Portsmouth City Council, one of the few unitary councils in the country has recently held elections for a third of its seats.

The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives now hold 19 seats each, after the Liberal Democrats lost one seat and the Tories gained four.

The Labour party suffered a loss of one, reducing its total number of councillors to two. Two more councillors sit on the local authority, both being members of an Independent group.

A total of 59 candidates put themselves forward for election across all 14 wards - a third of the council.

Each ward has three councillors. They are elected to serve a four-year term of office.

The council, which has powers ranging from rubbish collections to implementation of education in the Portsmouth area is made of 42 councillors, of which 14 are due to be elected every year.

The composition of the council before the election was:

* Conservative 15
* Independent Group 3
* Independent 1
* Labour 3
* Liberal Democrat 20

The Liberal Democrat deputy leader of the council lost his Milton seat to Tory Sarah Dinenage.

This year’s election has seen little change to the overall power held in the council, no one party holds a large enough majority within the council to be in overall power.

In recent years, the three main parties have each formed the biggest group, but no party has had overall control since 1999 when Labour had 20 of the 39 seats. The number of seats increased to 42 the following year.

The results were announced in the small hours of the 2nd May at the Portsmouth Guildhall.