Nicky Ford
Reporting from the Lambeth count

The latest from the Lambeth count at the Kia Oval where it appears that Labour will lose control of the council.

The Greens are in the lead with 26 seats, with Labour close behind with 20 and the Liberal Democrats on eight.

I caught up with Claire Holland, Labour leader of Lambeth Council, who didn’t want to fully comment until the results are all in - but she did say she felt very sad if the council went to no overall control and pledged to come out fighting.

"We will continue to be the voice for the voiceless, representing every community," she says.

After the last local election, Labour held 58 seats in Lambeth, the Lib Dems had three and the Greens had two.

BBC London was in Hackney this morning to speak to Hackney's new mayor Zoë Garbett.

During a walkaround in Ridley Road Market she was greeted by supporters who were celebrating her winning the seat from Labour.

We'll bring you lines from her interview with BBC London's political editor Karl Mercer shortly.

Josef Steen
Local Democracy Reporting Service

Image source, Camden Greens

The Green Party in Camden has hailed their wins in the local council elections.

Lorna Jane Russell, who until now has been the only Green councillor in Camden, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “It’s incredible. The Green Party is now the official opposition, to go from one to 11 is amazing.

"I have every faith that we will do people proud and show them what Green councillors can do."

Labour retained control over Camden but the surge in support for the Greens saw Labour's council leader Richard Olszewski lose his seat.

The insurgent Greens dealt the ruling party several blows as they increased their total number of councillors to 11, making them the largest opposition group on the council.

Labour retained its overall majority with 30 council seats, down 17 from the 2022 elections.

The Liberal Democrats also made gains, increasing their number of councillors to 10.

Trailing in fourth place, the Conservatives won three seats, while the Camden People’s Alliance won a seat in St Pancras and Somers Town.

Russell said: “With a reduced majority and what will be a new leader, it’s a good opportunity for Labour to reflect on the issues and priorities that matter most to communities: housing repairs, overdevelopment, green issues, and to ground them a little bit more in the grassroots.

“We will keep them on their toes.”

The Labour Party’s losses will resonate with Labour MPs representing the borough, which includes the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Nicky Ford
Reporting from the Lambeth count

There is recount upon recount here at the Kia Oval as control for Lambeth hangs in the balance.

Counting restarted this morning with 16 wards already announced yesterday – the Greens have won 21 of the seats declared with Labour on 12 and the Liberal Democrats on seven.

Today there is a tense but optimistic atmosphere depending on who you’re talking to.

The Greens say they’ve taken some seats they weren’t expecting to and Labour say they’ve been fighting against the tide.

The council could be heading for no overall control.

The Greens are telling me they think they’ll get 29 or 30 maybe overall but need 32 for a majority.

Tony Grew
BBC London

Image source, Getty Images

The mea culpas from the prime minister continue into Saturday.

This morning Sir Keir Starmer visited south-west London where he gritted his teeth and faced the cameras.

He gave his diagnosis for why Labour did so badly in Thursday’s elections, not just in London but across England, Wales and Scotland.

There were unnecessary mistakes, he said. We were too honest with the voters about the dire state of the economy without telling them how things were going to get better.

While the immediate danger to Sir Keir’s continued residence in Downing St may have passed, London Labour aren’t in a forgiving mood.

Their leader, mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, pointedly didn’t name the PM, but his message was clear: the party’s disastrous results in the capital are Sir Keir’s fault.

The reason voters fled from Labour “wasn't because of the performance of the Labour council or the Labour mayor, it was because of the Labour government”.

For all the losses Labour took on Thursday, there are reasons to be grateful.

The threat from Reform UK in Barking and Dagenham failed to appear.

They held on in Islington, in Hounslow, in Camden.

While it could have been much worse, Labour will mourn the losses nonetheless.

The mayoralties of Hackney and Lewisham. Waltham Forest and Hackney Council.

Control of Southwark, Brent, Enfield.

The Greens triumphant and in control of parts of London that Labour used to think of as its heartland.

It’s no wonder the party isn’t in the mood to forgive.

In the end despite speculation that they could dominate the eastern flanks of London, Reform UK only picked up Havering, an outlier politically and culturally, where voters resent being thought of as "outer London" and many hanker to return to Essex.

Reform were tipped to take Bexley and Bromley – they didn’t come close.

The Tories retained both, won back Westminster, pushed Wandsworth into no overall control and comfortably held on in Harrow and Kensington and Chelsea.

Not a bad result when we consider how Reform have rampaged all over Tory territory across England.

And the Lib Dems will be happy enough: they retained the three councils they had before, and got a clean sweep of every councillor in Richmond.

But Thursday’s victors were the Greens.

Zoë Garbett’s stunning victory in Hackney and her impassioned acceptance speech will live long in the hearts and memories of progressive voters across London.

They didn’t win as many councils as predicted, but the fear for Labour must be that left-leaning voters who go Green may never come back.

