2010 United Kingdom local elections

← 2009 6 May 2010 2011 →
All 32 London boroughs, all 36 metropolitan boroughs, 20 out of 55 unitary authorities, 76 out of 212 district councils, and 4 directly elected mayors
First party Second party Third party   Leader David Cameron Gordon Brown Nick Clegg Party Conservative Labour Liberal Democrats Leader since 6 December 2005 24 June 2007 18 December 2007 Percentage 35% 27% 26% Swing 4% 1% 1% Councils 66 37 14 Councils +/– 4 17 4 Councillors 3,462 2,976 1,730 Councillors +/– 121 417 132
Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results.

The 2010 United Kingdom local elections were held on Thursday 6 May 2010, concurrently with the 2010 general election.^[1] Direct elections were held to all 32 London boroughs, all 36 metropolitan boroughs, 76 second-tier district authorities, 20 unitary authorities and various Mayoral posts, all in England. For those authorities elected "all out" these were the first elections since 2006. The results provided some comfort to the Labour Party,^{[citation needed]} losing the general election on the same day, as it was the first time Conservative councillor numbers declined since 1996.^{[citation needed]}

Summary of results

Party		Councillors		Councils
		Number	Change	Number	Change
	Conservative	3,462	121	66	4
	Labour	2,976	417	37	17
	Liberal Democrats	1,730	132	14	4
	Residents	63		0
	Green	36	8	0
	BNP	19	27	0
	Liberal	15	1	0
	UKIP	9	4	0
	Others	298	117	0
	No overall control	n/a	n/a	47	7

Source: [1]

London boroughs

All seats in the 32 London Boroughs were up for election.

Metropolitan boroughs

One third of the seats in all 36 Metropolitan Boroughs were up for election.

Unitary authorities

One third of the council seats were up for election in 20 unitary authorities.

The elections in Stoke-on-Trent had originally been cancelled following a referendum result which decided to abolish the existing Mayor and Cabinet system of governance, with replacement elections to take place in 2011 following a review of the council by the Boundary Committee for England.^[2] However, it was later decided to hold elections to one-third of the council in 2010 as planned.^[3]

Non-metropolitan districts

The elections that were due to be held in Exeter and Norwich were cancelled due to structural changes.^[4][5] Following the 2010 general election, the structural changes were cancelled, leading to elections in both cities in September 2010 (see 2010 Exeter City Council election and 2010 Norwich City Council election).

Half of council

Seven district councils had half of their seats up for election.

Third of council

69 district councils had one third of their seats up for election.

Mayoral elections

There were four mayoral elections.