Lucy Ashton
South Yorkshire political reporter

No single party is in control of Sheffield Council and it runs as a committee system. This means Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party share the decision-making.

There are two independent councillors and one Reform councillor, as well as a small group of four Sheffield Community councillors.

The council leader is Labour’s Tom Hunt (pictured below), whose seat of Walkley has become a key battleground in this election.

Image source, Sheffield City Council

This election will be fought on micro issues in each community, and parties will need to adapt their campaigning depending on which postcode they are in.

There are 84 seats on Sheffield Council and this election is “thirds” which means 28 seats are up for grabs. Voters can choose one candidate on the ballot paper.

James Vincent
Political Editor, BBC Yorkshire

It feels like I’ll be on a bit of an election road trip today.

I’m starting in Sheffield where the count is under way at the English Institute for Sport.

Then I’m off up the M1 to Barnsley to the count there at the Metrodome.

Elections and leisure centres tend to go hand in hand – not sure what the people to my right on the treadmills think of all the paper shuffling going on in front of them.

In Sheffield Labour are expected to be squeezed from both the Lib Dems and the Greens, could those parties do enough to team up and run the council?

The sandpit for the long jump at EIS is barriered off insert your own jokes about that – or that the votes are being counted on a basketball court.

Labour will be trying to work out how to bounce back from a bit of a dunking here (you can have those ones for free).

Peter Barnes
Senior elections analyst

Counting is now under way in 46 councils in England, out of 136 local authorities where elections have taken place. As a reminder, counting in Scotland and Wales doesn't begin until Friday.

When those English results come in, the council seat change figures you’ll see on the BBC are calculated by looking back at who won the seats the last time they were contested at a scheduled election, and comparing those results with the winners this time around.

For most of the seats being contested this year, that means going back to the results in 2022. We ignore by-elections and changes of party allegiance – when a councillor defects from one party to another.

That’s the same approach we take when reporting the results of general elections, and many experts think it’s the best way to gauge how the parties have performed from one election to another.

Some media organisations calculate change differently – they look at what party each councillor represented just before this year’s elections. The difference between the two approaches is going to be unusually big this year.

Lots of councillors have switched from one party to another or have left the party they were originally elected for to sit as independents.

In particular, many Conservative councillors have defected to Reform UK and lots of Labour councillors have switched to the Greens or have become independents. Reform have also won a lot of seats in by-elections.

So, the BBC is likely to show a higher number of seat losses for Labour and the Conservatives, and a higher number of gains for Reform UK and the Greens, than you might see elsewhere.

David Rhodes
BBC Yorkshire data journalist

What can we learn from voting in other parts of the country this morning?

Wakefield has only ever been run by Labour since its creation in 1973, but Labour councillors will be fearing the worst - looking at places such as Wigan, a formerly solid Labour town. Overnight the town in Greater Manchester saw Labour lose 22 seats, all to Reform.

Look out for how the Greens perform in Sheffield to see how they might do in Bradford and Leeds.

Nigel Farage says he’s confident of good news for Reform in Calderdale, but along with Kirklees will Reform be the largest party or will they win enough seats to form a majority?

Whilst in Bradford some projections this morning suggest independent candidates could be the second largest group of councillors in the chamber when all the votes are counted.

Image source, PA Media

It's been a tough night for the Labour Party in other parts of the country.

Speaking to reporters, Prime Minister Keir Starmer says that he takes "responsibility" for Labour's election results in England.

"They are very tough, and there's no sugarcoating it," he says.

He says the party has "lost brilliant Labour representatives across the country... that hurts, and it should hurt, and I take responsibility".

“Days like this don’t weaken my resolve to deliver the change that I promised," he adds.

Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the local elections in Yorkshire.

We will be with you through the day and into the evening as votes are counted in councils in your area.

At the moment counting teams are working to verify papers and begin the long job of totting up the ballots.

We'll bring you results, insight and analysis as the day goes on with teams at all counts taking place in the region.

How Sheffield's radical Labour council and the city's business community are working together to revive the city's prospects.With an airport and a science park on the way, Councillor Clive Betts and businessman Norman Adsetts explain why and how the partnership is working.