Andy Giddings
BBC News

We'll be getting results from five local authorities today, with most of the final results due this afternoon.

Shropshire Council's results will start coming through this morning.

The counts in Tamworth and Worcester are expected to produce final results around midday.

Not long after that we'll be due the final tally from Cannock Chase.

And then, later in the afternoon, we should be getting the final votes confirmed in Staffordshire.

But, as we saw yesterday, those are estimates because of all the changes that have been made at the counts for social distancing reasons, so we could see that timetable shift.

Andy Giddings
BBC News

Good morning and welcome to day two of our live coverage of election results around the West Midlands.

Yesterday we saw the Conservatives take control of two councils and make gains in others, but most local authorities remained in the same hands.

And today we have another five councils due to finish their counting, plus the results of the West Midlands Mayor and West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner votes.

Conservative group leader Matt Dormer says the party has seen some "really convincing" results.

Sophie Calvert
Political Reporter, BBC Radio Stoke

Conservative Ben Adams has been elected Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC) in Staffordshire.

He gained 56% of the vote as the party retained the post.

PFCCs are elected representatives who work to ensure police forces and fire services are running effectively.

Initially established as Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), they replaced police authorities in 2012 and were intended to bring a public voice to policing.

The government said they were not there to run local police forces but to hold them to account and respond to the needs of the public.

In Staffordshire, the PCC also took over responsibility for the fire service in 2018.

Matthew Ellis, elected last time around, announced he would step down and fellow Tory Ben Adams takes over.

Andy Giddings
BBC News

That's our updates done for today, but there will be more appearing on our website overnight and we'll be back tomorrow morning to bring you the rest of the results.

BBC Radio Shropshire

Hundreds of people were mistakenly invited to vote in a parish council by-election in Telford yesterday.

Ballots were issued to about 1,200 residents in the Brookside area, giving them a vote in the Stirchley ward on Stirchley and Brookside Parish Council.

Some 500 then went on to cast their votes and the ballot papers had to be sorted to removed them before a proper count could take place.

Returning Officer David Sidaway apologised for the error and Stirchley's two available seats were won by Conservative councillors Harvey Unwin and Tammy Wood.

The Labour leader of Coventry City Council appears pretty content with his party's showing there.

They only lost one seat in the end and George Duggins said he thought the voters "recognise the way that the Labour council has responded to the dreadful pandemic".

"Labour are still strong here," he said.

Their one gain was in Earlsdon, and they held 11 elsewhere.

Adam Fleming
Chief political correspondent

On the most basic level the local elections in England matter because they decide who delivers the services where you live.

But they also mean a lot for national politics.

They prove that the Conservatives’ recipe at the general election in 2019 – get Brexit done, spend lots of money – has worked again in 2021.

And that there are broad demographic and political changes to the country that could benefit the Tories in the long term.

They suggest that the Labour strategy to paint the government as corrupt or incompetent might not have worked.

They could also be the spark that reignites the civil war between the centre-left and the very left within Labour, which might mean Sir Keir Starmer has to spend more time trying to win an argument in his party than on winning over the country.

The Tories take control of Dudley Council and also take their first seats in Sandwell for six years.

The Labour leader says he takes "full responsibility" for Thursday's election results.

Sir Keir Starmer says the party has lost the trust of voters and he will "do whatever is necessary it takes to fix that".

We've had four by-election results from Birmingham today too.

Two of them were held by Labour, but the party lost the others to the Conservatives - in the Quinton and Oscott wards.

Image source, Birmingham City Council

That still leaves Labour with a strong majority though.

The party has 65 seats to the Conservatives' 27 and the Liberal Democrats remain with eight.

There is also one Independent on the council.

The Conservatives have maintained their grip on Warwickshire County Council and made six gains.

They now hold 42 of the 57 seats at the local authority, with Labour losing four seats to end up with a total of six.

The Liberal Democrats lost three seats, to leave them with five and the Green Party gained one to reach three.

The other seat remains in the hands of the Whitnash Residents Association.

BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester

Labour were defending eight seats on Worcestershire County Council going in to this election and so far they've lost four of them.

But it could get worse and there's the outside possibility they could lose all of them, if they fail to hold their four seats in Worcester.

They were already down two on the results from the 2017 elections, because of defeats in by-elections.

Another result which has never been in doubt is in Worcestershire, where the Conservative Party will keep control of the county council.

There are still about 20 seats to be declared, but the Tories have reached the total needed for a majority, 29, external, including an overall gain so far of three seats.

Their gains have largely come at Labour's expense with the party losing four seats so far.

The Conservatives have held on to power in Walsall, making five gains.

There were 22 seats up for election this time and the Independents gained one seat.

Labour lost three seats and the Lib Dems lost two.

That means the Conservatives have stretched their majority from two to 12.

Tom Edwards
Reporter, BBC Hereford & Worcester

The overall control of Worcestershire County Council is unlikely to change, but some senior councillors won't be returning.

So far we've lost the Labour group leader Robin Lunn and his predecessor as leader, Peter McDonald.

And the Conservatives have also lost a former leader, with Paul Middlebrough losing to the Green Party in Croome.

He had been a councillor for 38 years.

It's another one of those results that was never in doubt, but Labour have held on to Coventry City Council.

There were 19 seats up for grabs and the net result of the votes was Labour losing one seat and the Conservatives gaining one.

So the end result is Labour being left with 39 councillors to the Conservatives' 15.

Sandwell has remained a Labour council, but that was never in doubt, and the Conservatives will be pleased to have gained nine seats.

They won none in the 2019 elections.

Labour still have 58 seats, while Independents claimed four seats.

The voter turnout was up by 5% from 2019, with 29.5% of eligible residents heading to the polls.

Sophie Calvert
Political Reporter, BBC Radio Stoke

We’re waiting for the full results for the first round of voting for Staffordshire's Police Fire and Crime Commissioner

But if the East Staffordshire results are anything to go by, we might not have to go to the second round.

The Conservative candidate Ben Adams has 14,480 votes in East Staffordshire.

His next nearest challenger, Labour’s Tony Kearon, has 7,886.

There were also 3,012 votes cast there for Independent Deneice Florence-Jukes and 1,188 for Lib Dem Richard Whelan.

The Reform UK candidate Michael Riley got 607.

But these are just the votes for East Staffordshire, not the whole county, so that picture could still change.

The Conservatives have comfortably held on to Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.

They gained three seats to take their total to 30 with the Green Party the next largest group with 15.

The Lib Dems have three seats, Labour two and there is one Independent.