Counting is under way in 35 of the 107 councils in England that held elections on Thursday, with most of the remaining local authorities due to start counting later on Friday.
Jonathan Carr-West, the chief executive of Local Government Information Unit (LGIU), has said the initial results are looking good for Labour, with early wins in Hartlepool, Rushmoor (where the party has won a majority for the first time ever), Thurrock and Redditch.
“The narrative developing so far is one of large Conservative losses,” he said, although they have managed to hold on in some cases where they had small majorities, such as the key test of Harlow in the East of England.
Here are some of the key results so far:
Three years ago Labour lost the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election to the Conservatives – an event that reportedly led Sir Keir Starmer to consider resigning as party leader.
This year Hartlepool gave Labour cause for celebration, with the party winning control of the council for the first time since 2019 thanks to a net gain of seven seats, while the Tories lost six.
It was a less cheery picture for Labour in South Tyneside, where the party suffered a net loss of 10 seats.
Independent candidates gained nine seats and the Greens gained two, while the Tories lost their only councillor.
Labour still has a majority here, but only just: the new council will have 28 Labour councillors, 15 Independents and 11 Greens.
The Reform Party had a full or near-full slate of candidates in only a handful of councils holding elections this year and Sunderland was one of a few places where it fought every seat.
While the party did not win any of them, it did beat the Conservatives into third place in 16 of the 25 seats up for grabs while Labour made a net gain of six to increase its comfortable majority.
This Essex council was one of Labour’s top targets and is in an area of the country that will be a key Conservative-Labour battleground at the next general election.
The party needed to gain six seats to take control of Thurrock, which has been run by the Tories for the past few years during a period of turbulence that saw the council declared effectively bankrupt in December 2022.
Labour ended up making a net gain of eight seats, enough for a clear majority, with Independents picking up two and the Tories suffering a net loss of 10.
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