Here's a round-up of the latest lines:

• The Conservatives have won the Hartlepool by-election, taking the seat from Labour and giving the town a Tory MP for the first time since the seat was created in 1974
• Jill Mortimer won the seat by almost 7000 votes and a swing from Labour of 16%
• Boris Johnson described early results as "very encouraging" and said the gains were due to the government's focus on "bouncing back from the pandemic"

• Shadow Labour minister, Steve Reed admits the result is "absolutely shattering"
• Ex- Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said they show "a loss of hope" and urged Labour to "offer a bolder vision"
• The Conservatives also win control of councils in Northumberland, Harlow, Redditch, Dudley and Nuneaton & Bedworth
• But they lost control of Cambridgeshire County Council, while Labour have lost in Harlow
• Full results in the Welsh Parliament elections, and some results in the Scottish Parliament elections, are expected later
• Labour has won the mayoral contest in Doncaster, with more mayoral results due later across England

Speaking at her election count in Glasgow SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has said that a majority in the Scottish Parliament is a "very, very long shot" for the party.

Sturgeon said a majority has always been on a "knife-edge" and never taken for granted.

But she said she is "happy and confident" that her party is "on track for a fourth election victory".

"That's an extraordinary achievement for any political party", she said.

Hartlepool's newly elect MP Conservative Jill Mortimer has told the BBC that people in the town "knew they'd been taken for granted for 57 years and they wanted positive change". She is the first Conservative to win in the town since 1959.

She also cited Brexit, the vaccine roll-out and the record of Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen in bringing investment into the area as other important factors in her victory.

She said that locals "will start to see the difference" in the town.

Our political correspondent Leila Nathoo, external will be here at 16:00 BST to answer your questions on the election results so far across England, Scotland and Wales.

Click here - or use the link above - to send it to us, and we'll do our best to answer.

Why Hartlepool result could change the national moodpublished at 15:15 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

15:15 BST 7 May 2021

Chris Mason
Political Correspondent

When this town last had a Conservative MP, the average home in the UK cost around three thousand pounds and Beatlemania was sweeping America.

For 56 years, Hartlepool has had a Labour MP: until this morning.

A look at the numbers from the last general election here is a reminder that this result is – in one way – arguably unsurprising: one in four voters in 2019 backed the since-rebranded and much shrivelled Brexit Party; it required fewer than half of them to switch to the Tories to turn this Teesside town blue.

But it is psychologically significant, for Labour and Sir Keir Starmer.

Hartlepool was once part of its apparently impregnable heartlands; now it’s another brick from the 'red wall' that’s been bulldozed away by Boris Johnson.

It also suggests the depths to which the party plunged under Jeremy Corbyn – Labour’s worst general election defeat since 1935 – were not as low as it could go.

This result doesn’t radically change the maths at Westminster. But it could change the mood.

The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Daisy Cooper, has told the BBC that coronavirus restrictions on doorstep campaigning disproportionately affected the party as it relies on grassroot activists to get the vote out.

Ms Cooper said she does not have a "crystal ball" but the early signs are "looking good" in a number of places because their candidates "pride themselves on being community champions" and have "played a blinder".

So far, the party has won 95 seats in the local elections in England.

Ian Blackford, the SNP leader in Westminster, said he was pleased to see the strong turnout among voters in the Scottish Parliament elections - including newly eligible 16-17-year-olds and asylum seekers.

"We want to see the maximum number of people participating in our democracy," Mr Blackford told BBC News. "It's the right of every citizen."

He went on stress that dealing with the Covid emergency and Scotland's recovery remained the SNP's priority in the immediate future, but added that a vote on Scottish independence was a long-term goal.

"We want people in Scotland to have a say in their future."

Too early to second guess Tory performance in Scotlandpublished at 14:43 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

14:43 BST 7 May 2021

Professor Sir John Curtice
Polling expert

The early Scottish results need to come with a health warning.

Orkney is the one part of Britain, along with the Shetlands, that has been Liberal Democrat for virtually the entire post-Second World War period.

The result Aberdeen Donside will be disappointing at first glance for the SNP, with the party down by four points and the Conservatives up by eight.

But don't read too much into it for two reasons:

Firstly, the resignation of Mark McDonald from his post as minister - only to be later thrown out of the party over indiscretions.

Secondly, it is a relatively pro-Leave part of Scotland - with a 47% share of the vote in the 2016 referendum, and the views of pro-Leave voters have typically become more entrenched since 2016.

