All 32 London boroughs, 34 out of 36 metropolitan boroughs, 17 out of 55 unitary authorities, 67 out of 201 district councils, and 6 directly elected mayors
According to a BBC News estimate, taking into account boundary changes, the major political parties are effectively defending the following 'notional' numbers of council seats on election day:
These numbers are how many seats each party won at the previous comparable election, generally in 2014, rather than which party held the seat on the eve of the election.[5] Some other news agencies, such as the Press Association, compare against the party holding a seat on the eve of the election, leading to a different analysis of gains and losses.[6][7]
There are also 48 Residents Associations' councillors, and 100 'other' / independent councillors.[8]
Eligibility to vote
All registered electors (British, Irish, Commonwealth and European Union citizens) aged 18 or over[9] on polling day were entitled to vote in the local elections.[10] A person with two homes (such as a university student having a term-time address and living at home during holidays) was able to register to vote at both addresses as long as the addresses were not in the same electoral area, and was able to vote in the local elections for the two different local councils.[11]
In certain councils, there was a trial system in place where photo ID was required to vote. These councils were: Swindon, Gosport, Woking, Bromley, and Watford.[12] An estimated 4,000 electors were turned away from polling stations across these trial areas as a result of not having the appropriate form of ID.[13]
Results
The number of councils controlled by each party following the election are shown in the table below. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats made modest gains in terms of their respective number of councillors, whereas the Conservatives made a net loss of 35 seats. UKIP lost nearly all of the 126 seats they were defending, with only 3 councillors elected.[14]
†Due to boundary changes, the figures for seat losses/gains are notional changes calculated by the BBC, and do not match up precisely to the London-wide results in 2014.
Results outside of London
The following table shows the aggregate results for the 118 councils that were up for election outside of London.
Labour won the inaugural mayoral election for the Sheffield City Region. Five other mayoral elections saw no change in the winning party: Labour held four and the Liberal Democrats held one.
Because the group of local councils varies with each cycle of local elections, the BBC and other analysts calculated a projected national vote share, which aims to assess what the council results indicate the UK-wide vote would be if the results were repeated at a general election. The BBC's estimate put Labour on 35% of the vote (up 8% since 2017), the Conservatives on 35% (down 3%), the Liberal Democrats on 16% (down 2%).[17] In the May 2017 local elections, the projected national voteshare was 38% for the Conservatives, 27% for Labour, 18% for the Liberal Democrats and 5% for UKIP. When votes were still being counted, media reports widely described the result as "mixed" for both Labour and the Conservatives.[18] The results suggested that support for the parties had not moved much since the general election 11 months earlier.[19] Some reports considered the results a relief for Theresa May and the Conservatives.[20][21]
Ben Margulies, a research fellow at the University of Warwick, noted how the United Kingdom Independence Party's collapse in vote share directly benefited the Conservatives as they committed to exiting the European Union. Margulies stated that the Conservatives' position with the electorate will "remain perched on a precipice".[22] Matthew Mokhefi-Ashton, a politics lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, argued that Labour had set their expectations too high and thus made the actual result look disappointing by comparison.[23] David Cutts, a professor of political science at the University of Birmingham, described the Liberal Democrats' performance in the election as "underwhelming" in contrast to the media response, arguing that the party only made moderate gains in their strongholds from before the Liberal-Conservative coalition and council areas that were seen as "Strong Remain" and "Strong Leave". Cutts argued that the next local elections in England are a greater test of their stability as they feature substantially more strongholds.[24]
54 district councils had one third of their seats up for election. Weymouth and Portland originally had elections scheduled for 2018, but the elections were postponed indefinitely following a decision to merge the council into a unitary Dorset Council from 2019 onwards.[121][122]
These were the last elections to Daventry District Council, following the decision to abolish it along with Northamptonshire County Council and its 7 district councils into two unitary authorities in 2020.
^ abAll vote shares in the infobox are projected national equivalent vote shares calculated by the BBC.[1]
^Swing figures are the percentile changes between the BBC projected national equivalent vote share from 2017 local elections and the same for these local elections that were held in different areas.
^Compared to the last time these elections were held, four years previously.
