Boris Johnson admits the local election results in some parts of England have been "tough" for the Tory party
The Conservatives have lost more than 480 council seats across England, Wales and Scotland
The party has lost key London councils to Labour, and southern councils to the Liberal Democrats, who have gained more than 190 seats across England
Sir Keir Starmer has hailed a "really good set of results" for Labour - however major gains in England have not been made outside London
The BBC calculates that based on these results, if the whole country had been voting - Labour would have 35% of the vote, Conservative 30%, Lib Dems 19% and others 16%
Labour has become the second largest party in the Scottish council elections, but the SNP continues to dominate
In the Northern Ireland Assembly election, Sinn Féin has received the largest number of first preference votes but the count is ongoing
The Conservatives have seen heavy losses in Wales, while Plaid Cymru have made gains
We have the first result of the night.
Labour has retained overall control of Halton Borough Council in north-west England after two of 18 seats were declared.
The party already had a majority of 42 after the last election in 2021.
The council was expected to be held by Labour, which has been in control since it officially formed as an authority in 1974.
The next elections for Rutland County Council won't take place until May 2023. But the Conservatives there have suffered a blow tonight with the resignation of council leader Oliver Hemsley and several other Tory councillors.
In a statement, Mr Hemsley says he intends to carry on leading a minority administration as an independent. He says the council has been ignored by the government on funding.
Huw Edwards has kicked off our overnight results programme on BBC One and the BBC News Channel. However, you plan on following the results, we've got you covered:
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Georgia Roberts, political reporter
Only a third of seats are up for grabs in Derby this time, so it’s perhaps trickier to spot significant trends but still a very useful indicator as to how the parties are faring here.
Talk of a high watermark of results for Labour in 2018 locals elsewhere does not apply to Derby. The party lost control of the council here the last time these seats were contested, and support has continued to erode since.
Labour in Derby has been wounded since 2018 and tonight, the mood is very much looking to have a good story to tell for the beginnings of a comeback, ready for an all-out assault when all 51 seats on the council are up next year.
The Conservatives here – who lead as a minority administration – are feeling more relaxed. Support seems to have held up on the doorstep but turnout will be key.
The Liberal Democrats are also hoping for a steady evening but perhaps nothing astronomical here for them.
Derby also has the unusual added complication of Reform UK’s sizeable presence on the council – another party Labour have shredded support to.
These were UKIP seats when last contested in 2018, won in traditionally Labour areas. Labour is hoping to see a turnaround in at least one of them tonight.
Professor Sir John Curtice
Polling expert
Around the country, the BBC has identified a number of key wards that will point to the final result in their council areas.
So far, across the six wards declared in Sunderland, there is a 6% swing from Conservative to Labour. If Sunderland is any guide, we will be looking at a series of Conservative losses overnight.
Shelley Phelps
BBC political reporter
As the first few votes are counted here at the StoneX Stadium in Barnet, north London, many are expecting an historic win for Labour.
Party activists and candidates are upbeat.
Labour group leader Barry Rawlings says he is "fairly confident" but adds "it could still end in tears”.
The party was dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.
Rawlings says a victory for his party in Barnet - which has one of the UK's largest Jewish populations - would be be proof “we have turned the corner on anti-Semitism."
The mood among the Conservative camp is more muted. They say they fought a hyper local campaign.
“No one wanted CCHQ [Conservative Campaign Headquarters] anywhere near them” says one local Conservative party source.
Tim Donovan
BBC London, Political Editor
A senior Wandsworth Tory source says it looks "very likely" that they have lost control of Wandsworth, in south London.
Conservatives have run the council since 1978.
The source says Labour supporters have turned out, and Tories have stayed at home.
“Our voters are generally not very happy at the moment….but this is a mid-term thing.”
There has been discontent with the cost of living and Partygate, but the source says it is also something that Boris Johnson can come back from with a “return to proper Conservative policies, none of this wishy-washy stuff”.
All three parliamentary seats in the borough are Labour. Putney was Labour’s only win of the night in 2019.
The source says the demographics have been moving against the Conservatives for some time.
The area voted heavily for Remain in the Brexit referendum in 2016.
