The 2003 Sheffield Council election took place on 1st May 2003 to elect members of Sheffield City Council

Sheffield City Council

Sheffield City Council is the city council for the metropolitan borough of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. It consists of 84 councillors, elected to represent 28 wards, each with three councillors...

. One third of the council was up for election and the Labour

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 took control of the council from no overall control

No overall control

Within the context of local councils of the United Kingdom, the term No Overall Control refers to a situation in which no single party achieves a majority of seats and is analogous to a hung parliament...

 with six gains from the Liberal Democrats.

The election saw a trial of electronic voting

Electronic voting

Electronic voting is a term encompassing several different types of voting, embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes....

 in half of the council's wards

Wards of the United Kingdom

A ward in the United Kingdom is an electoral district at sub-national level represented by one or more councillors. It is the primary unit of British administrative and electoral geography .-England:...

. Voters in these wards were able to vote by either text message, touch tone phone, internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, post

Postal voting

Postal voting describes the method of voting in an election whereby ballot papers are distributed or returned by post to electors, in contrast to electors voting in person at a polling station or electronically via an electronic voting system....

, or use electronic kiosks as well as the normal polling station

Polling station

A polling place or polling station is where voters cast their ballots in elections.Since elections generally take place over a one- or two-day span on a periodic basis, often annual or longer, polling places are often located in facilities used for other purposes, such as schools, churches, sports...

s. Overall turnout was 29.5%, a half a percent fall on the previous year, a drop negated somewhat by the higher turnout in the wards trialing electronic voting.

Election result

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This result has the following consequences for the total number of seats on the Council after the elections:

Party		Previous council	New council
	Labour	43	49
	Liberal Democrats	42	37
	Conservatives	2	1
	Green	0	0
	BNP	0	0
	Socialist Alliance	0	0
	UKIP	0	0
	Independent Labour	0	0
	Socialist Labour	0	0
	Socialist Alternative	0	0
Total		87	87
Working majority

Ward results