The next local elections in the UK are set to take place on Thursday 7th May 2026. I've applied for a postal vote registration, so that I don't have to go to place where most voters go to. Applications to vote by post end on Tuesday 21st April at 5pm.

Edited March 21Mar 21 by DanielCarey

Indeed, thanks for starting this, and it looks to be a fun one as local elections seem to take more and more significance (quite possibly outsized) each year. To what extent that is part of the media hatred of Labour, using them as a vehicle to push Reform, or just a symptom of the 24/7 news cycle, nothing conclusive, but yes there is quite an expectation for this one.

2025's local cycle was largely county-wide district council voting, in contrast, 2026's set of local elections is far more urban.

Perhaps the most significant set of elections will be those of every London borough, and the full elections in other major urban areas like most of the West Midlands and traditional Labour areas like Sunderland. Most of the major population centres in North West England also have an election, but those are mostly a one-third election, so we're not expecting Reform to flip central Manchester, nor would we outside of the collapse of polite society.

Various district councils and cities across the country also have an election, including some that got delayed from 2025, and once again I'm still not voting anywhere.

Anyway for those people who do have the opportunity to vote, this is expected to be seen as a test of Greens in fertile environments for them, a test of Reform in mostly rather less fertile environments, though some they have a good chance of flipping, and an opportunity to have a referendum on Keir Starmer's premiership.

Though of course, as always, voting like that is very destructive, as if you end up with a bunch of useless party loyalists as your council, you can expect your council to act as if it were run by a bunch of useless party loyalists (see: Kent Council, Warwickshire Council in the last year). Keep an eye out for who's running in your ward and vote for who you think'd be best at doing a councillor's job is, as always, the far better advice, no matter what the media circus about its impact on the national picture is.

Ah is this why he threatening "may lockdowns" 😅

1 hour ago, 777666jason said:

Ah is this why he threatening "may lockdowns" 😅

Who? No one is doing that.

1 minute ago, Iz様 🌟 said:

Who? No one is doing that.

Starmer to curb the meningitis outbreak a May lockdown

15 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

Starmer to curb the meningitis outbreak a May lockdown

https://fullfact.org/health/keir-starmer-fake-quote-lockdown-meningitis/

I'd be wary of the sources you are consuming media from if a fake claim has made it onto your feed. Meningitis also is unlikely to ever require a COVID style lockdown because the threshold for transmission and infection is far higher than COVID or flu.

Not heard of any May lockdown - sounds like fake bollocks to me - probably stirred from the right

I got my postal vote application accepted. I'll be able to vote by post for 3 years.

One month until the local elections take place.

Deadline to register to vote is tonight if there is a local election of any sort in your area.

I'll try and do an amateur preview soon. Also Wales and Scotland elections though any Welsh or Scottish posters are welcome to start topics for them.

I've already started getting vote campaigns. I got one from Labour on Sunday, and another from Reform yesterday.

Genuinely really worried about the Senedd elections.

My postal ballot thingy arrived today. I've just completed it. Now I just need to send it off.

On 21/04/2026 at 22:01, T Boy said:

Genuinely really worried about the Senedd elections.

There’s more left wing progressive parties/seats/votes than reform. Il just be interested who shares power.

2026 Election Previews

Going to hijack this thread to start a number of previews, just a short basic runthroughs of the current state of play and what we might expect to see from the council results in just under 2 weeks from now, splitting it by general area so there's not a big overwhelming load of information.

London

Currently among the 32 London boroughs, 5 are run by Conservative administrations, 3 Liberal Democrat, 1, Tower Hamlets, is run by local political party Aspire, two are run by minority/coalitions, and all of the rest are Labour-controlled - below the position after the 2022 elections:

Might well be a very different map in a short while.

With Labour alienating much of their left-wing, city-dwelling base throughout their time in government, much of what would normally be unassailable Labour central London is under threat. Very possible that multiple central London councils go Green - and expect to see a smattering of Muslim independents and yes, even Your Party members in there too. Outside of central London, east and south Outer London is close to the Reform-leaning grounds of Essex and Kent and may well head in that direction, while outer NW and SW seem likely to hold their Conservative and LD areas respectively.

YouGov MRP projections, gone with them as they have this nice hatching that shows how close it may be in lots of places:

London could look a lot more fragmented than it normally does after this. Suspect it'll attract a lot of the commentary as so many people (and journalists!) live there, and I've done it first because of that, but it'll be far from the only story in this election, though possibly the most hopeful spot for left-wing people, many are already doing calculus for the high-profile London Labour MPs who'll see this and start getting nervy. Outlying voting councils here may be an attraction for any perceived council failures.

2025 Delayed Councils

Also a discrete bunch to take care of all at once, these are the rural councils in South East England and East Anglia that the Starmer anti-democracy machine cancelled elections for last year in dastardly attempts to ensure that Labour's ill-gotten councillors in rural Suffolk would have another year living off the fat of council tax from your grandmother and the local farmers.

These are those 6 (blue for Conservative, black for NOC):

The only current non-Conservative one, East Sussex, was elected as a Conservative administration, and their majority has been whittled away with by-elections, so essentially these are very, at least formerly, in 2021, Conservative areas.

They are also the only 'county councils' up for election this time, as a result of being on the wrong election year, normally this part of the cycle is for district and unitary councils.

Of course the main concern and the hoo-hah about delaying them was Reform not being able to make inroads into potentially fertile areas. As such they've so far failed to match the fate of Kent County Council, which has been mired in controversies since electing a Reform administration last year.

