Despite people going to the polls today, it will be a weekend of vote counting before the full picture of today’s elections is actually known.

Polls close at 10pm, but only a handful of council results are expected overnight into the early hours of tomorrow.

More councils will report results throughout tomorrow. The MEP results for nearly all the 11 UK regions are announced after 9pm on Sunday evening.

None of the results from key battlegrounds for Labour will be available before tomorrow afternoon.

The only overnight vote-counting on today into tomorrow will be in Bristol, Central Bedfordshire and Lincolnshire and the mayoral contest at Hartlepool.

The first declarations of the remaining 31 councils, and the Doncaster and North Tyneside mayoral elections, are expected just after midday tomorrow.

The bulk are due late afternoon, with stragglers coming in as late as 8pm, and recounts possibly extending into Saturday.

Counting of the UK mainland European Parliament votes will get under way before the 9pm deadline. This could ensure 10 of the 11 regional constituencies report soon after 9pm.

Altogether, 2,318 council seats and three elected mayors are up for election in England. The Conservatives are defending 1,048 seats and 20 councils. The Liberal Democrats, defending 370 seats in total, will be challenged by the Tories for their only two councils of Somerset and Devon.

Smaller parties UKIP, the Green Party and the BNP will be hoping they benefit from the recent scandal over MPs’ expenses, which has engulfed all three major parties.

Green candidates are contesting 33.4 per cent of the seats, the BNP 19.7 per cent and while UKIP 24.5 per cent.