Over a third of the local councils offered a delay to their elections in May have requested one, Sky News analysis shows.
Twenty-four councils have confirmed to Sky News they have written to the government asking their local elections be postponed by a year, citing the resources needed to deliver the local government reorganisation (LGR) programme, and the cost of holding elections.
Eighteen of those councils are led by Labour – either in majority, or leading a coalition administration. Two are Conservative, two are Liberal Democrat, one is Green, and one is independent.
Six councils have yet to publicly confirm their positions, although the deadline to request a delay passed at midnight on Thursday.
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On the Thursday before Christmas, the government unexpectedly announced it would consider delaying 63 local council elections next year due to challenges around their LGR plans.
Local Government Secretary Steve Reed argued on Sky’s Politics Hub on Thursday: “The vast majority of elections are going ahead on schedule. Where we have asked councils to let us know if there needs to be a delay or a postponement is where we’re going through the biggest reorganisation of councils in decades.”
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He explained that a third of the country has two councils, rather than one, which is money that could be spent on local services, and so they are offering to postpone elections this year if holding them could mean a delay to elections next year.
Sky News has contacted all of the 63 councils offered a delay, and a total of 24 have said they will be requesting one, 31 have said they will not, two could not agree internally whether to ask for a delay, and six had not responded at the time of writing.
All the councils that have requested a delay cited the resources needed to deliver the government’s LGR programme, and many said it would not make sense to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds to hold an election for councillor positions that would only exist for one year.
The final decision on whether an election will be delayed rests with the government, and opposition parties are furious.
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At his news conference on Thursday, at which he announced Robert Jenrick’s defection from the Tories, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “I had the full intention today to tell you how absolutely monstrous it is that elections for millions of people all over this country are being cancelled, in some cases for the second year in a row.”
Instead, he will do that at a later date, and he said he is preparing to bring a legal challenge against the government’s plans.
He has previously accused Labour and the Tories of working together to lock his party out of power – but just two Tory-led councils have confirmed they will be seeking a delay, while eight have said they will not.
The Conservatives have said publicly they want all local elections due in May to go ahead, with shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride telling broadcasters on Thursday it is “not right” that millions could be “denied the democratic right to seek change in their councils if they desire it”.
“We don’t want to see councillors serving seven-year terms. We need to get on with democracy,” he added.
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The chief executive of the Electoral Commission, Vijay Rangarajan, has also criticised the potential delays to elections, saying in December he was “concerned” that some elections could be postponed, having already been deferred from 2025.
“Scheduled elections should, as a rule, go ahead as planned, and only be postponed in exceptional circumstances,” he said in a statement.
“We very much recognise the pressures on local government, but these late changes do not help administrators. Parties and candidates have already been preparing for some time, and will be understandably concerned.”
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He said “capacity constraints” were not a “legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections”, which risked “affecting the legitimacy of local decision-making and damaging public confidence”.
The watchdog chief also said there was “a clear conflict of interest in asking existing councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters”.