Before Thursday's local elections Labour ran 21 London boroughs, the Conservatives had five, the Lib Dems had three, the Aspire Party had one and two were no overall control.

Four councils (shown in light grey) are still to be declared but the political map shows how much change there has been with Labour losing several areas, the Greens and Reform picking up their first London boroughs and more now in no overall control (marked in dark grey).

Earlier, London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan was asked by BBC London political editor Karl Mercer whether Sir Keir Starmer could carry on as leader of the Labour Party.

Philip James Lynch
Local Democracy Reporting Service

Image source, MyLondon/Facundo Arrizabalaga

Labour retained control of Hounslow Council following the local elections, despite losing 20 seats.

A total of 32 is needed for a majority – exactly the number Labour achieved.

The party will have a majority of one, compared to a majority of 20 after the 2022 vote.

Labour saw a large drop off in their vote, losing some of their safest seats in the borough.

Reform UK had a breakthrough in Feltham, gaining eight new councillors across the borough compared to 2022.

The Conservatives also saw success in the borough gaining seven councillors.

Jack Emsley, Conservative councillor for Chiswick Homefields, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the result was “seismic”.

The Green Party gained three new councillors compared to 2022, although one had defected to the Greens during the previous term.

The Liberal Democrats also gained their first councillor, taking a seat from Labour in Isleworth.

Turnout was 41%, compared to 33.6% in 2022 – an increase of 7.4%.

Tony Grew
BBC London

The prime minister has set out why he thinks Labour lost councillors, councils and mayoral elections across England.

Speaking in south-west London this morning, he says the results "are tough and that hurts of course it hurts, it should hurt, but the right thing to do is to therefore set out the path forward".

He also admits to "unnecessary mistakes" in being honest with voters about "the challenges that we face as a country" without setting out how their lives would be better.

Sir Keir says: "The hope wasn't there enough in the first two years of this government, and that's why it's important for me now to set out where hope resides.

"It resides in our young people having the future to go as far as their talent or ability will take them to genuinely have that, because if you've grown up in poverty, you don't get that chance and to make sure that everybody feels the pride that I know they do feel about where they live and where they work."

Joe Ives
Local Democracy Reporting Service

Image source, Joe Ives/LDRS

The most dramatic moment of the day at the election count in Haringey came when the Labour leader of the council endured her own "Portillo moment" when it was announced the Greens had taken all three seats in Noel Park ward, ousting her from the council entirely.

Just four years ago, Peray Ahmet’s closest competitor was a Liberal Democrat candidate – one she beat by 1,335 votes. The Greens didn’t even put forward a candidate in the ward that year.

The Greens have won the most seats in Haringey – ending more than half-a-century of Labour-led administrations in the borough.

No single party has overall control of the local authority, however.

Even the Greens’ fairy tale night had a sting in the tail, seeing them win 28 seats and therefore fall just one short of the 29 needed for a majority.

Haringey Labour, meanwhile, which has run the borough in consecutive administrations dating back to 1971, lost 23 of the 44 seats it held before the election on Thursday.

Four years ago such a result seemed unthinkable. But in Haringey – and beyond – a new political era appears to have been written.

The Conservatives failed to win a single seat despite standing in every ward.

Reform UK, the Tories’ right-wing challengers, made seismic gains elsewhere in the country but here they, too, failed to gain a single seat.

Haringey Socialist Alliance, who were joined on the campaign trail by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last month, performed better in terms of votes.

Nevertheless, the newcomers fell short of getting a council seat.

Other outsider parties included the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition as well as the Christian People’s Alliance.

The latter achieved the unwelcome feat of gaining the fewest votes of any candidate in the borough when Stroud Green candidate, Amelia Alao, won just 30 votes – or 1.4% of the total achieved by rival Green candidate, Beth Anderson.

Josef Steen
Local Democracy Reporting Service

Image source, LDRS

Dylan Law was elected as a Green Party councillor for Hackney Downs ward yesterday, becoming one of the youngest councillors in the country.

Law, who is 20, ran on a joint ticket with victorious mayoral candidate Zoë Garbett and she has pledged to appoint him as deputy mayor of Hackney.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said Law declined to speak to the press at the count yesterday, but a Green Party spokesperson said it was “probably the biggest day of his life”.

Labour suffered unprecedented losses in Hackney following the local elections.

The party saw its long-held dominance in Hackney crushed as its huge majority of 50 councillors at the last election collapsed to a rump of nine seats.

The insurgent Greens made sweeping gains across the borough and finished with 42 out of 57 seats.

Cabinet members were ashen-faced and candidates bleary-eyed as they were defeated in what one Labour candidate described as a “slaughter”.

The seismic result for the Green Party followed its earlier victory when Green candidate Zoe Garbett beat incumbent Caroline Woodley with 49.8% of the vote to become mayor.

