How the BBC is reporting local election results

Local council and mayoral elections are taking place across England, and police and crime commissioner elections are taking place across England and Wales on 2 May. There are also elections to the London Assembly.

When are the local election results expected?

This will depend on the local authority. Some will start counting their votes immediately after the polls close at 22:00 BST on 2 May. Others will wait until the following morning to start counting.

We are expecting about a third of councils to count overnight, with the first results coming in around midnight. Most of these councils will post their results in the early hours of Friday 3 May. Then there will be a lull before all but four of the remaining councils start counting at about 09:00 BST.

The first council results during the day on Friday are expected at midday. Most of these results will come mid-to-late afternoon, with a few expected later in the evening.

North Tyneside, Stroud and Warrington are expected sometime on Saturday 4 May and Salford on Sunday.

The mayoral elections results will be spread out. The East Midlands, North East, Tees Valley, and York and North Yorkshire mayors are expected on Friday. The rest including the Mayor of London are expected on Saturday.

The results for police and crime commissioners will be announced at different times over the weekend with some coming on Friday and others as late as Sunday 5 May.

The Blackpool South by-election result is expected in the early hours of Friday morning.

Which elections does the BBC cover?

The BBC results service covers council, mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections that are part of the regular election cycle as well as the Westminster by-election in Blackpool South, and the London Assembly.

Council results are available at a whole council level. In line with most media outlets, the BBC does not provide ward level results.

There may also be parish, town or community council elections, council by-elections or local referenda where you are. Results for these elections and ward level results can be found on your local council website.

The BBC uses data from the Press Association for its election results service, alongside some data it sources itself.

How is council control calculated?

If a party has more than half of the councillors on a council, it is deemed to be 'in control' of that council. If no party has more than half of the council seats, the council is described as having 'no party majority'.

If a party did not have enough seats to control a council before the election but goes on to win more than half the seats on 2 May, this is described a 'gain'.

This may be a gain from another party, or it may be that before the election no party had enough seats to control the council. In this case it is a gain from no party majority.

If the party already controlled the council before the election and they hold more than half the seats again after this election this is described as a 'hold'.

How is change in council control calculated?

Council control prior to the election is defined by the BBC, the Press Association (PA) and others as the party, if any, that had a majority in the days running up to the poll.

This may be different to the party that won at the last election.

For example, a party may have won control of a council at the last election but then have lost their majority in the meantime through defections or by-elections.

If that party were to win the council again this year, the BBC would describe this as a gain for that party rather than a hold.

How is seat change calculated?

The change in the number of councillors for each party is calculated by comparing this election result with the result the last time these seats were contested.

For most councils, not all their seats will be contested at this election. Seventy-six of the 107 councils holding elections this year are only electing a third of their seats, four are electing half of their councillors, twenty-seven are electing all.

For most councils, the seats were last contested in 2021 but in some areas it was 2022 or 2023. Dorset has not had a full council election since 2019.

There are some areas where change is more difficult to calculate because there are boundary changes which may also change the number of councillors representing each ward.

In cases like this, the BBC uses "notional results" to project what the previous result would have been if the new boundaries had been in place at the last election.

How are notional results calculated?

When the boundaries of council wards change, it is important to have an idea of how many councillors each party would have had if the new boundaries been in place last time the seats were contested.

This way, the change in the number of councillors elected for each party can be calculated on a like-for-like basis.

This is not an exact science. When boundaries are redrawn and an area is moved from one council ward into another there is no official record of how that area voted.

This is where the experience and expertise of analysts comes in.

To calculate the notional results, analysts use maps of the old and new boundaries. They look at the area, and use local knowledge and professional judgement to help them work out how people are likely to have voted.

Using this information, they recalculate the results of the last election to show how many councillors each party would have had if the new boundaries had been in place.

It is this figure that is used by the BBC to calculate change in these areas.

You can see if an area has had boundary changes in the 'About this council' section at the bottom of each council results page.

How is the order of the banners and scorecards decided?

Banners appear at the top of the front page of the BBC News website, on relevant politics and live pages and stories related to the election.

Scorecards appear in election live pages, in stories about the election and on social media.

They are ordered by the number of council seats a party has won. This will change during the counting period as results come in.

When two parties are tied, the order is determined by how well the party did at the previous election when these seats were last contested.

For most councils elections for these seats were last held in 2021, and so we compare 2024 results to this baseline year to show change figures for the parties.

Mayoral elections

Regional mayors are being elected in a number of places across England including new mayors in York and North Yorkshire, the East Midlands and the North East.

The way mayors are elected has changed since these elections were last contested. They are now elected using a first-past-the-post system of voting. This means that the candidate with the most votes wins, without the need for another round of counting, in cases where one candidate did not reach more than a 50% of the vote.

Police and crime commissioners

Police and crime commissioners are being elected across most of England and Wales. The exceptions are those areas where the regional mayor takes responsibility for policing. These areas include London, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and York and North Yorkshire. In some areas the PCC also has responsibility for overseeing the fire service. PCCs are being elected using first-past-the-post for the first time.

Vacant seats

The BBC results pages include vacant seats as part of the Independents and others total.

This results in the Independents and others figure in the scoreboard being slightly higher than the figure in the results banner that sits at the top of pages. This banner does not include vacant seats

Vacant seats are those which are left vacant after this set of elections.

These seats are often vacant because a councillor whose seat was not up for election, dies or resigns. In these cases a by-election would be held at some point in the coming weeks.