Sheffield City Council elections took place on 2 May 2002. One third of seats were up for election. Since the previous election, the Liberal Democrats and Labour had each suffered one defection - Ronald Shepherd left the Labour grouping to sit as an Independent and Lib Dem Matthew Dixon defected, firstly as an Independent and then to the Conservatives. In this time an earlier Lib Dem defector, Trefor Morgan, also changed from an Independent to Liberal.
Following this election, the council returned to no overall control, as the sizable swing from Lib Dem to Labour allowed Labour to gain five seats directly from the Lib Dems, and two from earlier defections, making Labour narrowly the largest party with 43 seats to the Lib Dem's 42. Overall turnout was 30.0%.
Election result
This result had the following consequences for the total number of seats on the council after the elections: PartyPrevious councilNew council Labour 36 43 Liberal Democrats 47 42 Conservatives 2 2 Independent Labour 1 0 Liberal 1 0 Total 87 87 Working majority
Ward results
References