Labour delays elections in 9 English authorities as it rolls out devolution

Local elections for more than 5mn voters across England will be delayed by a year as the government overhauls councils, in a move that will limit the populist Reform UK party’s ability to gain ground.

East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey will all delay their polls as they draw up detailed plans for new authorities, ministers announced on Wednesday.

The move forms part of the Labour government’s plans for the biggest shake-up of local government in 50 years, including moves to roll out further devolution.

The resulting delay to some elections will mean nearly 350 Conservative councillors remain in post for an extra year before they face the polls, along with a smaller numbers of Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians.

“I thought that only dictators cancelled elections but what I see today is collusion to stave off the threat of Reform UK,” said Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader.

“We are blooming angry that 5.5mn people in this country are being denied their vote,” he added. He said he was particularly aggrieved about Essex and Norfolk, where he believed Reform UK was going to do particularly well.

The elections are being delayed to give time for new larger councils to be set up under government plans to make local authorities more efficient.

Farage said Reform would stand candidates in every one of the roughly 1,500 seats that are going to be contested in May, and still hoped the party would win up to 200 seats.

While the five biggest political parties in Britain will all see some of their councillors waiting another year before an election, the Tories are the biggest beneficiary of Wednesday’s decision.

In total 347 Conservative councillors will avoid facing voters this year as a result of Labour’s plan, something welcomed by some Tory officials as their party falls behind both Labour and Reform in the polls.

“In the short term it’s fewer seats for us to lose, to be blunt. It brings the number down,” said one.

Not all Tory politicians view the development in a positive light, however. Kevin Hollinrake, shadow communities secretary, said: “I don’t think it’s ever helpful to delay democracy — I think it creates all kinds of feelings.”

He insisted his party was “up for the fight” in all seats, pointing out that the Tories have gained council seats in a raft of recent local authority by-elections, while Labour has made net losses.

Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary, University of London, also downplayed the potential benefits to the Tories: “It’s not going to do them any favours unless one expects the Reform bandwagon to stop rolling.”

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the move was part of a “devolution revolution” that would save money by creating larger, more efficient councils to which further powers could be handed down from Westminster.

She also confirmed six new groupings of councils on a “priority” list for devolution deals: Cumbria, Cheshire and Warrington, Norfolk and Suffolk, Greater Essex, Sussex and Brighton, and Hampshire and Solent.

The news comes just weeks after ministers said they were planning the biggest local government shake-up in half a century. 

All areas currently under a two-tier council structure, in which district councils provide neighbourhood services such as bin collections and county councils provide social care, are to be radically overhauled.

Ministers intend to scrap all 164 district councils and create new single-tier authorities of about 500,000 people instead.

County councils were in December asked to make initial proposals on the geographies of such a move, including any requests to delay elections while new authorities are set up. 

Rayner said she had rejected half those requests, but added that Labour was “not in the business of holding elections for bodies that won’t exist and where we don’t know what will replace them”.

“This would be an expensive and irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ money,” she said.  

The reorganisation proposals had prompted an immediate backlash after they were published in December’s devolution white paper. 

The District Councils’ Network, the sector body, has claimed ministers were creating remote “mega councils” far larger than their equivalents in continental Europe.

Following the announcement, it said the move amounted to a “cancellation of democracy”.

“The crazy timescale to force through mega councils will benefit no one apart from consultants — they’re in for a field day as councils have little capacity to do the work required within the timescales demanded by the government,” said councillor Sam Chapman-Allen, DCN chair.

There was also unease within Labour ranks about the move.

“I’m not sure they’ve thought this through,” said one senior party official, warning that the shake-up could diminish incentives for Labour’s own activist base by reducing the opportunity to serve as councillors.

“People are angry about it — and it’s unlikely they’re going to campaign, or at least campaign as hard, for the party after it’s scrapped their roles,” said the official.

Hollinrake from the Tories said the reorganisation process had been “massively rushed” and warned there had been “no attempt” to seek consensus on the ground. 

“Local residents have not been consulted,” he said. “Council leaders have a ‘gun to their head’ from the Labour government.”