Local Elections 2023: Is there an election in my area?
Local elections 2023: In maps and charts
(about 1 month later)
This May sees the biggest round of local council elections in England and Northern Ireland since 2019, with 40 million people able to choose new councillors.
With all of the results declared, the Conservatives have lost control of more than 40 councils. Gains have been shared by Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens in all regions.
In England, 230 councils will be electing some or all of their councillors on Thursday 4 May.
More than 1,000 Tory seats have changed hands. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the loss of Conservative councillors is "disappointing".
About 8,000 councillors are being elected in all.
Labour have picked up more than 500 seats. Leader Sir Keir Starmer claims the party's performance sets them "on course for a Labour majority at the next general election".
Bedford, Leicester, Mansfield and Middlesbrough will also elect mayors.
Liberal Democrats have won 12 councils, including Windsor and Maidenhead and Stratford-on-Avon from the Conservatives. And the Greens have taken control of a council for the first time in Mid Suffolk.
In Northern Ireland, 462 council seats are being contested across all 11 councils on Thursday 18 May.
Use our lookup to see who won in your area.
To see if there is an election in your area, who is standing and where you can vote, use our lookup, made in collaboration with the Electoral Commission.
More than 8,000 councillors have been elected across 230 local authorities. Most of the seats were last contested in May 2019.
England
Dozens of councils have changed hands across England, with many no longer having a party majority. You can see them in the table below.
Most of the seats up this year were last contested in May 2019.
Where have things changed the most?
Back then, Theresa May was the Conservative Prime Minister and she was struggling to find a Brexit deal that would get through the House of Commons. Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the opposition Labour Party.
Conservatives lost councillors in almost every region of England, with the biggest falls coming in the South East, East and East Midlands.
The Conservatives lost more than 1,000 council seats in that election. Labour slipped back slightly, losing 84 councillors, and UKIP lost most of the seats they had gained in the run-up to Brexit.
Most of the gains have been split between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
The Liberal Democrats, the Greens, independent councillors and local parties all increased their representation.
The Conservatives lost the most seats in the South East. Their biggest losses at an individual council tied between East Hertfordshire and Bracknell Forest, losing 27 in each. However, they made gains in other areas such as Slough and Leicester.
The 2023 elections are mostly taking place in rural areas where the Conservatives still hold many councils. They are defending more than 3,300 seats.
Labour made the most gains in the South East, but their most dramatic changes were elsewhere. Mirroring the Conservatives, Labour saw the most seats lost in Slough, at 18 in total, and the most gains in Bracknell Forest and Brighton and Hove, also at 18.
There are also elections in urban areas in the north of England where Labour are more dominant. They are defending more than 2,000 seats.
The Liberal Democrats have made the most progress in the South East overall. Elsewhere their best performance was in Mid Devon, where they gained 21 seats.
After their gains in 2019, Liberal Democrats won more than 1,200 seats and the Green Party are defending 240.
The Green Party also gained the most in the South East. They gained 18 seats, their highest in an individual council, in East Hertfordshire and also gained control of the council in Mid Suffolk..
What do the councils do?
Mayoral results
Most of the councils up for election in May are district councils. They look after services including bin collections, parks, public housing and local planning applications.
Three Labour mayors have been elected, Chris Cook in Middlesbrough and Andy Abrahams in Mansfield and Peter Soulsby in Leicester.
Other services in these areas such as highways, schools, social and care services are managed by county councils which are elected at a different time.
The Conservative Tom Wootton won in Bedford beating the Liberal Democrat incumbent.
The rest of the councils are a mixture of metropolitan and unitary councils. These areas have a single local authority that deals with all local services.
Produced by: Wesley Stephenson, Jana Tauschinski, Marcos Gurgel, Steven Connor, Liana Bravo, John Walton, Rob England, Becky Dale, Jerina Jacob, Mark Oludimu and Rahat Anayat
Bedford, Leicester, Mansfield and Middlesbrough will all be electing mayors, the directly elected leaders of the council.
They are responsible for all of the services controlled by the council from leisure services to social care, and appoint members of the cabinet who each have responsibility for specific council services.
Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland there is only one layer of local government. Councils here have responsibility for services such as bin collections, planning, street cleaning, sport and leisure centres, parks and open spaces.
Northern Ireland uses a type of proportional representation to choose councillors called the single transferable vote.
The effect of this system is that no one party controls a council and most work by forming a series of cross-party decision making committees.
Eleven parties and independents won seats at the last election in 2019. The Democratic Unionist Party are defending the most seats, followed by Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and the Alliance Party.
Produced by: Wesley Stephenson, Jana Tauschinski, Marcos Gurgel, Steven Connor, Liana Bravo, John Walton, Jerina Jacob, Mark Oludimu and Rahat Anayat
