2007 United Kingdom local elections

Results

There was a suggestion in February 2006 that many of the 2007 local elections in England would be cancelled due to a reform of local government. However, since then possible reforms are still in the consultation stage and no decisions have yet been made.

312 English district councils, nearly all districts in England held some form of election – either thirds or full – on Thursday, 3 May 2007.

The final results are summarised below; firstly, with a table ranked by the party with the greatest number of councillors elected.

Source BBC BBC NEWS | Politics | Vote 2007 | English councils map

England

Mayoral elections

Scotland

Main article: 2007 Scottish local elections

All 32 Scottish councils had all their seats up for election - all Scottish councils are unitary authorities. These local elections were held on the same day as the Scottish Parliament general election. They were the first election for local government in mainland Great Britain to use the Single transferable vote (the system is used in Northern Ireland), as implemented by the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004.

Summary of results

Councils

The notional results in the following table are based on a document that John Curtice and Stephen Herbert (Professors at the University of Strathclyde) produced on 3 June 2005, calculating the effect of the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote on the 2003 Scottish Local Elections.

Pre-election predictions

A Newsnight poll by the analysts Rallings and Thrasher some days before the election predicted the following results for the English council elections:

Con 38% (Conservatives gaining 330 seats and losing 2% of the vote on 2006)

Lab 24% (Labour losing 500 seats and losing 2% of the vote on 2006)

LD 29% (Liberal Democrats gaining 110 seats and gaining 2% of the vote on 2006)

However, these predictions, as in 2006, were largely inaccurate, underestimating Conservative support and grossly overestimating the Lib Dems' performance. However, it did accurately predict the number of seats Labour would lose.

References

1. (4 April 2007). "Teenagers to run as councillors". BBC News.
2. (8 February 2006). "Council polls could be scrapped". BBC News.
3. "Electoral Panorama / Panorama Electoral".
4. "Archived copy".
5. Labour minority control. The council was previously run by a coalition of Scottish Liberal Democrats, Independents and the SNP.
6. Liberal Democrats lack a majority (LD: 12 councillors; opposition: 12 councillors)
7. Labour lack a majority, after by election loss to Scottish National Party (Lab: 29 councillors; opposition: 29 councillors)
8. Labour [[minority administration]]
9. Conservative and Unionist control, on a [[cut of the cards]] (Con: 15 councillors; opposition: 15 councillors)
10. Labour lack a majority, after by election loss to Scottish National Party (Lab: 11 councillors; opposition: 11 councillors)