her role as a Handforth town councillor.

“I'm, of course, grateful to all the residents that came out and voted for me and believe in me, and I hope I'll be able to show them that I can do some positive work and they’ll be able to say the council has done that,” she said.

Turnout at Thursday’s by-election was low at just 19.2 per cent but that might have been expected as voting did take place two days before Christmas.

The result was declared at 10.45pm on Thursday.