RCVS Council and VN Council elections results

Results for the 2009 RCVS Council and VN Council elections are now in, and, following slight increases in both turnouts this year, one or two new faces will be joining some of the more familiar ones from July.

Voting in the RCVS Council election increased from 17% to 18.2% this year, with 4,041 veterinary surgeons out of a possible 22,201 casting a vote. The results of the voting are as follows:

• NUTE, Patricia Jill 2,467 (Elected)
• JINMAN, Peter 2,346 (Elected)
• GRAY, Christopher John 2,230 (Elected)
• DAVIES, Jeremy Vincent 2,229 (Elected)
• VINER, Bradley 2,123 (Elected)
• TUFNELL, Christopher Wynne 2,088 (Elected)
• SWAYNE, Nigel 1,673
• McDOWELL, David Michael 1,394
• LONSDALE, Thomas 389

The new Council members will be Christopher Gray and Christopher Tufnell, who will officially join Council at RCVS Day on 3 July 2009.

The VN Council elections saw a larger increase in voters, with 912 out of a possible 8,108 VNs casting a vote. This was an 11.2% turnout, up by nearly 25% up on last year. The results were as follows:

• JEFFERY, Andrea Karen 604 (Elected)
• GLYSEN, Louise 332 (Elected)
• WILLIAMS, Caroline Mary 312
• IVES, Cheryl Diana 236

Louse Glysen is the new VN Council Member (again, officially joining at RCVS Day) and Andrea Jeffery will begin her eighth year, having been the Council’s chairman for the past four years.

This year, for the first time, the College teamed up with the online community websites vetsurgeon.org and vetnurse.co.uk in order to allow voters more opportunity to quiz the candidates and find out more about their views.

Over the voting period, the two election sections on these sites received a total of over 23,000 page views. Over 53 different discussion threads (ie questions to candidates) were started, which received a total of over 650 responses.

RCVS Registrar Jane Hern comments: “Although this created a lot of extra work for the candidates, we were pleased with the opportunity this presented for more people to get involved and engage directly with them.”