General Election 2024: West Dunbartonshire Count gets underway

Voting is over and the count has now started in West Dunbartonshire - with eight candidates waiting to find out their fate.

The Lennox Herald is at Clydebank Leisure Centre, which is the venue for the constituency count, providing updates and reaction throughout the night.

Teams are collecting ballot boxes from 38 polling stations across the area and bringing them to the centre, which is the venue for the constituency count, where a team of around 100 staff will make their way through every voting slip.

Voting ended sharply at 10pm, with results expected from the early hours of Friday morning.

Peter Hesset, chief executive of West Dunbartonshire Council, is the returning officer and will announce the winner of the constituency once all the votes have been counted.

Six candidates are battling it out for the West Dunbartonshire seat.

Martin Docherty-Hughes, who has represented the constituency since 2015, is standing for re-election, while Labour candidate Douglas McAllister - the area’s Provost - is hoping to take advantage of a predicted surge for the party by turning the area red for the first time in almost a decade.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Green Party’s candidate is Paula Baker, David Smith stands for Reform UK and the Liberal Democrat candidate is Paul Kennedy.

The Conservative candidate is Maurice Corry, Kelly Wilson stands for Sovereignty and Andrew Muir stands for the Scottish Family Party.

The UK-wide ballot comes around five years after voters went to the polls in the December 2019 Westminster election, where Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won a resounding majority.

The country will know where it stands once all 650 MPs have been elected. For an outright majority, a party needs to win 326 seats. The picture from across the whole of the UK should be clear by around 6am on Friday morning.

The Lennox will have live updates throughout the night from the count.