Charlotte Callen
BBC West home affairs correspondent

In a Covid-secure sports hall at the University of Bath training village, the votes are quietly being counted for the new Avon and Somerset police and crime commissioner.

We are only allowed as far as a mat inside the door of the sports hall and have taken Covid tests before we arrived.

Turnout this year is slightly up, at just more than 30% compared with 26% back in 2016.

There has only ever been one PCC for Avon and Somerset, the Independent Sue Mountstevens, who has worked alongside three chief constables during her two terms in office.

She’s standing down so whoever wins, will be a new person in the role.

The chief constable has also said he is standing down in the summer so, one of the first jobs for the new PCC will be appointing a new chief.

The force has been in the international headlines with the protests that turned violent a few weeks ago and the toppling of slave trader Edward Colston's statue.

The new PCC will have to deal with the fallout from these issues over the coming months and years too.

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Paul Barltrop
Political Editor, West of England

It is a bumper local election – but it could be confusing.

Voters in Bristol took their pick from dozens of candidates on four different ballot papers. They were choosing local councillors, a mayor for the city, a mayor for the West of England and a police and crime commissioner.

While Labour currently hold sway in Bristol, elsewhere the Conservatives are dominant. They expect to keep control of Wiltshire Council; there will be more focus on Swindon where their majority is smaller.

In Gloucestershire they hope to keep their solid control of the County Council. There are tighter contests in two districts where no one presently has a majority, Gloucester City and Stroud, while the Liberal Democrats hope to hold onto Cheltenham.

There are PCC contests for all police force areas, meaning everyone in the West has a chance to vote. Whether they do, and what shapes their vote in a time of pandemic, is hard to predict.

Residents across the West voted for the new Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) this year.

As the ballots are being counted let's have another look at who the candidates are.

Wiltshire:

• Jonathon Seed (Cons)
• Junab Ali (Lab)
• Liz Webster (Lib Dem)
• Mike Rees (Independent)
• Brig Oubridge (Green Party)
• Julian Malins (Reform UK)

Avon and Somerset:

• Cleo Lake (Green)
• Kerry Barker (Lab)
• Mark Shelford (Cons)
• Heather Shearer (Lib Dems)
• John Smith (Independent)

Gloucestershire:

• Martin Surl - (Independent)
• Chris Nelson - (Cons)
• Simon O'Rourke - (Labour)
• Christopher Coleman - (Liberal Democrats)
• Adrian Stratton - (Independent)

For the police and crime commissioner elections, Bristol has had the highest turnout at 40.71% with 139,098 verified ballots.

Sedgemoor District Council had the lowest turnout at 19.79% with 18,506 verified ballot papers.

Go to http://www.avonpccelection.org.uk , externalto see the turnout for the rest of Avon and Somerset.

Dan O'Brien
Political reporter, BBC Wiltshire

Swindon’s always a closely watched race between the Conservatives and Labour because the town has so consistently reflected the parties’ performances nationally.

A third of seats are up for grabs, and if the Tories lose just two then no one has a majority here.

However, the mood amongst local Conservatives is much more positive than in Labour, with much speculation of Tories making gains in the parts of the town which have voted Labour for decades.

Meanwhile on Saturday, the West’s largest council – Wiltshire – will count its results. It’s normally a very Conservative county so the question won’t really be “will the Tories win?” but “by how much?”, although there are certain corners where the race is very close.

As for the police and crime commissioner elections, we won’t know the Wiltshire results until Monday afternoon.

The Bristol variety show will be live streamed in support of volunteering organisation Gig Buddies.

Hayley Mortimer
Political reporter, BBC Radio Gloucestershire

It is a bumper crop of elections in Gloucestershire due to some being postponed from last year due to coronavirus.

Gloucestershire County Council is currently run by the Conservatives and they need to hold on to all of their 28 seats to keep control.

Opposition parties are quietly confident that they may have gained enough seats from the Conservatives, which would mean the Tories would lose their majority.

Stroud District Council is currently run by a rainbow coalition of Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat councillors.

At the last election, the Conservatives won the most seats, but not enough to form a majority so they are hoping to make some gains this year.

The Labour Party is also hoping it can win enough seats to form a majority but has said it would happily form another coalition.

Gloucester City Council is currently run by the Conservatives but they lost their one-seat majority due to a resignation, so this is an opportunity for Labour and the Liberal Democrats to make gains.

Finally, half of the seats on Cheltenham Borough Council are up for election.

The council is currently run by the Liberal Democrats, who have a 24 seat majority.

They should emerge as the dominant force again but the Conservatives are hoping to chip away at that majority and take a few seats.

The police and crime commissioner result isn’t due until Monday afternoon.

The election is expected to be tight this year due to a large number of candidates and it is unlikely that anyone will win outright, which would see second preference votes used.

The turnout figures for the West of England mayor are in.

More than 250,000 people voted out of a potential electorate of 700,000.

That's up on 2017 when the turnout was just shy of 30%.

Result from Somerset. Daniel Mumby is the Local Democracy Reporting Service journalist in the county.

Mayors, council and PCC election results from from Bristol, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

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