Labour has blamed their loss of control of Hull after more than a decade in power on a collapse of the Tory vote which moved to the Lib Dems.
Labour’s outgoing council leader Daren Hale said his party lost its slender majority in the city due to a total collapse of the last vestiges of Conservative support in key wards of the city.
The Lib Dems saw a net gain of three seats in Hull, leaving them with 29 seats on the 57-seat council, compared with 27 for Labour and one independent. The Conservatives lost their last remaining seat on the council to Labour.
Asked whether the result was a reflection of Labour’s national profile, Mr Hale told BBC Radio Humberside: “In the seats we held, our majority went up.
“It was the collapse of the Tory vote which, in a sense the Labour Party isn’t responsible for, that led to those seats changing hands. So, I think it would be too premature to make those judgments.”
Local issues around disruptive road building projects and policies over buses and cycles have been cited as key areas of concern for voters in Hull.
Mr Hale said local Lib Dem councillors are at odds with the national party over bus and cycle lane policies.
He said: “There’s no hiding place now. I look forward to all the roadworks being completed in the middle of the night by magic pixies with no disruption to the public but we will see, won’t we?”
And he added: “We will dust ourselves down and we will come back.”
Hull’s Lib Dem leader Mike Ross told the BBC: “There’s obviously issues around the road network. But there is also, fundamentally, the fact that people feel failed by a Labour council after over a decade – one that seems to have refused to listen to what the residents of Hull want.
“We want to be a council leadership that puts the people’s priorities ahead of everything else and deliver what the residents of Hull want to see happen.”
Asked about transport policy in the city, Mr Ross said: “There is no difference between us and the national party in terms of the ambition.
“Of course, we want to see more people using bikes and other forms of transport to cars.
“But we also need to recognise that the way we go about getting that is really very important and there are concerns that we had a council that just seemed to impose these changes on the public of Hull and didn’t take account of whether these were the right things to do or not before doing it.”
