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The dust has settled on this year’s local elections, with Nigel Farage’s Reform party seeing unprecedented success across the country.
Some 1,650 local councillors were elected in 23 councils, with a further six mayoral races and one by-election in Runcorn and Helsby.
From the unexpected scale of Reform’s success, to Labour winning no votes in some areas, The Independent looks at the most important figures from the 2025 local elections.
Hundreds of seats for Reform
Reform entered the local elections this year with zero seats to defend and went on to win 677 council seats.
This easily exceeded expectations, with pollsters predicting around 400 to 450 seats for Mr Farage’s right-wing party.
Both Labour and the Conservatives, on the other hand, lost hundreds of seats, amounting to two-thirds of their 2021 representation on local councils, far worse for both parties than expected.
The Conservatives had the most to lose, winning some 996 seats in 2021, when these councils last held elections.
Labour barely scraped ahead of Independent candidates and Greens, winning just shy of 100 seats.
The third-party players - Reform and Lib Dems - both ousted Labour and the Conservatives to be the two leading parties in the local elections.
Though their success was somewhat overshadowed, the Lib Dems nearly doubled their council seats from 2021; leading experts to suggest the UK is moving away from a two-party system to a four or five-party one.
See where Reform performed best here.
Labour failed to get any votes in dozens of wards
Overall, Labour and the Conservatives both lost hundreds of local council seats.
But Labour faces a further sting when looking at individual electoral wards, where it didn’t just lose the race - it got no votes at all.
No single vote was recorded for Labour in 81 electoral wards, mostly within Cornwall and Wiltshire councils.
This is worse than any other major party, with even the Conservatives only failing to win any votes in six wards.
Meanwhile, just eight electoral wards held zero votes for Reform, most of which were for Oxfordshire council.
Turnout
The number of voters showing up for local elections is consistently lower than general elections in the UK.
Voter turnout for this election is still being determined in some councils.
On average, the turnout has been around 35 per cent according to initial estimates; a figure which is moderately high for local elections.
The lowest reported turnout so far is at just 19.5 per cent in Ponteland North, Northumberland, in which the Tories won the seat.
By comparison, the mean turnout in last year’s local elections was at 30.2 per cent, while the equivalent races in 2021 saw 34.1 per cent of voters cast ballots.
These figures are subject to change.
Vote share
Initial estimates of the vote share show that Reform received nearly a third of the vote across all councils holding elections, with the Conservatives next at 23 per cent.
With 17 per cent the Lib Dems received a lower vote share overall than the Tories but won more seats. They also overtook Labour in vote share with Keir Starmer’s party getting 14 per cent.
The combined vote share of both main parties (Labour and the Conservatives) is now at just 37 per cent; the lowest on recent record, and no longer a majority of votes.
This is nearly half of the 67 per cent vote share won by Labour and Conservatives combined in 2021.
Changing shape of council control
Control of local councils looks far different from its previous form in 2021.
In the 23 councils which held elections, 10 will have a local government with no overall control; meaning that no single party has enough councillors to form a majority.
This is an increase from the last elections, in which seven councils had no majority.
But the biggest change to the electoral map came for the Conservatives, who lost control of all fifteen councils they won in 2021.
This includes Kent council, which had been run by a Tory majority since 1997.
Meanwhile Reform has secured majorities in ten councils, with Labour dominating none at all.
The Lib Dems won majorities on Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire councils, and took control of Shropshire from the Conservatives.
It remains to be seen how new Reform candidates, inexperienced in local leadership, will manage council budgets and day-to-day activities.
By-election lost by six votes
The by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, declared early into Friday morning, set the tone for Reform’s local election success.
The Labour constituency was up for grabs after former MP Mike Amesbury was suspended and jailed, following a physical altercation with a constituent.
Just last year, Labour had a majority of 14,000 votes in the constituency.
But this week’s by-election saw Reform win by just six votes after a recount.
Runcorn and Helsby’s new MP is Sarah Pochin, marking Reform’s fifth seat in the House of Commons after Rupert Lowe was suspended.
Labour candidate Karen Shore lost by just 0.02 per cent of the vote.
This was a tighter race than any in the 2024 general election, with the smallest margin in Hendon, where Labour won by 15 votes.
As the first parliamentary by-election since Labour came into power, the result is a blow for Sir Keir Starmer’s party, who are neck-in-neck with Reform in national voting polls.
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