Thankfully, the decision has been made to abandon postponements this year. It now seems all elections will go ahead as planned, except of course for those in Surrey where the new authorities will have elections instead.
I say thankfully because this avoids the very likely situation next year where additional postponements are required due to delays or changes to reorganisation plans. And also because I like elections.
Full list of councils is here.
The Statutory Instrument which will postpone elections at 30 councils has the following to say about future terms and elections.
East Sussex, West Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk: members elected in 2027 will serve until 2029
Thurrock: members elected in 2027 will serve until 2031
Others: members elected in 2027 will serve until 2030
Clearly, if the schedule is kept to, all of these areas will also have shadow authority elections in 2027 and then be abolished on 31st March 2028, so these dates are just placeholders until legislation comes out to establish the new unitary authorities.
This site will be displaying the existing councils in all years up to shadow authority elections, then switch to the new councils.
All of the vacancies at councils with postponed elections which would have come under the six month rule for 2026 are now listed in the upper section of the by-elections page. They will all now be getting by-elections latest by May 7th.
Had time for a bit of development over the past week or so and managed to add council-level maps to the site. Multi-seat wards are handled using diagonal stripes,
which are generated dynamically as changes are made to the underlying database. Maps should pop up for all 2025 pages except County and NI councils (had some
teething problems with those which I'll come back to later).
Here's a particularly nice one: Shropshire
A decision was released today that the elections to the 10 seats up in Pendle in 2026 will also be cancelled.
See the Elections 2026 link at the top for the full list.
Didn't expect this quite as quickly, but the list from the Ministry stating which are to be cancelled has been released.
29 councils will have their 2026 elections cancelled and will instead elect in 2027 to new shadow authorities. They are:
Adur
Basildon
Blackburn with Darwen
Burnley
Cannock Chase
Cheltenham
Chorley
Lincoln
Crawley
East Sussex
Exeter
Harlow
Hastings
Hyndburn
Ipswich
Norfolk
Norwich
Peterborough
Preston
Redditch
Rugby
Stevenage
Suffolk
Tamworth
Thurrock
Welwyn Hatfield
West Lancashire
West Sussex
Worthing
See the Elections 2026 link at the top for the full list.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have announced the 63 councils due to be abolished in the next few years have been invited to request cancellation of their 2026 elections.
This BBC Article talks about a postponement to 2027, but I'm assuming this is conflating elections at the councils to be abolished with new elections to shadow authorities in 2027.
We could all see that the optimistic pace and subsequent delays to local government reoganisation would likely make this necessary. It's hard then to understand why the Ministry was briefing the exact opposite policy for the past month or so. Making big changes is a tricky business, I guess.
In any case, I'll post a full list of the councils affected later on, and make any updates to the Elections 2026 page as any cancellations are announced.
It seems the news about a 1 year delay to the 4 new combined county mayors has also rapidly gone out of date. They're now expected in 2028.
To be fair, I may have jumped the gun and assumed it was a 1 year delay before the full story really became clear. In any case, 2028.
I thought here would be a good place to highlight a few local politics resources that I think are pretty much just amazing.
• PollCheck: www.pollcheck.co.uk
A fantastic resource for tracking opinion polling and approval ratings. Lots of charts to get into as well as analysis and a new section with info on the 2026 locals and devolved parliament elections.
• This Week in Polls: theweekinpolls.substack.com
Weekly articles taking a more nuanced look at a wide range of political polling and related topics.
• ElectionMapsUK: Website | Bluesky
Enormous amount of info here on all aspects of elections and polling, with all those informative visuals that are missing from this site ;)
• Andrew's Previews: andrewspreviews.substack.com
Mentioned this one before, but it got a little buried beneath other posts. Always a nice read prior to weekly by-elections.
• Britain Elects: britainelects.substack.com | Bluesky
A good one to follow for polls and by-election / election results.