So, for the moment, we don't have that much of a clue as to exactly where we are going in the wake of these two results.

The co-leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie, has been talking to the BBC.

He said the party's performance appears to be up and they feel "hopeful and optimistic" but it is early days and they don't yet have enough "robust results" in to get a sense of the overall picture.

He wouldn't be drawn on whether the Greens would prop up an SNP government that fell short of getting a majority.

He said the party would make "positive and constructive decisions" based on what they could do for people in Scotland.

Image source, PA Media

Boris Johnson has posed for pictures alongside the 30ft inflatable figure of himself that was erected in Hartlepool overnight.

The air-filled likeness of the prime minister was put up outside the leisure centre where the votes counted, but it was move to the site where the prime minister was visiting the constituency with new Conservative MP Jill Mortimer.

The Conservatives have lost control of Cambridgeshire County Council.

The party lost eight seats, the Liberal Democrats gained five, and Labour two.

The Conservatives had been in power since 2017.

Why do all these elections matter?published at 14:22 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

14:22 BST 7 May 2021

Adam Fleming
Chief political correspondent

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

But they 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.

Yet all of this could be overshadowed by the results from the Scottish Parliament later which could be the first step on the road to another independence referendum and the potential break up of the United Kingdom.

Thank you for your questions about the election results across England, Scotland and Wales.

There's still time to send them in. Our political correspondent Leila Nathoo , externalwill be here at 16:00 BST.

Click here - or use the link above - to send it to us, and we'll do our best to answer.

Image source, PA Media

After speaking to the media earlier in the West Midlands, Boris Johnson has arrived in Hartlepool to congratulate the Conservatives' winning candidate Jill Mortimer.

He tells reporters he thinks the lesson of the election is that "the public want politicians to get on with focusing on their needs and their priorities".

He adds that for the government this means focusing on the vaccine roll-out and the economic recovery after Covid, as well as "uniting and levelling up" the country.

We've also had our first declared result in the Wesh Senedd election - with the Conservatives holding the constituency of Montgomeryshire.

It means Russell George retains his seat with 12,013 votes, with the party increasing its share of the vote from 41.8% to 48.1%.

Plaid Cymru came in second with 4,485 votes, the Liberal Democrats third with 4,207 and Labour fourth with 3,576.

Scotland's Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf told reporters earlier some seats in the Scottish Parliament election are "going to come down to the wire".

The SNP candidate for the Glasgow Pollok constituency said the slimmed-down campaigning time - due to the pandemic - had made it hard to predict the result.

"It's difficult to get a feel on the doors because of that lack of data coming back," said Mr Yousaf, as he arrived at the election count in the city's Emirates Arena.

But he said the SNP were feeling buoyant after figures showed a high turnout of voters.

"I think the SNP's going to have a good night, but I think other parties also I can see there's an uptick in their vote too.

"So really it's going to come down to the wire in some seats, I suspect."

The Glasgow Pollok constituency is expected to declare later on Friday

Image source, .

The Liberal Democrats have held the Orkney constituency - the first to be declared in the Holyrood elections.

MSP Liam McArthur will return to Holyrood to represent the safe seat, after claiming 7,328 votes. The SNP were in second place, with 3,369, followed by the Conservatives on 699 and Scottish Labour on 290.

Jackie Dunbar becomes the first SNP MSP to secure a seat for the party in the 2021 elections, taking Aberdeen Donside comfortably - a hold for her party.

Her predecessor, Mark McDonald, had to resign from the SNP and become an independent because of allegations over his behaviour towards women.

The turnout in the vote was 57.8% with a swing of 6.2% from the SNP to the Conservatives.

Image source, PA Media

The Communication Workers Union has criticised Labour's approach in Hartlepool, after the party lost the parliamentary by-election to the Conservatives.

In a statement, the union's general secretary Dave Ward said it had left "Labour on the brink of irrelevance" .

"Despite their misgivings, voters are staying with the Tories because they don’t know what Labour stands for," he added.

The union backed Sir Keir Starmer's rival Rebecca Long-Bailey at last year's leadership election, and supported Jeremy Corbyn's bids to lead the party.

Send us your election questionspublished at 13:21 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

13:21 BST 7 May 2021

Do you have a question about the Thursday's elections across England, Scotland and Wales?

As the results continue to come in, we want to answer the questions that matter most to our readers.

Click here - or use the link above - to send it to us.

Our political correspondent Leila Nathoo , externalwill be here with some of the answers later.