CONSERVATIVE MP John Glen has retained his seat in Salisbury after picking up 28,192 votes in the public ballot.

Re-elected Mr Glen, who greatly surpassed his 23,859 score five years ago, was announced clear winner by more than 20,000 votes just before 4am at Salisbury City Hall.

Behind Mr Glen was Labour candidate Tom Corbin with 7,771, Ukip’s Paul Martin with 6,152 and Reeten Banerji of the Liberal Democrats with 5,099, a 12,000 drop since the General Election in 2010.

Green Party candidate Alison Craig picked up 2,762 votes and Independent campaigner King Arthur Pendragon received 729.

Speaking to the Journal, Mr Glen said: “It was a very pleasing result.”

“An increase share of the vote for the conservatives, so more people voting for the Conservative party and an increase majority, over triple what we had in 2010.

"I really am overwhelmed and didn’t anticipate an outcome as good as this."

"I felt that there would be pressure on the Liberal Democrats but the outcome was really beyond my expectations.

"It’s not about me, it’s about the future of Salisbury and me working with all the other parties in the city for the people who live here."

The main focus securing extra jobs with more funding in certain areas, according to the MP.

He added: “The key priority for me is to secure extra investment in the science park at Porton which will bring higher quality jobs to Salisbury, there’s some projects in the centre of Salisbury, the Maltings and Churchfields that I want to see move forward. And I’ll use this convincing result to try and move those things in the right direction.

"It’s been six weeks of hard campaigning, we’ve been out every day from 9 to 4, 16 public meetings, six husting meetings and numerous emails but that’s what campaigning is about.

"I love meeting people and debating the issues and obviously it’s very pleasing when you have an outcome like this.”

“I’m not going to let this go to my head. I’ll be working hard to retain this trust in the years ahead.

"I think it’ll be a difficult result to match in future but I look forward to giving it a good go.”

At 11.30am today, Mr Glen will be singing the traditional Vly be on the Turmut on the balcony of the White Hart Hotel.