Mayor deeply concerned about youth killings

Sir Steve Bullock Executive Mayor of Lewisham. Photo: Nikki Marra

The re-elected Mayor of Lewisham, Sir Steve Bullock, says he will give the resurgence of violent crimes involving young people in the borough his immediate and real priority. In the week he was elected for a third term as executive Mayor, his appreciation was fully tempered by the tragedy attending two separate alleged murders of young people within days of the poll.

He told East London Lines reporter Talia Lapidus:

“Violence involving young people is a very concerning issue. The figures came down over the last year, but there have been a number of incidents recently. We are all very alarmed about it; completely concerned about the effects on the families and the communities. I’ll be working with the police and other agencies … to say ok, we were making progress, why has this slipped back? What more can we do? It’s something that has to have a very real priority.”

The Mayoral election results were announced late on Friday night. After eight years as Mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, of the Labour Party was re-elected. The two candidates with the highest number of 1st preference votes were Sir Steve Bullock with 47,861 votes and Liberal Democrats candidate, Christopher Stewart Maines, with 26,445 votes. In order to win, one had to have over 50% of the 1st preference votes.

As this did not occur, all of the other candidates were excluded and a second count took place.  The overall number of second preference votes for these top two candidates was  then calculated.  Christopher Stewart Maines gained 10,001 2nd preference votes totalling to 36,446 overall votes and Steve Bullock gained 4,670 2nd preference votes which took his total to 52,531 and was therefore elected as the Mayor of Lewisham.

Interview with Sir Steve Bullock after the declaration of his re-election:

Sir Steve Bullock’s mayor victory speech in full

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