The three main parties in England have been testing out their election night messages on the BBC's Newsnight.
For the Conservatives, Rachel Maclean said it had been a tough set of polls.
But the safeguarding minister brushed off suggestions that many Tory candidates had fought their campaigns under "Local Conservative" banners to avoid being associated with Boris Johnson.
She said she hadn't seen that, and party activists were "proud to be led by the prime minister".
Labour chairwoman Anneliese Dodds played down suggestions that her party should be targeting hundreds of council seat gains.
She said it was "going to be difficult" to make gains when Labour already held more than half the seats being contested. What the party was really targeting, she said, was a sizeable increase in its share of their national vote since 2019.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper rejected claims that her party had engaged in unofficial local pacts with Labour, to stand aside in some areas to their mutual advantage.
She said the Lib Dems were targeting "modest gains in Blue Wall areas" to increase their chances of unseating Conservative MPs at the next general election.
Image source, PA MediaJoint Green leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay were the faces of their party's campaign in England.
They worked hard to differentiate themselves from their bigger rivals.
“London’s Labour council’s need more balance,” one campaign poster read.
Ahead of these polls, Denyer and Ramsay, pledged to build on these recent electoral successes with a pledge to deliver “fairer, greener communities”.
Writing for the Evening Standard, external ahead of the elections, Denyer outlined what the Greens would do for voters, should they be elected. She said the party would:
Image source, Getty ImagesUnlikely as it may sound, BBC Question Time host Fiona Bruce has announced that Formula 1's Sebastian Vettel will be appearing on the programme next week.
So if you want to hear the driver's opinions on tonight's local elections results tune into BBC One next Thursday at 22:40.
In Scotland and Wales all council seats were up for election. In England, elections only took place in 146 of the 333 local authorities in England.
And even in those councils, not all seats were up for election this year.
A lot of the areas where elections are being held are Labour strongholds - London, for example.
As you can seat from our chart below, Labour have the most seats to defend.
You may also notice that our graphic does not include Northern Ireland. This is because there were no council elections there - only elections for the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly.
Image source, ReutersWhat about Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey's influence on the campaign?
Like Labour, the Liberal Democrats devoted much of their campaign to what Sir Ed called a "cost of living emergency".
The party homed in on this issue in England, where they prioritised attracting the support of disaffected Conservative voters in rural areas.
On the final day of campaigning, Sir Ed said he had spoken to “lifelong Conservative voters who feel utterly taken for granted by a law-breaking prime minister and a tax-hiking Chancellor”.
The party set the tone at its campaign launch, at which Sir Ed called for an “emergency tax cut”.
He proposed a cut to value added tax (VAT) from 20% to 17.5% for one year, a move he predicted would save households an average of around £600.The party’s elections offer also included:
Image source, PA MediaNow let's look at Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's role in the election campaign.
The Labour leader initially focused on the row over lockdown parties in Downing Street and claims Mr Johnson could not be trusted to lead the country.
Sir Keir then got caught up in his own controversy, as newspapers and Tory MPs accused him of breaching lockdown rules at a campaign event in Durham.
But as the financial squeeze on households tightened, Labour shifted its campaign focus to the rising cost of living.
Sir Keir pushed hard on this issue, relentlessly accusing the Conservatives of not doing enough to top up budgets.
Many of Labour’s policies were geared towards the cost of living. They included:
Image source, ReutersAs we await results, let's look at what impact party leaders had on the election campaign in England, starting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The controversy over lockdown parties in Downing Street - and Mr Johnson's fine - appeared to put the Conservatives on the back foot in the weeks leading up to the election.
Soaring energy bills and rising prices in the shops also cast a pall over the Conservative campaign.
Some activists feared the party was on course for big losses, in the region of 800 seats or more.
Many Tory candidates around the country styled themselves as “local Conservatives” on leaflets and ballot papers, in an apparent attempt to distance themselves from events in Downing Street.
Despite this, Mr Johnson remained a visible presence on the campaign trail, vowing to fight for “every possible vote”.
He promised to help households cope with the rising cost of living and reminded voters what support his government had already offered.
