North Yorkshire PFCC: Tory Zoe Metcalfe elected

Zoe Metcalfe is a project manager for a property company

Voters in North Yorkshire have elected their new Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.

Conservative candidate Zoe Metcalfe won 41,760 of the first and second-preference votes in the by-election.

Labour's Emma Scott-Spivey got a total of 26,895 votes, putting her in second.

The ballot was triggered after the previous commissioner, Conservative Philip Allott, resigned following criticism of comments he made about the murder of Sarah Everard.

Mr Allott, who was elected in May, stood down in October after his comments on BBC Radio York led to public complaints and a vote of no confidence by the county's crime panel.

More than 1,000 complaints were made after he said women should be more "streetwise" about powers of arrest and that Ms Everard should not have "submitted" to arrest by her killer Wayne Couzens, a serving police officer.

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Ms Metcalfe said in order to regain trust in the office following Mr Allott's resignation she would be "open, visible and transparent in promoting her work".

As part of her campaign, she said she would "focus on improving safety for women and girls across North Yorkshire, supporting victims of crime and tackling serious and organised crime".

Ms Metcalfe hoped to work to get domestic violence workers placed in hospital accident and emergency departments, she added after the count.

On Thursday, 86,973 votes were cast from an electorate of 623,821 in North Yorkshire, a turnout of 13.94%.

May's election turnout had been more than 25%.

'Worked so hard'

Three other candidates were knocked out in the first round, with independent Keith Tordoff gaining 14,988 votes, Liberal Democrat James Barker 9,499 and Sarah Barham-Brown of the Women's Equality Party 8,837.

Simon Dennis, chief executive of the office of the North Yorkshire police, fire and crime commissioner, said he was delighted to welcome Ms Metcalfe to the role and looked forward to working with her in the years ahead.

"I also want to thank Jenni Newberry for serving as acting police, fire and crime commissioner for the past few weeks and all the team at the office of the police, fire and crime commissioner who have worked so hard to ensure our work continued without interruption ahead of this by-election," he added.

Police, Fire and Crime Commissioners are normally elected every four years.

The count started at 11:30 GMT in Selby