Local elections 2024: Lib Dems say Portsmouth residents "spoke loudly" in support

Nationally, Rishi Sunak braced for a difficult set of election results as forecasts suggested the Tories could lose up to half of the council seats they are defending in England. Before the results, Portsmouth City Council was made up of 18 Liberal Democrat councillors, eight Conservatives, seven Labour members, and six from the Portsmouth Independent Party.

The Lib Dems were defending six seats, the Conservatives five, Labour one and one member of the Portsmouth Independents Party. Now the makeup is 19 Lib Dem councillors, four conservatives, eight labour members, nine members of the Portsmouth Independent Party, one non-aligned independent councillor, and one independent councillor aligned with Labour.

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Labour group leader Cllr Charlotte Gerada, who retained her seat in Central Southsea, said: “We’re now very competitive in at least four other seats which is a really good foundation for us to build on for the elections in 2026 and it shows the direction of travel in terms of the general election.

“People are really fed up with the Conservative government and they want a change so I’m happy with the trajectory we’re on.” Cllr Steve Pitt, the Liberal Democrat leader of the council, added: “We’ve put an awful lot of work in as an administration – we leveraged an extreme amount of external investment and we listen.

“Despite quite a lot of efforts during this campaign to say that we weren’t listening and we got it wrong, I think the residents of Portsmouth have spoken very loudly. If you look at that result in Milton – that was a resounding ‘we want a leisure centre’, obviously other parties are going to have a different perspective.”

The Conservatives failed to defend their seats in Copnor, Cosham, Hilsea and Eastney and Craneswater. The council remains in no overall control with a council meeting set to take place later this month to decide who will steer it.