Twenty-nine English councils to delay elections, minister confirms
Almost half of the 63 elections scheduled for May in England will be postponed, the minister responsible for council elections has confirmed.
Local Government Minister Steve Reed told the House of Commons that he had approved the deferral of 29 councils until 2027, with the latest application due to be submitted on Thursday morning and still under consideration.
Opposition MPs criticized the decision, saying delays would potentially disenfranchise millions of voters, but Reed insisted the “vast majority” of elections would still go ahead.
A major reshuffle is underway in local government that will see some officials eliminated, and the postponement of votes is intended to aid this restructuring.
The local government regime will replace the existing two-tier system of district and county councils in many parts of England with new ‘unitary’ councils responsible for the provision of all council services within their area.
The government has said it is concerned about the capacity of some councils to conduct polls alongside the overhaul of town halls, as well as the cost to taxpayers of holding elections for councils to be abolished.
There were initially 136 local elections planned to be held in May across England. Of these, 63 were eligible to request a postponement; Currently, nearly 30 of them have been postponed.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Reed said he had listened “carefully” to 350 submissions about whether the election should go ahead, and 29 confirmed that legislation allowing the election to be postponed would now be brought forward.
“I received another representation this morning and I will consider it and report my decision to the House,” Reed said.
“Council elections in all other areas will be held as planned; many have given no evidence that this will delay restructuring in their areas.
“This means the vast majority of the 136 local elections scheduled for May across England will take place as planned.”
He accused the Conservatives of “sitting back and ignoring this problem” for the last 14 years and said delays were needed to address the problem of duplication in local government.
Reed said the aim was to save “tens of millions of pounds” of taxpayers’ money, which some citizens currently have to spend on “two sets of councillors, two sets of chief executives and two sets of financial directors”.
“We must act quickly to eliminate the confusion and waste created by doubled bureaucracy,” he said.
“No one would design a system where one municipality collects your garbage and the other gets rid of it.”
Most of those calling for a delay are Labour-led, but three are Conservative-led and one is a Liberal Democrat. Some councils that requested the postponement are led by more than one party or independents.
The decision to postpone the elections was criticized by opposition parties.
Reed’s Conservative counterpart James Cleverly attacked Labor for “seamlessly moving from arrogance to incompetence and now cowardice”, saying elections were the cornerstone of democracy.
Reform UK is taking legal action against the decision.
The Electoral Commission, which oversees elections in the UK, said delays in council elections in England risked “damaging public confidence” and that it did not consider “capacity constraints are a legitimate reason to delay long-planned elections”.
Holding elections this year means that some councils up for election this year will be split into new unitary councils in 2027 or 2028, so councilors will only be able to hold office for one year.
