SCHOOLS boss Mike Appleyard was the happiest person at the Buckinghamshire County Council election count at Wycombe Sports Centre on Friday morning.

The diminutive cabinet member for schools had feared he would lose his Wooburn seat.

He had only a 200-vote majority and Labour and the Lib Dems were eager to wrest it from him.

The votes for Wooburn were among the first to be counted and his was the first result announced by Richard Cummins, chief executive of Wycombe District Council, acting as returning officer on the day.

The result gave Cllr Appleyard a doubled majority of 400 over Lib Dem Brian Pollock, and immediate congratulations from a host of people, among them members of opposition parties.

His future in the cabinet is the next thing to be resolved.

He wants to get back into the eight-person team but this depends on sorting out differences about the role of the schools cabinet member with council leader David Shakespeare.

The 19 results being counted at the sports centre were for the county councillors representing divisions in the Wycombe District Council area.

The results had to wait until after the general election counts the night before. Other counts were going on in Aylesbury Vale, Chilterns and South Bucks districts.

In the Chilterns area, Lib Dem leader Pam Crawford in Chesham west, who had a majority of about 100, and who was also being targeted by the Conservatives and Labour, increased her majority to 371. But she lost one of the most able people in her team, Mike Brand, who took over the Amersham east seat in a by-election, and went out to the Conservatives.

Mr Brand's big interest was education where he could always be relied on to query Tory policy and results. After hearing the result Tory leader David Shakespeare said Mr Brand was an extremely able member. "That will be a loss to the intellectual content of the Lib Dems," he said.

Back in Wycombe, Trevor Fowler and the other four Labour members of the council all held their seats but could not claim any others.