Ward boundary reviews take place at a small number of councils each year. This year, 4 of them have been paused following potential local government reforms, leaving us with the following.
This group of Metropolitan Boroughs usually elect by thirds, but will have one-off, all-up elections in 2026. There are no changes to the number of seats for these, just new boundaries.
• Bradford
...
• Coventry
• Gateshead
• Kirklees
• Newcastle
• Sandwell
• Sefton
• Solihull
• South Tyneside
• Sounderland
• Wakefield
• Walsall
• Barnsley (Metropolitan) usually elects by thirds but will move to an all-up cycle after this boundary update, meaning we won't see elections in't tarn again this decade.
• Calderdale (Metropolitan) will have a one-off, all-up election, but with 54 seats, up from 51
• Milton Keynes (Unitary) will also have a one-off, all-up election, but with 60 seats, up from 57
• Swindon (Unitary), finally, always elects all-up every 4 years, and has no change to seat numbers
Then we have North East Lincolnshire, Portsmouth, Southend-on-Sea and Colchester, all of which have had boundary reviews which were paused mid-way and so likely now won't see any changes by next May.
Well, my post a couple of days ago aged like... well, not milk because I still have the same perfectly good milk in the fridge...
The new regional mayors will now see their inaugural elections in 2027 rather than next May. There has been a sense that these reforms have had a very fast pace, so while I wouldn't say potential postponement was on the cards, it was certainly somewhere in the pack.
That doesn't preclude consternation from political parties who have been spending and planning for these elections, only for them to be cancelled by their rivals quite late in the day.
...
The affected areas are the Mayoral Combined County Authorities:
• Greater Essex MCCA
• Hampshire and the Solent MCCA
• Norfolk and Suffolk MCCA
• Sussex and Brighton MCCA
Along with this annoucement we have also been reassured that all planned council elections for 2026 (including those postponed in May this year) will take place unless there's a tremendously good reason otherwise. I'll be posting with a full list shortly.
Over the next few years we can look forward to a large number of changes due to local government restructuring. We have a new type of combined authority - a Mayoral Combined County Authority - which will put an elected regional Mayor at the top of a group of County Councils and/or Unitary Authorities. This differs from Mayoral Combined Authorities in that District Councils won't be able to take part as constituent (voting) members. Of course, District Councils are being phased out anyway.
Here is what's known so far about the latest changes.
2026: Mayors will be elected for these new Mayoral Combined County Authorities:
...
• Greater Essex MCCA
• Hampshire and the Solent MCCA
• Norfolk and Suffolk MCCA
• Sussex and Brighton MCCA
All of these areas are also scheduled to be combined into a number of Unitary Authorities. It seems as though scheduled 2026 elections at County, District and Unitary Councils within the boundaries of these areas will go ahead. Either way the councils themselves won’t be abolished until at least 2027.
2026: Shadow authorities will be elected for these new Unitary Authorities:
• West Surrey Unitary Authority
• East Surrey Unitary Authority
However, these will not take over from existing councils until 1st April 2027.
In addition to Surrey County Council, the following District Councils will be abolished to make way for West Surrey in 2027:
• Guildford, Runnymede, Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Waverley, and Woking
And the following District Councils will be abolished to make way for East Surrey in 2027:
• Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Mole Valley, Reigate and Banstead, and Tandridge
All other two-tier areas are expected to migrate to new unitaries, with shadow authorities elected in 2027, followed by the formal transition in 2028.
2027: Mayors will be elected for these new Mayoral Combined Authorities:
• Cumbria MCA
• Cheshire and Warrington MCA
These areas have already completed their conversion from County/District to Unitary structure.
For those who aren't already aware, here's an in depth guide to today's local by-elections.
Previewing the five council by-elections of 4th December 2025
Welcome to Open Council Data UK's first actual written content. It should make a nice change from all the tables of numbers.
...
Hopefully I'll find something of interest to post here from time to time.
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