BBC News Hereford & Worcester

The Conservative party has taken the majority on Worcester City Council.

The party went into this election with a total of 15 seats, which it increased by three, giving it control of the council by one seat.

Meanwhile the Labour party added to its disappointment from across the West Midlands by losing four seats.

We've got around half the results in from the Worcester City Council elections and so far the Conservatives have taken two seats from Labour.

Labour have also lost the city centre seat of Arboretum to the Greens, with the former parliamentary candidate Joy Squires losing out that one.

There have also been wins for the former UKIP MEP Jim Carver, who was elected in the Nunnery ward, and for the Lib Dems, who took Claines from the Conservatives.

Labour were defending eight seats on Worcestershire County Council going in to this election and so far they've lost four of them.

But it could get worse and there's the outside possibility they could lose all of them, if they fail to hold their four seats in Worcester.

They were already down two on the results from the 2017 elections, because of defeats in by-elections.

The Green Party has been doing well in the Malvern seats on Worcestershire County Council, gaining one seat and increasing its vote in another.

Martin Allen took the Croome ward from the Conservatives and said afterwards he was "absolutely staggered" by the result.

The Conservatives might have been pleased to add an extra 179 votes there, but they were blown away by Mr Allen, who added 1,609 on the number of Green votes in the last election.

And Natalie McVey saw her vote increase by 50% to 1,451, giving her a comfortable win with roughly double the number of votes her Conservative challenger received.

Thirteen out of 57 results are in for the Worcestershire County Council elections.

So far the Conservatives are on course to hold on to their majority, but overall they are down one seat on their 2017 performance.

Despite winning a seat from the Independents in Alvechurch, they've lost Malvern Chase to the Lib Dems, and surprisingly Croome to the Greens.

While Labour have been heavily hit, especially in Redditch's district elections, elsewhere the Greens and the Lib Dems have done well.

The first results are starting to come in from other local authority elections now and on Worcestershire Council we know the Conservatives have held on to four seats so far.

That includes the Evesham ward, where the Green Party quadrupled its vote to come second, missing out by just under 300 votes.

There has also been one gain for the Liberal Democrats, who took the Malvern Chase ward from the Conservatives.

The former Labour MP for Worcester has defended party leader Sir Keir Starmer in the face of heavy Labour losses in local elections and the Hartlepool by-election.

"There's no way we should even consider a leadership challenge, that's ridiculous," Mike Foster said.

He said he felt the results were more of a reflection on the previous leadership and what he described as "long-Corbyn" - an "alienation between traditional Labour voters and the leadership".

Mr Foster, who was first elected in Tony Blair's landslide election in 1997 believes Sir Keir needed to be bolder with the party now.

"He's said it's under new management, now's the time to put the management policies into place and prove it," he said.

The former Labour group leader on Redditch Borough Council, who was one of seven members of the party to lose their seat, said: "I think both sides were shocked at the results, they were staggering results".

Bill Hartnett said he felt people had voted on national issues and added: "It's no reflection on the local party or the local candidates, we had a good manifesto I felt."

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Mr Hartnett has served on the county and borough councils since 1985 and said it was a "strange election with Covid conditions" and felt the rollout of the vaccine had swung voters towards the Conservatives at a national level."I think as more and more results come through in later in the day, when they do more counts, I think the same pattern will follow," he added.