SDLP councillors quit as party launches election campaign
Hours before the SDLP launched its Assembly election campaign, two of the party's councillors resigned and announced that they would be standing as independents in next month's election.
Amid party friction in West Tyrone, Derry City and Strabane councillor Patsy Kelly and Fermanagh and Omagh councillor Josephine Deehan quit, saying that “the SDLP has lost touch with the electorate in West Tyrone”.
The SDLP has said the resignation of Mr Kelly from the party “comes as no surprise” as it had recently withdrawn the whip from him.
Mr Kelly is the second councillor to leave the SDLP grouping within the new Derry City and Strabane Council within a year following Sean Carr last April.