Three days after the polls closed Croydon Council’s election results were finally announced on Sunday night.

The authority is now under no overall control after the Labour Party lost its majority on the council.

This is the local equivalent to a hung parliament and happens when no political group wins a majority of seats.

Usually the largest group would form alliances with other councillors to make up a majority for decisions.

But as Croydon has just changed the way the council is run, with the election of a Conservative mayor, things will be a bit different.

It is understood there will be a clearer picture of how things work by the end of this week as the new mayor, Jason Perry, sits in back-to-back meetings with council staff on how Croydon will look.

Mayor Perry will be able to appoint a cabinet – this could be a mix of political parties.

Conservative councillor Mario Creatura was re-elected to serve in the Coulsdon Town ward.

He said Mayor Perry has pledged to work with the other parties on the council.

The councillor said: “We don’t control the council, it is uncharted territory we have to work out how many representatives each party is getting on which committee.”

For some items the mayor can make decisions through delegated authority but big things like the budget and the local plan have to go to council.

In order to stop something like this, two thirds of the council would have to oppose it.

In Croydon’s case, this would mean 46 councillors would be needed to overturn a mayoral decision – this is equivalent to the Conservative and Labour councillors on the council.

Andrew Pelling who served as a Labour councillor for the past eight years but became an independent at the end of his term said the result showed that people had lost trust in Labour.

Mr Pelling, who stood to be an independent mayor in Croydon, said: “I think straight away, no overall control further strengthens the hand of the mayor over the council, he can court the two minority parties.”

He added: “When you’ve got one party in charge, decisions are made within the party, now they will have to go to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats occasionally, there might be a bit more openness. I was a supporter of the mayoral system but it has the potential to lack transparency, it depends on what Jason Perry will do.”

When the result was announced, new Mayor Perry said the result means the council will have to work together

He said: “I think the Croydon electorate have spoken, we have a council of no overall control we have to work together to put Croydon back on the right path. Together we need to move forward and fix Croydon’s problems we need to restore faith in Croydon.”

The nail-biting end to a count that spanned three days came on Sunday evening when the final ward, Fairfield, was announced.

The Labour Party losing out on two seats to the Green Party meant it missed out on having a majority on the council.

The one Labour councillor in the ward, Chris Clark, held onto his seat by just over 30 votes, getting 923 votes compared to the Green Party’s Peter Underwood with 890 votes.

Claire Bonham from the Liberal Democrats took a seat from Labour in the Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood ward.

It is the first time the party has won a seat on Croydon Council in 20 years.

Labour lost two seats to the Conservatives in New Addington North, one in New Addington South and one in Waddon.

Serious questions about the handling of the count have been raised by many in Croydon.

After delays to the mayoral count on Friday night, chief executive and returning officer Katherine Kerswell made the call to postpone the full council count at around 2.30am on Saturday morning.

But the count location, Trinity School, had other bookings for the main hall meaning counting could only take place in two smaller halls.

For this reason the count was rescheduled to take place in two batches, with the final session starting at 6pm on Sunday.

It is understood the count was originally scheduled for Friday night, rather than overnight on Thursday, as is usual, as the school had exams in the daytime on Friday.

Croydon North MP Tweeted: “Lewisham finished their count for a mayor and all councillors at 4:30pm on Friday. Croydon still hasn’t finished as we now enter the 4th day of counting, with extra costs mounting for overtime and room hire. Not good enough [Croydon Council].”