Alsager Town Council will be looking to co-opt new members now the local elections are over because the 15-seat council only has 11 councillors.

The Liberal Democrats, who have been the dominant party on both the borough and town council in Alsager for many years, are dwindling in numbers locally.

Alsager, which had three Lib Dem councillors on Cheshire East up until this month's elections, now only has two – and didn't even have a third candidate to stand for the town which, for so many years, has been its stronghold.

Labour's Brian Drake now holds the third Alsager seat on Cheshire East.

Similarly with the town council, the numbers are dwindling – and so, it seems, is the interest in local politics with no elections taking place for the town council because of a lack of candidates.

This means there are still four vacancies and new members will have to be co-opted.

The make-up of the new town council is four Independents, three Liberal Democrats, three Labour councillors and one Green.

Alsager town councillor Michael Unett (Lab) said the council would now look at co-opting additional members to fill the vacant seats.

When asked why he thought there had been a lack of interest from people wishing to stand, he said: "We've found people are re-evaluating what they want to do after the pandemic. I think politics in general for the past couple of years has been quite up in the air and that might have put some people off."

He added: "And again people aren't always as interested or aware of their town or parish council when really, in my opinion, they should be because, of course, some town councils are spending quite a lot of public money and doing quite a lot of activities in the town."

At 26, Cllr Unett is one of the younger town councillors in Cheshire East.

He said he became interested in politics at a young age and joined the Labour party the day after the 2015 general election.

"It was taking an interest in what was going on, because not only was our local party discussing national matters, it was also discussing local ones," he said.

He started turning up at council meetings to find out what was going on and began to get involved in local campaigns.

"I found the East ward, which is the ward I represent on the town council, hadn't had an election for the town council for almost as long as I had been alive at that point," he said.

"Because of it being an extremely large ward, there had never been more than six candidates to contest the seat. There had been plenty of elections in West and Central wards."

This year though there weren't enough candidates for elections to be held in any of the town council wards.

Cllr Unett is hoping more people will start taking an interest in politics at grassroots level.

He said the process of co-opting on to Alsager Town Council is expected to start soon and 'we welcome applications and will begin to co-opt people'.