Ivybridge Town Council voted to approve the appointment of another councillor and voted for Fang Cao, known as Crystal, to be elected for the Ivybridge West ward.

Crystal said that she is committed to helping and engaging with young people across Ivybridge. Her flagship idea is to provide more free access to activities for young people by introducing a ‘free voucher’ to public facilities for young people, particularly those from a financially disadvantaged background.

Before voting started, Cllr Lance Austen commented: “We should have had an election, we shouldn’t be choosing our councillors, the people of Ivybridge should. Next time this happens I will be pushing for this council to organise an election.”

The four candidates standing for election made short statements to the councillors before the voting started stating why they wanted to be elected onto the council board. All of the candidates said to councillors that they hoped they would vote to have an extra councillor on the board to diversify the voices and improve the representation of the council.

After the candidates left the room, voting started. Candidates needed to get a majority of votes in order to be elected onto the board, for this election it was seven. In each round of voting the candidate with the lowest amount of votes in each round was eliminated, until one candidate had the support of the majority of the council.

Voting went through three rounds before Crystal had a majority of votes.