The reason they were delayed is that England is undergoing a process to replace council and district councils with unitary authorities and as such, Labour instructed these to delay, to avoid more frequent and therefore expensive elections when the new authority comes in in a couple of years. As ever, this was a move that annoyed everybody, allowed opponents to assign unbacked sinister motives of anti-democracy to Labour and achieved nothing of what it set out to do, as they were instructed by the Supreme Court after a legal challenge from Reform to hold these anyway.

As such, these will elect councillors for even less time than they were originally set to do so, with most of these new areas (except Sussex, whose new organisation hasn't been decided yet) voting for new councillors to replace these in 2027.

For myself, unitary authorities and less levels of local government is not entirely desirable, a trend of more people to manage with less staff and accountability, cutting staff costs because of increasing costs everywhere else that I foresee burdening councils to becoming less and less useful for the average resident - though attempts to unwrangle England's historic complexities of local government aren't entirely unwelcome.

Anyway these councils are likely to see a good influx of Reform councillors in a mercifully short term, though wouldn't be surprised to see Conservatives retain hold of Hampshire or one of both of the Sussexes, possibly Lib Dems and coalitions popping up too.

Just realised from that map that Thurrock and Southend aren't administratively part of Essex county council which makes no sense.

The Hitler Coast (Kent to the Wash but also Lincolnshire if they were having elections) will be extremely (light) blue.

I doubt it will make a difference to the county council control, but no idea what happens to the smattering of Greens in Suffolk now that they have controlled a district council there for a while and now have a visibly leftwing leader with a strong nationwide presence despite mid Suffolk really not being fertile leftwing territory. Maybe one of the areas that might actually miss Adrian Ramsay as leader even as the change is undoubtedly positive overall.

Edited April 27Apr 27 by Harve

2 hours ago, Harve said:

Just realised from that map that Thurrock and Southend aren't administratively part of Essex county council which makes no sense.

The Hitler Coast (Kent to the Wash but also Lincolnshire if they were having elections) will be extremely (light) blue.

I doubt it will make a difference to the county council control, but no idea what happens to the smattering of Greens in Suffolk now that they have controlled a district council there for a while and now have a visibly leftwing leader with a strong nationwide presence despite mid Suffolk really not being fertile leftwing territory. Maybe one of the areas that might actually miss Adrian Ramsay as leader even as the change is undoubtedly positive overall.

Indeed, part of the planned restructure is to do away with anomalies like that and instead eventually have roughly equal-size unitary councils everywhere (with names like South West Essex and North East Hampshire). The original 2009 unitary authorities were mostly in much smaller counties population-wise like Wiltshire, Cornwall, Shropshire, and Cheshire was easily split in two. Trend would then be towards most of England outside of maybe the biggest cities eventually under geographically compact and sensible units of roughly 350k-550k people.

Map is a new one that YAPMS posted btw, apparently up to date for 2026, though more in parties competing than any new boundaries, their most recent election one didn't have Reform in. https://yapms.com/app/gbr/counties/2026026/blank

Will be interesting to see how the rural Greens fare in these and subsequent locals, though I don't know if anything is there that would push them away that wasn't there before if that makes sense.

Unitary Authorities

So to the the unitary authorities that have elections this year, and again it's a bunch of weird exceptions because of the delaying elections rule. Below, their current composition.

Note that some of these have all of their councillors up for election, but most of them are councils that elect in thirds. The faded ones, you can see it if you squint, are the latter. Black is, again, for No overall control and is a mix of minority administrations and odd coalitions.

For those not immediately familiar with the location of every town/council in England that's, from west-to-east, Plymouth, Halton, Blackburn with Darwen, Swindon, Isle of Wight, Southampton, Portsmouth, Hartlepool, Reading, Wokingham, West Surrey, Milton Keynes, East Surrey, Peterborough, Hull, North East Lincolnshire, Thurrock and Southend-on-Sea.

All councillors

The Surrey councils are entirely new, as Surrey is a year ahead of those in the last post, its former district councils are mostly split but have a mix of Liberal Democrat and minority coalitions, expect LD and/or Conservatives here, but potentially any sort of mix really available.

Isle Of Wight has a Green-independent coalition that could get swept aside for the island's more normal right-wing shift, this is again a delay from 2025, just with an already existing UA. Thurrock is the same and very likely to be a full-fat Reform council after this.

Milton Keynes and Swindon normally elect in thirds but have new boundaries. They could easily be shocks of the election if they turn against their Labour control enough.

Third of councillors

Part of the benefit of electing in thirds is I suppose to not get swept away by transient political tides, but it generally requires a council to have three councillors per ward.

Of the NOCs, North East Lincolnshire has a Conservative minority, Peterborough a Labour minority, Portsmouth a Lib Dem minority, and Southend a Labour/Lib Dem/independent coalition. They of course could easily swing in one way or another and NE Links and Peterborough seem in positions very vulnerable to Reform. Hartlepool, Hull and Blackburn as well from the rest.

For Green pickups, Reading or Southampton feels perhaps the most likely of these but I don't expect enough seats to change to change control - can it even?

In Reading, Labour have 32 seats currently out of 48, they are standing 17 seats, of which 10 are Labour incumbents. If all of those were to lose, Labour would have 22, but if the Greens, the second largest, were the beneficiaries, they would only have 18. So, in this case, yes, technically Labour could lose control. They probably won't lose every seat they're up for though, unless things have really gotten existential. Maybe a few of these will switch, but mostly from party control to NOC or vice versa.

3 hours ago, Iz様 🌟 said:

Unitary Authorities

Third of councillors

Part of the benefit of electing in thirds is I suppose to not get swept away by transient political tides, but it generally requires a council to have three councillors per ward.

As a number of councils who had elections last year are finding out, things can go horribly wrong if one party goes from having few, if any, councillors to having overall control overnight. The Tories, Labour and Lib Dems have all provided similar examples in the past.