The Super Thursday Vote 2021: Local Election results in Hertfordshire
The local elections in Hertfordshire on Thursday 6 May involved the county council, the county’s Police & Crime Commissioner and North Herts, St Albans, Stevenage and Welwyn Hatfield councils.
Local elections which usually take place every year in May have stacked up because they have been postponed during the pandemic.
The Liberal Democrats took control of St Albans after they gained six seats. Previously the council had no overall control.
Labour and Conservative lost three and one seats respectively.
Meanwhile in North Hertfordshire the overall makeup of the council looks similar to before, with Labour losing one seat and the Conservatives gaining one.
Labour have come within a whisker of losing power on Stevenage Borough Council. They lost six seats on the council and now have a majority of just three over the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
It is the closest Labour has ever come to losing the council, which the party has run since it was created in 1973.
in 1996, a year before Tony Blair swept to victory in the General Election, all but one of the 39 borough councillors in Stevenage were Labour.
The Conservatives have won back the overall majority on Welwyn Hatfield Council that they lost at the previous set of local elections two years ago.
The party gained an additional five councillors at the expense of Labour who lost four and the Liberal Democrats who went down by one.
The Tories now have a working majority of eight
Hertfordshire County Council
In early results coming through on Saturday afternoon, the Conservatives had made a number of gains on Hertfordshire County Council including a new councillor called James Bond who eliminated the Labour councillor Margaret Eames-Petersen in Hatfield North
The Liberal Democrats made gains on the county and look set to have their largest ever grouping on the council. The party has been the main opposition to the Conservatives since 2009.
The Greens have also gained a seat on the council winning Hitchin All Saints from the Conservatives. The last time the environmental party won a seat on Herts County Council was 12 years ago.
Polling stations were open on Thursday with social distancing measures including the wearing of a face covering and voters asked to use their own pen or pencil. Coronavirus safety measures are also affecting the counting of the votes, which usually takes place immediately after polling stations have closed and into the early hours of the following day. This year the counts will take place over several days across the Anglia region and all the results won’t be known until the following Monday.
As well as the county council, there were elections for a third of the councillors on several of the district, city and borough councils in Hertfordshire.
Hertfordshire Police & Crime Commissioner
Conservative David Lloyd has been elected for a third term as the Police and Crime Commissioner in Hertfordshire. He's been in the post since the position was created in 2012.
The count went to second preference votes after Mr Lloyd, failed to secure the necessary 50% of first preference votes.
Mr Lloyd got 155,114 votes in the first round which was 48.5% of the total. He went into the run-off with the second place candidate, Liberal Democrat Sam North who got 87,524 votes (27.4%).
The Labour candidate Philip Ross was eliminated from the race after coming third with 76,941 votes (24.1%). His second preference votes were allocated to the remaining two candidates.
More details of local elections elsewhere in the Anglia region
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