Nick Gibb has retained his Conservative stronghold in Bognor Regis and Littlehampton with 59% of votes, an increase of 8%.

UKIP’s Patrick Lowe faced major disappointment with only 1861 votes, compared to 10,241 in 2015.

He said UKIP had “clearly suffered a massive blow” with a huge shift to the Conservatives.

Mr Gibb said he was “surprised” by his increased majority and said being elected MP was an “honour.”

But his success was over-shadowed by the national Conservative picture and his supporters were particularly disappointed by nearby Portsmouth South shifting to Labour.

Mr Gibb maintained that Theresa May was right to call an election and should not stand down.

He said tonight’s result showed that Britain needs to start “doing politics differently.”

Labour candidate Alan Butcher said he was “absolutely delighted” that he had almost doubled his number of votes, with a total of 12,782.

He said Jeremy Corbyn had galvanised young people in the area.

“I visited the Bognor campus of Chichester University and it was very noticeable that young people there were very pro-Labour,” he said.

Francis Oppler, Liberal Democrat candidate, said he hoped Brexit would help “pick up some remainers,” but only received 3352 votes. Paul Sanderson, the left-leaning independent candidate who is a chaplain at Littlehampton Academy, gained nearly a thousand more votes than UKIP.

He was climbing a mountain in Scotland when the snap election was announced and decided to stand as a candidate.

He crowd-funded his “creative” campaign and thanked his supporters.