Just a handful of councils remain where the leadership vote has gone awry and a second (or third) meeting will be required.
• Birmingham - no vote scheduled as yet
• Cambridge - having another go 1st June
• Colchester - scheduled for 15th July!
• Kirklees - also scheduled for 15th July!
• Lambeth - 1st June
• Oldham - 15th June
It's possible some of these will call extraordinary meetings earlier than the current schedule. The default seems to be the CEO takes over some powers until a resolution can be found.
See the Council Changes page for the full list of changes since the election
Here are today's council control updates.
• Basildon - Andy Barnes (CON/REF/IND)
• Blackburn with Darwen - Phil Riley (LAB min)
• Coventry - George Duggins (LAB min)
• East Sussex - Andy Woolley (REF min)
• Hampshire - Nick Adams King (CON min)
• Huntingdonshire - Sarah Conboy (LD/IND/Grn)
• Kingston upon Hull - Mike Ross (LD min)
• North East Lincolnshire - Oliver Freeston (REF min)
• Preston - Matthew Brown (LAB min)
• Rugby - Louise Robinson (LAB/LD)
• West Lancashire - David Whittington (CON min)
Cambridge came to no decision.
That's another 4 of our TBCs to LAB, 3 to CON, and 2 each to LD and REF.
See Council Changes page
More NOC councils have now had their AGMs.
• Brent - Muhammed Butt (LAB min)
• Burnley - Afrasiab Anwar (IND/LD/GRN)
• Cannock Chase (REF min)
• Exeter - Phil Bialyk (LAB min)
• Gosport - Zoe Huggins (CON min)
• Haringey - Mark Blake (GRN min)
• Havant - Gill Harris (LAB/GRN/LD)
• Leeds - James Lewis (LAB min)
• Milton Keynes - Jane Carr (LD/LAB)
• Nuneaton and Bedworth - George Finch (REF min)
• Southampton - Sarah Bogle (LAB min)
Kirkless and Oldham came to no decision.
Overall, that's 5 of our TBCs going to LAB, 2 to REF, and 1 each to LD, CON, GRN, IND.
See Council Changes page
A handful of NOC councils have now had their AGMs.
• Barnet - Barry Rawlings (LAB min)
• Birmingham - No decision
• Bradford - Stephen Place (REF min)
• Peterborough - Shabina Qayyum (LAB/LD)
• Rochford - Adi Malviya (REF min)
• Tamworth - Carol Dean (LAB min)
• Worthing - Caroline Baxter (LAB min)
Overall, that's 4 of our TBCs going to LAB and 2 to REF.
See Council Changes page
On the 2026 versions of individual council pages you'll now see up to three rows for council control.
• Majority control shows as a single row, no issues (e.g. Medway)
• NOC councils with a Leader & Cabinet or Alternative Arrangements system also show the current administration and the name / party of the largest political grouping (e.g. Lewes)
• NOC councils with a Mayor & Cabinet system show the party of the Mayor as the administration, as well as the largest political grouping (e.g. Croydon)
• NOC councils with a Committee system just give "Committee System (All)" as the administration, and again the largest political grouping (e.g. Sheffield)
On pages with a list of councils, the control column now shows the majority control if one exists, otherwise the administration, or for committee councils, the largest grouping.
I hope this brings a bit more sense to council control labels. Places such as Croydon and Doncaster, where the Mayor and Cabinet are different parties to the majority on the council should now be more clearly represented. NOC committee councils should also be easier to interpret as well.
This is all new and there may be examples where this doesn't work so well. Do let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
[Edited 16th May] Staus quo regarding council control updates following the election:
• Majority-to-NOC councils are listed as 'TBC' (AGM dates below)
• NOC-to-NOC councils where the party with plurality has changed are also listed as 'TBC'
• Other NOC-to-NOC councils are for the moment still listed under their pre-election control
I'll come to a solution to improve this with an actual system in the next few days.
19th May: Barnet, Birmingham, Bradford, Worthing
20th May: Brent, Cannock Chase, Exeter, Haringey, Leeds, Milton Keynes, Southwark
21st May: Blackburn, Cambridge, Coventry, Hampshire, Hartlepool, Hull, Preston, Swindon
22nd May: West Sussex
26th May: Redditch, Solihull, Southampton, Tameside
27th May: Enfield, Lambeth, Wandsworth
28th May: Hyndburn, Norfolk
It's been a hectic few days but all the new councillors are now online, which means council pages, composition tables and headline totals are ready for you to delve into.
The by-election page is also now up-to-date, as is the party totals archive. Tomorrow I'll get the CSV downloads and historical compositions up and running.
