A top councillor says her party is still in a “really strong position” despite being omitted from a newly-formed coalition.

Swale Liberal Democrats took five seats during May’s local elections – the same number as four years ago and five more than 2015 when they had no representatives at all.

However, its members will no longer be part of the borough’s ‘rainbow coalition’, as they were between 2019-23, having missed out on all of the leadership and major committee positions at the recent full council meeting.

Swale’s adoption of a committee system rather than a cabinet one was to ensure more inclusion in decision-making – something recently echoed by new council leader Cllr Tim Gibson (Lab).

Group leader Cllr Hannah Perkin says this will mean the Lib Dems’ influence should not decrease.

“We believe we can still do the best job for the borough regardless of our status in terms of positions,” the Abbey ward representative said.

“In 2019 there was a need for a more formalised coalition and a leadership-style cabinet system, so moving away from that like we did to the committee system was important because it decentralised decision-making and included more backbenchers.

“Labour and the Swale Independents obviously had enough seats to run a coalition on their own, so it was right they took the leadership and deputy leadership roles, as well as the majority of the chair and vice chair positions given the numbers.

“It means we don’t have the positions we had previously, and so I’m no longer the standards committee chair and Ben (Martin) isn’t chair of housing and health, but we still have what is essentially an equal stake in the direction of the council given the new system.

“So we will continue to support the coalition unless something arises which goes against our liberal values – which we don’t expect anyway.

“But we also want to be in a position where if our residents are unhappy about something, then we can challenge the administration on that.”

Cllr Perkin, who is yet to confirm whether she will run again for the Faversham and Mid Kent parliamentary seat in 2025 as she did in 2019, believes her group can continue to win more votes in future elections.

The 38-year-old added: “We have increased our majority in a number of our seats, so we’re still in a really strong position which will move us forward too in terms of the parliamentary position for Faversham and Mid Kent.

“We also won a seat and kept another in Abbey ward in Faversham, so when you look at how much the Conservatives’ vote decreased as a whole compared to four years ago, we’re in a really strong position.

“With the first-past-the-post and two-party system we have, there has always been an us versus them rhetoric between Labour and the Tories, but as a Liberal Democrat in my ward I have seen a lot of anger among residents and discontent from people during the elections and that showed.

“As a group though we are going to push for environmental changes when we can, but also work on improving the diversity of local government.

“It’s still a very traditional old, male and white setting, so that’s why I was pleased to see the number of women increase for Swale seats given four years ago we were right at the bottom of the gender representation tree nationally.”