Labour regains control of council after 24 years

The Labour Party has regained control of Milton Keynes City Council for the first time in 24 years, after taking seats from the Conservatives.

Labour won nine seats, gaining three extra councillors, while the Liberal Democrats also took two seats from the Tories, winning six. Three Conservative councillors held their seats.

The council has been under no overall control since 2006, when the Lib Dems were in charge, although Labour has been the largest party for many years.

Labour's Pete Marland said: “I've been leader of the council for 10 years, and for the people of Milton Keynes to still put their trust in us and give us a majority shows it’s about local issues and national issues.”

Turnout was 30.3%, with one third of the seats across Milton Keynes up for grabs in Thursday's election.

Mr Marland said it was "a big change for Milton Keynes” to have a majority party and that Labour was pleased to win three more seats.

“Obviously you want to win more, but we won seats where we never had all three councillors before. Those are all seats we’d need to win as a party in a general election,” he added.

Oscar Bentley, BBC Political Research Unit

Milton Keynes is a bit of a bellwether - both parliamentary constituencies typically follow national trends.

Labour will take winning the council as a good sign for the general election, where both seats are must-win targets.

Milton Keynes City Council has been hung for the last 20 years - and Labour hasn't won a majority there since 1999.

However, Labour only needed to gain two seats to take control of the council so it really wasn’t much of a challenge for them to win (and would have been very disappointing to not have done).