JULIA Mulligan has been re-elected as North Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner in an election which saw nearly double the number of votes cast as in the previous election.

The re-elected Conservative candidate secured 65,018 votes, with Labour’s Steve Howley coming second with 44,759 votes.

Over-all turnout was 22.5 per cent, which was just under a quarter of those eligible to vote and significantly more than the 14.3 per cent of voters who turned out in the first 2012 election. Across the county 135,642 votes were cast. The highest turn-out was in the Craven district where 34 per cent of the electorate voted.

As the results came in at Ryedale District Council’s headquarters in Old Malton, second preference votes had to be counted when no single candidate secured 50 per cent of the first preference votes.

The first preference ballot saw independent candidate and author Mike Pannett secure nearly a quarter of the votes. But it wasn’t enough to get to the second round and he was eliminated with Liberal Democrat candidate James Blanchard, who came last.

Mrs Mulligan said one of her first tasks will be to improve services in North Yorkshire for children who have been sexually abused and bring in specific support services for parents of children being groomed. Also high on her list is improving working with mental health services in policing.

She said: “When I took up this job in November 2012 the first thing I did was meet with victims of crime. Throughout that time I’ve focused on trying to protect the vulnerable people of North Yorkshire as best I can by introducing new services.”

Steve Howley, who came second, said: “Obviously I’m disappointed with the overall outcome but we’re certainly satisfied we came so far in this county by getting as close as we did.”

Despite the high turnout, Steve Howley and Mike Pannett called on the Government to put some resources into the PCC elections and publicise the elections more widely, saying in a geographic area as large as North Yorkshire, some money should have been made available from central government to advertise the candidates.

Mike Pannett’s team felt if he had gone through to the second round he may have won by scooping up the majority of second preference votes.

But the former police officer said he was still pleased to secure nearly a quarter of the vote. As an independent candidate with no party backing he had a total campaign budget of £1,000 and fought his campaign with a team of family, friends and volunteers largely on foot visiting parishes in North Yorkshire.

He said: “It was really humbling; I didn’t expect to win this and was quite surprised to get this far.

“I think the key thing was the message to keep politics out of policing. The only reason I stood was I believed it shouldn’t be a political role.”

He said he would now be focusing releasing his next book, detailing his time as a police officer in London.