results in maps and charts

Reform UK has made huge gains in local elections held across England on 1 May, taking control of 10 councils and winning the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by just six votes.

Labour and the Conservatives both suffered their biggest local election defeats, failing to hold on to any of the councils they controlled before the election.

The Liberal Democrats picked up scores of seats and gained control of three councils, while the Greens more than doubled their number of councillors.

The six mayoral contests were more of a mixed picture, with Labour retaining three mayors, Conservatives gaining one and Reform UK picking up the two newly-created mayoralties.

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Reform UK swept to victory across England with 31% of the vote, gaining a majority in 10 areas.

The party took Doncaster from Labour and eight councils from the Conservatives: Derbyshire, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and West Northamptonshire. In Durham, there had been no party majority.

The Liberal Democrats gained control of Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Shropshire, and made gains elsewhere.

Both Labour and the Conservatives lost two thirds of their council seats, their worst local election performance on record. The Conservatives lost control of all 15 councils they held before the election.

Some of Reform’s biggest victories were in former Conservative-controlled areas such as Staffordshire, Kent and Lancashire, where the party went from having no councillors elected in 2021 to holding a majority.

The Lib Dems’ big gains were in Shropshire, as well as parts of the South and South West.

The Conservatives’ biggest losses were in Kent and Staffordshire. For Labour, Durham and Doncaster saw the biggest falls in the number of seats.

The collapse in support for Labour and Conservatives in these 23 council elections indicates that the traditional main parties’ grip on voters may be loosening.

The BBC’s projected national share, an estimate of how the country would have voted if everywhere had had a local election, shows the Conservatives in fourth place.

Labour and Conservatives would attract only 35% of the vote between them, a historic low.

Mayoral elections were fought in six areas of England, with two being elected for the first time.

Reform won both of the new positions, in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull & East Yorkshire.

Andrea Jenkyns – a former Conservative MP who defected to Reform in November – became the first mayor of Greater Lincolnshire after gaining 42% of the vote.

Labour retained three of the mayors they held: Doncaster, North Tyneside and the West of England.

Reform took second place in all three contests, coming within a thousand votes of winning both North Tyneside and Doncaster.

There was some comfort for the Conservatives in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, with Paul Bristow winning comfortably ahead of a close race between Labour, Reform and the Liberal Democrats.

The Westminster by-election in Runcorn and Helsby added some drama to the results, with a recount in the early hours of Friday.

At daybreak, Reform’s Sarah Pochin won the seat from Labour, recording the narrowest victory of any parliamentary by-election: just six votes.

Produced by Callum Thomson, Rob England, Christine Jeavans, Wesley Stephenson, Libby Rogers, Muskeen Liddar and John Walton. Lookup produced by Stephen Connor, Rebecca French, Scott Jarvis, Allison Shultes, Matthew Taylor, Holly Frampton, Adam Allen, Preeti Vaghela, Scott Liston and Callum Thomson