East Sussex County Council election votes are due to be announced this afternoon
FULL HASTINGS RESULTS: four Conservative holds, three Labour holds and one Green gain.
FULL ROTHER RESULTS: six Conservative holds, one Conservative gain, one Independent hold and one Lib Dem hold.
There were eight Hastings seats up for election and nine across Rother.
In Hastings only one county division changed hands, with Green Julia Hilton taking Old Hastings and Tressell from Labour.
With two Conservatives not standing again, Alan Hay and Sorrell Marlow-Eastwood were elected to County Hall for the first time in Baird & Ore and St Helens & Silverhill respectively.
Hastings Labour retained control of Hastings Borough Council. However, they were left with a reduced majority because of Conservatives gains. The Tories won eight of the 16 seats contested. The Green Party gained one seat in the Old Hastings wards. Crawley In Crawley, no party has overall control. Labour won a narrow victory in 2019, but no party had overall control going in to the election. This was due to the resignation of one councillor and the death of another. The Conservatives have one more seat than Labour with 18. The Tories say they will begin talks to try and form an administration.
The headline results of the local elections in England are clearly bleak for Labour and rosy for the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are, in effect treading water, while the Greens and independents have made some gains in terms of numbers of councillors.
But these are the aggregate council results. The top-level masks so many discrepancies. When listening to so much of the media coverage about these local elections, many candidates and councillors must get disheartened. They campaign as vigorously as possible, only for everyone to obsess about what the results mean for Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson.
The focus has been on how the “red wall” in the north of England is continuing to crumble. Labour lost control of Sheffield City Council and of Durham County Council for the first time, while the Conservatives have gained control of Northumberland County Council. But by zoning in on these, we miss that Labour had either no or only small losses in Gateshead Council, Liverpool C
Conservatives retain control of West Sussex County Council midsussextimes.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from midsussextimes.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.