The Conservative Party’s Roger Evans has held his Havering & Redbridge constituency in the Greater London Assembly, but his majority has been slashed.

The Havering councillor has held the seat since it’s creation in 2000. His vote this time was 10per cent down on 2008, seeing off the challenge from Labour’s Mandy Richards by less than 4,000 votes.

After the result Mr Evans, said: “It’s always going to be difficult when a Conservative government is in coalition right now.

“We are always going to struggle, as we saw here today, because government has to make hard decisions and that’s not always going to be popular.

“I am very grateful to the residents of Havering and Redbridge for keeping their trust in me and keeping me in this position for another four years.

“I have been committed to freezing council tax and I am very keen on reducing that burden further for residents.”

‘Words were also exchanged’ between Mr Evans and the National Front candidate Richard Edmonds.

Mr Evans refused to shake Mr Edmonds’ hand after the result was announced.

Mandy Richards said that the result was a ‘validation’ of Labour’s success.

The full results are as follows:

*Roger Evans (C) 53,285 (37.59%, -10.08%)

Mandy Richards (Lab) 49,386 (34.84%, +13.30%)

Lawrence Webb (UKIP) 9,471 (6.68%, -0.73%)

Malvin Brown (Res London) 8,239 (5.81%)

Farrukh Islam (LD) 6,435 (4.54%, -3.02%)

Robert Taylor (BNP) 5,234 (3.69%)

Haroon Saad (Green) 5,207 (3.67%, -1.87%)

Mark Twiddy (Eng Dem) 2,573 (1.81%, -2.12%)

Richard Edmonds (NF) 1,936 (1.37%)

C maj 3,899 (2.75%)

11.69% swing C to Lab

Electorate 389,814; Turnout 141,766 (36.37%, -8.21%)