INDEPENDENT candidate Martyn Underhill beat three party political candidates to become Dorset’s first elected Police and Crime Commissioner yesterday.

Former detective Mr Underhill, who was second in command in the Sarah Payne murder case, topped a poll in which only 16.77 per cent of residents voted.

The turnout prompted Bournemouth West MP Conor Burns to say the government would regret creating the job and that he regretted supporting the bill that introduced it.

Mr Underhill accused the government of “bodging” the election and said they “must learn lessons” from the mistakes made.

Mr Burns posted on social networking site Twitter: “I suspect we will live to regret creating these Police Commissioners. I regret voting for the bill.”

And he told the Echo: “What on Earth were we thinking going to the polls in November?

“This should have happened, if they were going to have it at all, at the local elections.”

Mr Burns claimed Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg had not wanted law and order to be an issue during government elections.

“It was £80million placating Mr Clegg and opening polling stations around the country for the worst turnout in an election in British history,” he said.

He also said that not allowing each candidate a free mailshot to electors had denied information to the seven per cent of people without internet access.

Mr Underhill agreed that denying candidates a mailshot, and holding the election in November, were massive mistakes.

“Even yesterday I was meeting voters who didn’t even know there was an election,” he said.

“People have called it undemocratic.”

Mr Canning said: “I think there’s an overwhelming rejection of the concept of having PCCs.”

And Ms Rogers also blamed the government: “They’ve failed to publicise the election effectively, they’ve held it at the wrong time of year and frankly the idea of wasting money on an election when there are cuts to police budgets is a nonsense.”

Mr King said: “I think an awful lot of people didn’t understand the premise. I spent most of my time explaining to people what the job was rather than telling them about me.”

Despite the poor turnout, Mr Underhill insisted he had a “strong endorsement” from residents, who he said had “spoken with a loud voice to keep party politics out of Dorset Police.”

He ackowledged the campaign had been “strong and sometimes bloody”, particularly towards Conservative party candidate Nick King.

Both Mr King and Ms Rogers left the count before the result was declared.

Mr Underhill said: “I have a strong mandate from the public and now I want to heal.

“Let’s put it behind us and make Dorset safer and make Dorset Police better.

“In my first 100 days, my first priority is to hire a chief constable who shares my vision, which is community engagement with the public, looking after the victims and trying to sort out some of the deprived areas in this beautiful county.”

POLL RESULTS

This was the result after the first preference votes were counted: Andy Canning (Lib Dem) 9,963.

Nick King (Conservative) 31,165.

Rachel Rogers (Labour) 11,596.

Martyn Underhill (Ind) 43,425.

There were 2,527 spoiled papers.

Because no-one achieved more than 50% of the vote, the bottom two candidates were eliminated and the second choices on their ballot papers were counted.

The final results were...

Nick King 34,451 and Martyn Underhill 51,930.

The turnout was 16.77 per cent overall. But across the county it ranged from 13.32 per cent in Bournemouth to 21.56 per cent in West Dorset.