Friday 12 June 2015 2:32 am

Tower Hamlets mayoral election: Labour’s John Biggs beats Rabina Khan – but with fewer votes than last year’s election against Lutfur Rahman

Labour's John Biggs has been elected mayor of Tower Hamlets – but with fewer votes than he received when he went up against Lutfur Rahman last year.

Biggs secured 32,754 votes, including second preferences, to beat independent candidate Rabina Khan, who received 26, 384. Turnout was just 37.73 per cent.

In 2014, he received a total of 34,143 votes, while Rahman received 37,395. Rahman was lataer convicted of electoral fraud and removed from the position in April this year, triggering yesterday's vote.

Biggs said the borough now needed to "move forwards".

Speaking after the overnight count at London's ExCel conference centre, the new mayor said: "What is important in Tower Hamlets is that we recognise the events of the past year or more have caused enormous tension and friction in our great borough and we need… to pull things back together again.

"Without dwelling too much on the past we should remind ourselves why we are in this position; there was bad behaviour.

"We need to overcome that, we need to move forwards, we need to recognise that Tower Hamlets is actually quite a magical place… where people come with traditionally quite little and build their dreams."

There was a strong police presence at polling stations and at the overnight count.