Accepting victory, Garbett said: “The fight back starts now. Across London and the country, people have made it clear that they are desperate for an alternative to this failing Labour government.

“I don’t want to tweak around the edges. I’m going to change the system. The people of Hackney own Hackney, and it’s time to take it back."

While Garbett, the borough’s new political leader, had left the count by the time the final council result was declared, a Green Party spokesperson told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “It’s a really exciting result. Obviously, the people of Hackney knew what they wanted – and they got it – so we’re ready to start working very hard.”

The Labour Party had controlled Hackney Council outright for all but seven years of its history since the local authority was created in 1965.

Karl Mercer
BBC London political editor

In his interview with the media, Sir Sadiq Khan also spoke about how he believes politics in the capital works.

"One of the things we've done in London is to have a coalition of progressives, whether you vote Tory, whether you vote Lib Dem, whether you vote Green," says London's mayor.

"I've asked you to lend me your vote because hopefully people see me as a mayor for a long time.

"I think similarly the prime minister and the government need to be governed for everyone, whether you're rich, poor, whether you're black, white, whether you're old, young."

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been under pressure over Labour's defeats in the local elections in England and elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd on Thursday.

Karl Mercer
BBC London political editor

The mayor of London has blamed Labour's loss of several London councils on the government and called for "meaningful change" at the top of the party.

Speaking to broadcasters this morning, Sir Sadiq Khan says: "One of the things that's clear to me is that voters didn't just desert Labour to go to the Greens, they went to the Lib Dems, some stayed at home, some voted for Reform.

"That's a wake-up call for the Labour government, but the reason they deserted Labour wasn't because of the performance of the Labour council or the Labour mayor, it was because of the Labour government.

"That's why it's so important that we see change and meaningful change from the government."

Sir Sadiq says voters are "angry, they are disillusioned, they are disappointed".

He adds: "At the same time you're seeing a fragmentation of politics in our country.

"No longer are we a country where there are just two options, Labour or Conservatives.

"We know now many, many people who normally vote Labour have gone to the Greens or to other parties.

"Many people who vote Conservative have gone to Reform or other parties."

One result which came in late last night that we haven't yet reported was in Redbridge where Labour retained control but lost ground to independent candidates and to the Greens.

You can find results in your area here.

While we'll likely have a final result for Lambeth in the next few hours, the other three councils - Croydon, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets - are unlikely to have declarations until later in the afternoon.

We'll be bringing you updates as things progress, as well as analysis and reaction from all of yesterday's results.

Counting for Lambeth council’s elections resumed at 10:00 BST.

Results for 16 wards were announced yesterday – the Greens have won 21 of the seats declared with Labour on 12 and the Liberal Democrats on seven.

There are 23 seats still to be announced.

Will bring you all the results as we get them

Tony Grew
BBC London

Good morning.

London has woken up to a new political map, with the Greens and Reform UK in control of councils for the first time.

The mayoral counts in Croydon, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets yesterday have delayed the counts for the councils until today.

The Greens won the mayoralty of Lewisham, so their council count will be one to keep an eye on.

The Conservative mayor of Croydon won re-election yesterday, and the council is likely to see several parties elected.

And in Tower Hamlets, local party Aspire won the mayoral election and are expected to retain control of the council too.

Counting is also continuing in Lambeth this morning after late-night recounts yesterday.

Karl Mercer
BBC London political editor

So the comfortable red blanket that cloaked London's councils is no more. The capital, which last night had 21 of is 32 boroughs run by Labour looks very different tonight.

For the first time, the capital got a directly elected Green mayor when Zoë Garbett won the former Labour stronghold of Hackney.

Hours later another one, as former Labour councillor Liam Shivastava became Lewisham's Green mayor.

And for the first time the Greens won a council in London, and took Waltham Forest from Labour before later taking Hackney.

For the first time the capital has a Reform UK council, with Nigel Farage announcing that Havering was "under new management".

Image source, Getty Images

There are more splashes of blue on the map too, with the Conservatives taking back control of Westminster, which they lost to Labour in 2022.

They became the largest party in Wandsworth, depriving Labour of the control the party won four years ago and the Tories held off a Reform challenge in Bexley and Bromley.

"I'm very proud of how we have done," said leader Kemi Badenoch.

It is not a pretty picture for Labour. While they may not have lost as high a percentage of their councillors as they did in the rest of the country, Thursday's results in the capital can't be glossed over.

Half the party's membership are in the capital - one in seven of its MPs are here - London has 6m people eligible to vote. The prime minister called it a "tough" night. That's putting it mildly.

The Conservatives have retained control of Harrow Council with a strengthened majority, winning 42 of the borough’s 55 seats. The party gained 11 seats, putting it comfortably above the 28 needed for overall control.

Labour suffered losses, falling to 12 councillors after dropping 12 seats, while Independents and others hold a single seat.