West Midlands round-up

10.37.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sun 6th May 2007

It was certainly a mixed set of results for the Liberal Democrats in the West Midlands, well so far, Warwick will restart their count (for the third time) on Tuesday! In some places we made some fantastic gains - 3 in Newcastle-under-Lyme, 2 in Solihull which meant the Conservatives lost overall control, 2 gain in Stoke (both in Central constituency), a crucial gain in Hodge Hill Parliamentary seat, Burton, Sandwell, Wolverhampton.

Sadly we also made some significant losses along the Marches - with the Tories gaining overall control in South Shropshire, Herefordshire, Malvern Hills. We also lost a four Councillors in Stratford-on-Avon.

Lichfield seems to have been the most mixed of our mixed results. Marion Bland gained a seat in Chadsmead, where she had previously stood in a by-election, our second candidate in the ward failed to be elected by just 7 votes. Phil Bennion kept his seat but we failed to hold the second seat in his ward. We also lost a seat in Leomansley ward by 50 votes, and failed to gain a seat by 100 votes.

Apart from our results, the BNP failed to make the breakthrough they, and the media, had been expecting. They did make a few gains but no where nearly as many as they thought. Sandwell was a particularly good result - the BBC had been talking them up but they ended up making no gains.

Over the next could of weeks, I will be examining each council in a bit more detail.