The Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors has reported back on last week’s council election results:
Just as the General Election produced a mixed bag of results, so did this year’s council elections. Although overall we had a net loss of 135 seats and control of a number of councils, the outcome was far more complex.
The results in metropolitan and London councils saw a net loss of 52 and 77 seats respectively losing overall control of Richmond upon Thames, Liverpool, Rochdale and Sheffield in the process. However, in unitary councils and the English districts we lost just 5 and 1 seat respectively, and gained control of Burnley, Cheltenham and Winchester councils. These figures also hide the fact that we lost significant numbers of seats in councils where we were in joint or minority administrations where Labour where the main opposition, such as Brent, Camden, Islington, St. Helens and Warrington.
Apart from the places where we gained control, there have been a number of other stars in this election. Firstly, we gained two seats from scratch on Merton council, a council where we now hold the balance of power. We also retained our by-election gain in Kensington & Chelsea and gained one more councillor to keep Carol Caruana company in this Tory fiefdom.
You can read the full report here.
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2 Comments
Even in the Mets the situation is more complicated than it looks. The Lib Dem group in Sefton MBC remains at 28, but within that we gained a seat from Conservative in Southport and lost one to Labour in Crosby.
oh dear – I hadn’t realised it was that bad…