2003 New Forest District Council election

New ward boundaries came into effect for the election, which increased the number of seats by two. Prior to the election, a by-election took place in Pennington, which saw the Liberal Democrats gaining the seat from the Conservatives, meaning that prior to the election the Conservatives held 29 seats (50.00%), the Liberal Democrats held 36 seats (44.82%) and three independents held seats (5.17%). After the election, the Conservatives held 32 seats (53.33%) and the Liberal Democrats held 27 (45.00%), with only one independent hold (1.66%)

The Liberal Democrats performed best in the East of the district, as well as the North West, taking eight out of ten Totton seats, all six Hythe and Dibden seats, and all four seats in the Fawley, Blackfield and Holbury area.[4] The Conservatives meanwhile performed well across the rest of the district.

The table below only tallies the votes of the highest polling candidate for each party within each ward. This is known as the top candidate method and is often used for multi-member plurality elections.

New Forest local election result 2003

Party		Seats	Gains	Losses	Net gain/loss	Seats %	Votes %	Votes	+/−
	Conservative	32	17	1	3	53.33	51.49	23,803
	Liberal Democrats	27	22	0	1	45.00	40.48	18,712
	Independent	1	0	2	2	1.66	5.89	2,723
	Labour	0	0	0		0	1.61	745
	Green	0	0	0		0	0.26	124
	UKIP	0	0	0		0	0.25	117