SOUTH YORKSHIRE: Lib Dems lick wounds in city as Labour celebrates

Lib Dem leader Paul Scriven, who narrowly lost out to Paul Blomfield in the Sheffield Central parliamentary seat, now faces no longer being in control of the authority after two Lib Dem seats were taken by Labour.

Labour also took a further seat from the Greens, giving it 39 councillors. As the Greens still hold two seats and there is one independent member, together the opposition parties now have 42 councillors – the same as the Liberal Democrats.

It was also a tense day for Labour councillors in Barnsley, who previously had a majority of just one in and stood a real chance of losing control of the authority.

However, Labour won 17 of the 21 contested seats, gaining five from independents and giving the Labour group a comfortable majority of 11. Barnsley Independent Group councillors held two seats and Tory councillors were again returned in both Penistone East and Penistone West.

In Doncaster, elected mayor Peter Davies's English Democrats party failed to win a single seat, despite candidates standing in 19 out of the 21 wards.

Instead, the momentum was with Labour, which strengthened its position as the largest party on the council and gained eight seats from its rivals. Five seats were taken from the Alliance of Independent Members, two from the Lib Dems and one from the Community Group.

The party's success came despite a damning Audit Commission report, published last month, which criticised senior members of the Labour group.

In Rotherham, Labour comfortably retained its control of the council, holding all 19 of its contested seats and finishing a close second in the borough's two Conservative-held wards.

A challenge from the BNP in 10 wards failed to materialise into seats, though the far-right party finished second in four wards and third in a further four. Labour therefore still maintains its stranglehold on Rotherham, with 49 seats out of 63.