After a tremendous amount of deliberation, I've decided to include both the old and the new Surrey councils in the standard stats and listings. At various stages I've been convinced that only the old councils should be listed, leaving the 'shadow' authorities in a sub-section, and at other times been equally convinced that only the newly elected councillors should be listed, as they have a greater democratic mandate.
In the end, I was asked why I felt the decision was necessary, given that I've listed both County and District councils for the same areas for many years. Quite. A councillor is a councillor.
The elections in a couple of days will mean over 5,000 individual updates and changes to almost every page on the site, so bear with me for a few days. The database is now locked, so any remaining changes in the last few days will be rolled up with the election update.
The main data refresh will be around the 14th, with things like CSV downloads and historical records updated in the days following.
Paid services will automatically have access to new datasets through existing APIs from the 14th, reaching their normal mature state by around 7th June (AGMs to elect leaders and executives are often in late May).
Best of luck to all the hopeful candidates out there!
Rallings & Thrasher have published their summary of councils and seats being defended. The full article is here on the Local Government Chronicle (sub required after a few sample articles). A huge thanks to the Elections Centre team!
The typical methodology for election time is to refer to the party that won the previous election as the defending party. Just for fun, I've produced some alternative figures taking the current party holding the seat as the 'defender'. Similarly, I've converted all NOC councils to the party with actual control (according to this site's usual system).
The adjustments column accounts for boundary changes and the new East and West Surrey unitaries. Obviously, nobody is 'defending' these seats strictly as they're new.
The two methodologies produce quite different numbers, mostly because this year has been a bumper one for defections and by-election changes. Does it make more sense this way or the other? Well, that depends whether you're interested in voting numbers or councillor numbers...
For those interested, under this system Reform are defending 82, the Greens 186, and 43 of those in the 'Other' column are currently vacant!
| Tory | Labour | Lib Dem | Other | Adjustments | Totals | ||
| Counties | Councils | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | |
| Seats | 252 | 37 | 61 | 82 | -2 | 430 | |
| London | Councils | 6 | 21 | 3 | 2 | 32 | |
| Seats | 385 | 1039 | 182 | 211 | 1817 | ||
| Metros | Councils | 3 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 32 | |
| Seats | 187 | 804 | 154 | 271 | +3 | 1419 | |
| Unitaries | Councils | 1 | 11 | 3 | 1 | +2 | 18 |
| Seats | 89 | 177 | 59 | 77 | +165 | 567 | |
| Districts | Councils | 6 | 23 | 15 | 4 | 48 | |
| Seats | 214 | 211 | 209 | 146 | 780 | ||
| Totals | Councils | 22 | 83 | 22 | 7 | +2 | 136 |
| Seats | 1127 | 2268 | 665 | 787 | +166 | 5013 |
New council areas have been announced for 3 of the 18 areas being reorganised.
It seems wards would stay the same for the purposes of shadow council elections in 2027 It looks like there will be some changes to ward boundaries prior to May 27, and I'm assuming the new council names are up for debate. In any case, the new councils and the areas they replace are as follows.
Greater Essex Combined Authority
Map / details: Accepted proposal (five unitary structure)
• Mid Essex: Brentwood, Chelmsford, Maldon
• North East Essex: Braintree, Colchester, Tendring
• South East Essex: Castle Point, Rochford, Southend-on-Sea
• South West Essex: Basildon, Thurrock
• West Essex: Epping Forest, Harlow, Uttlesford
Hampshire and Solent Combined Authority
Map / details: Accepted proposal
• Mid Hampshire: East Hampshire, New Forest, Test Valley, Winchester (less 14 parishes from all 4 areas)
• North Hampshire: Basingstoke and Deane, Hart, Rushmoor
• South East Hampshire: East Hampshire (3 parishes), Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Portsmouth, Winchester (1 parish)
• South West Hampshire: Eastleigh, New Forest (4 parishes), Southampton, Test Valley (3 parishes)
• Isle of Wight: No change
Norfolk and Suffolk Combined Authority
Map / details: Accepted proposal
• East Norfolk: Broadland (less 19 parishes), Great Yarmouth, North Norfolk, South Norfolk (less 25 parishes)
• Greater Norwich: Broadland (19 parishes), Norwich, South Norfolk (16 parishes)
• West Norfolk: Breckland, King's Lynn and West Norfolk, South Norfolk (9 parishes)
Map / details: Accepted proposal
• Central and Eastern Suffolk: Part of East Suffolk (less 25 parishes), Mid Suffolk (less 29 parishes)
• Ipswich and South Suffolk: Babergh (31 parishes), East Suffolk (25 parishes), Ipswich, Mid Suffolk (8 parishes)
• Western Suffolk: Babergh (less 31 parishes), Mid Suffolk (21 parishes), West Suffolk
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.
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
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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