WHILE politicians are no stranger to the spotlight on election night, those behind  the scenes never want to be in the news.

But in 2008, David Parr felt the eyes of the country on Halton as he was forced to choose the winner of a hotly-contested council seat by picking a name randomly from an envelope.

Despite all the time and effort which had gone in to staging that year’s local elections, both candidates for Halton Brook had received exactly the same amount of votes on the day.

Multiple recounts saw no shift in the numbers so two names were put into an envelope and David Parr picked out the winner.

For the last 18 years, Halton’s Chief Executive has been tasked with presiding over all elections in his role as returning officer.

But after announcing his intention to leave the top job in March, Thursday’s Halton Castle by-election will go down as his last - with that night back in 2008 being the one which still stands out.

He said: “As far as elections are concerned, you don’t want to be in the news. "We’ve never been in the news on our elections, only on that day when we had a tie.

“Great credit to the two candidates as they were very respectful to each other as it must have been quite emotional.”

Speaking after Thursday’s count, he added: “From a personal perspective it’s a bit unusual really, but the strength of elections in Halton is the elections team.”

Halton Council deputy leader Cllr Dave Thompson, added: “The Labour group would like to pay tribute to David Parr.

“I’d say that over the last 18 years, David has probably dealt with upwards of a thousand candidates of all parties, and I think it’s fair to say that in that time he’s done an absolutely fantastic job.

“We’ve had no controversy, he’s always been very fair and managed these elections in such a fair way so that local democracy happened."