The government has announced a council tax rebate and repayable discount on energy bills.
Out campaigning in Bury, the prime minister said the "greatest" assets his party had were "Conservative values and the way councillors deliver better taxpayer value".
In an article for the Express, external, he claimed lowering council tax and filling potholes were ways Conservative councils were improving voters’ lives.
Image source, ReutersNow the polls are closed, we’re poised to report the results as and when they are declared.
They’ll trickle in at different times overnight and into the weekend, depending on where the election was held.
The first of those results are expected in England, where 4,411 seats on 146 councils are up for election, most of them for the first time since 2018.
For that reason our coverage will be mostly focused on England overnight, until results in Wales and Scotland start coming in on Friday.
In Northern Ireland, the results aren’t due until Saturday.
But as with all elections, the timings of results can be subject to change, so watch this space.
Image source, ReutersParty leaders have expressed their gratitude to voters who cast their ballots in Thursday’s local elections across the UK.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted, external to thank supporters and activists “for their hard work to support our plan to keep council taxes low”.
In a tweet, external of his own, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said candidates and campaigners had “worked tirelessly to deliver our positive message to the country”.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said hard-working candidates were a “testament to the local community politics that fuels our party”.
Meanwhile, SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon posted, external to say “democracy is precious” in a tweet thanking “everyone who voted today”.
Around England, our reporters are picking up a sense of disillusionment with most of the political parties. In Sunderland, a Labour activist says there was a general feeling of a "plague on all your houses". Lots of people said they were angry at Sir Keir Starmer for "not tearing Boris Johnson apart".
A similar picture is emerging in Harlow, in Essex. Conservatives there reckon their vote will hold up, but say it was hard getting people out to the polling stations.
Hywel Griffith
BBC News' Wales Correspondent
Image source, Getty ImagesLabour will hope their resurgence under Mark Drakeford will continue, potentially winning back some of the hundred or so seats they lost this time five years ago.
A very good day could see them winning almost half of the 1,200 seats in Wales - keep an eye on places like Merthyr Tydfil and Bridgend.
For Plaid Cymru they are hoping for a standstill selection by keeping hold of their one council in North Wales
Welsh Conservatives are far less optimistic, feeling maybe the tide is against them, hitting voter apathy.
They will hope to keep hold of their one council in Monmouthshire.
What makes all of the above highly unpredictable is just how many independent councillors we have in Wales.
Last time around they were the second biggest contingent.
When they become the power brokers in councils that can mean it can be weeks, maybe months, of negotiations before we get to know who governs in every council area.
The results in Wales are expected late afternoon/early evening on Friday.
It's the first graph of the night!
As we wait for votes to be counted, let’s look at some analysis of previous local elections and what it told us.
A key snapshot of the outcome is the so-called projected national share (PNS), which is produced by professor of politics, Sir John Curtice. This year's PNS is due on Friday.
The PNS is an estimate of the share of the vote that the main parties would have won in a UK-wide general election if voters had behaved in the same way as those who actually voted in the local elections.
In 2018, when many of the seats contested in England on Thursday were last up for election, the BBC's projected national share put Labour and the Conservatives neck-and-neck on 35%.
In contrast, the Conservatives edged ahead last year, when the party’s projected national share was put at 36% to Labour’s 29%.
Of course, a lot can change in politics from one day to the next, let alone between elections.
So our advice: always take these projections with a pinch of salt.
Emma Vardy
Ireland Correspondent
Image source, ReutersPolls were open in Northern Ireland today - but the count won't begin until tomorrow morning
The result of this election has the potential to be huge for Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole.
That is because unionism has dominated here for a century and this election will tell us if we have reached a significant tipping point.
The big question is - can a nationalist party for the first time become the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly?
If Sinn Féin are able to beat their bitter rivals, the DUP, that will be a very significant result indeed.
That was the outcome the polls were indicating in the run-up to this election
But it is very hard to predict these things here and the final result may be much closer than polls have been indicating.
Losing the election would be a hammer blow for the DUP.
What will be the aftermath? We could be in for months of negotiations between the parties to see if they can reach a new power-sharing agreement.
The final results will be known on Saturday.