Labour have maintained a strong grip on Liverpool Council as opposition parties failed to turn recent controversy surrounding the local authority into a sizeable shift at the ballot box.
Labour now have 69 seats on the 90-seat council, meaning their sizeable majority remains intact.
Thirty one seats were up for election this year and the ruling group won 23 of them.
The Lib Dems took three seats off Labour, winning six overall, but the Greens missed out in their main target of Greenbank and came away with only their stronghold of St Michael’s.
Labour’s relatively small losses come against the backdrop of the arrest of former mayor Joe Anderson and a damning government inspection into aspects of the council’s operations.
It also came on a day where the party suffered difficult losses in England, including the Hartlepool by-election and across a number of councils.
In Liverpool, the ruling group’s large majority is likely to be secure not only at this election but also in coming years – unless opposition parties can make sweeping inroads across the city in the future.
They also held on to the mayoralty as Joanne Anderson made history by becoming the first Black woman directly elected mayor of a UK city.
However, the party required second preference votes to secure that victory after independent candidate Stephen Yip’s strong campaign saw him leapfrog the Greens and the Lib Dems to take second place.
Speaking after her win, mayor-elect Joanne Anderson apologised to the people of the city for the contents of the Caller Report and vowed to use her powers and Labour’s majority to deliver more scrutiny and better services.
She said: “I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported me and particularly I want to say thank you to the people of Liverpool.
“Thank you for making history for making me the first woman leader of Liverpool and the first black female leader of any big city in the UK.”
Liberal Democrat leader Richard Kemp praised his party’s wins in Childwall, Mossley Hill and Cressington, where planning committee chair Tricia O’Brien was handily beaten.
The Greens were unable to get their candidate for Greenbank, where they already have one councillor, across the line in a result which saw sitting Labour councillor James Roberts increase his majority.
Elsewhere, Liberal Party candidate Steve Radford held his Tuebrook & Stoneycroft seat with one of the strongest margins of any candidate up for election this year, though the party did not pick up further seats.
The Conservatives, who have had a successful election nationwide, failed to make inroads in Liverpool, with the party falling into the lower half of the vote tallies in most of the city’s 30 wards.
