With the media fixated on national political developments, they have as yet neglected the local election results, but there is a story to tell.

Elections were held in 166 authorities in England. All council seats were up for election in all of the London boroughs, a third of council seats were up for election in 20 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 71 district councils, and half of council seats were up for election in seven district councils.

The turnout was high. For the national elections it was a decent rise of a few per cent (at 64% up from 61% in 2005, and 59% in 2001). With turnout at local elections normally around third of the electorate, holding them on the same day as the national vote boosted turnout to an even greater degree.

This produced a very interesting outcome. The Conservatives are still the biggest party in local government, but in spite of winning the most seats nationally, at a local level they lost ground to Labour. Labour gained 442 new councillors, and won overall control of 15 more councils, doing particularly well in London, regaining control of a number of boroughs, such as Islington, Lewisham and Camden. The Conservatives on the other hand now have 119 less Conservative councillors and lost control of eight councils, and the Lib Dems fared even worse, losing 129 councillors and three councils.

Of the 166 local authorities having elections, 29 of these have changed in terms of the balance of power. In the main these councils have changed from a situation of no one party having overall control to Labour control, or a situation of Conservative or Liberal Democrat control to a situation of having no party with overall control.

Find details of all the local election results
Find details of which councils had elections and which did not

The ambivalence of electorate towards all of the three main parties, has shown itself show in electing a hung parliament. The local elections reinforce this.

In general, high voter turnout demonstrates an interest in politics, and solutions to the main issues of the day.

We now have a hung parliament. At a local level this is nothing new, and after May 6th we continue to have 20 or so local authorities where there is no one party in overall control. Could there be lessons that the new coalition government could learn from these about power sharing?