Councils shake-up: Will local elections face further delays?

0:01Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, a Labour running scared of local elections. This is a story that's not going to go away. I think it's been put out by the government just before Christmas. Obviously a time when people are not thinking about the local elections in May next year and thinking about politics in general. Come January, this will definitely come up again and local authorities have got until mid-January to request delays. Those requests start coming through.

0:44That is when I think we'll see the story again become a major story. And you've got people like Nigel Farage, Ed Davey, the Conservatives who are going to make a big deal about this. but first a row has broken out over proposals that would see elections delayed for a second year in a row for millions of voters as attempts to reorganize local government hit another setback elections in nine areas including conservative held norfolk suffolk essex surrey hampshire and east and west sussex had initially seen their elections delayed by 12 months until next year to allow for the reorganisation process.

1:27But while Surrey and Hampshire are likely to go ahead with votes in May, the others could be postponed again until 2027. Essex, Oxford, Wellwyn, Hatfield, Watford, South Cambridgeshire and Cheltenham are also among the regions set to have votes delayed until 2027. The government plans to abolish the two-tier system of district and county councils, creating a swathe of new local authorities that will be responsible for delivering services in their areas from 2028. Local Government Minister Alison McGovern said multiple town halls had asked for postponements after expressing concerns about running resource-intensive elections alongside the transition.

2:12But Reform UK leader Nigel Farage branded Sir Keir Starmer's government a banana republic and accused the Tories of colluding with Labour's plan to cancel elections, which polls predict his party would do well in. He said, Turkeys don't vote for Christmas. Tory county councils look set to collude with Labour to keep their control until 2027. Only a banana republic bans elections. That's what we have under Starmer. Kemi Badenok must instruct her council leaders to allow elections to go ahead. And Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said, This is looking like yet another Labour and Conservative stitch-up to deny people their votes in May.

2:55Kemi Badenoch must stop her Conservative council leaders from delaying elections yet again, just because they are running scared of the Liberal Democrats. I spoke to The Standards' chief political correspondent, Rachel Burford, to find out more. Rachel, why is this action being taken? You may remember some elections were delayed last year until May 2026. Well, now the government is proposing further delays. This is all part of a sort of restructure, essentially, of local government. Ministers plan to abolish the two-tier system of districts and county councils. This will create a sort of swath of new local authorities that will be responsible for delivering services, and it will abolish a lot of councillor positions.

3:41Now, there are a lot of councils involved in this restructuring, and some had their elections delayed last year. Ministers have written to 63 councils scheduled to hold elections in May 2026, five, six months from now, for their views on basically potentially postponing them. And that is because this reorganisation is taking a lot longer than they had hoped. They've already said that mayoral elections in Greater Essex, Hampshire, Hampshire and the Solent, Sussex, Brighton, Norfolk and Suffolk, they won't be going ahead until May 2028. They've already delayed them, but they've also written to dozens of more councils saying, would you like to delay your elections for councillors due in May?

4:24They include places like Essex, Oxford, Welland and Hatfield, Watford, South Cambridgeshire and Cheltenham and many others. and this is obviously quite controversial particularly when Labour government are not doing particularly well in polls and smaller parties like the Greens and most notably Reform are doing very well. So it's created a lot of tension in the government and they've also been sort of criticised for putting the announcement out just before Christmas particularly when local government secretary Steve Reid vowed that scheduled elections would go ahead just two days ago. So it's a pretty controversial announcement from the government just before Christmas.

5:03And is there any precedent for doing this? I mean, it's extremely rare to delay elections. Richard Wright, the chair of the district council's network, said that England's local democracy is built around every councillor being elected for a four-year term, a cycle which should not be broken only in the most exceptional circumstances. So this is extremely rare. The government argues that this reorganisation is needed. Eventually, voters, residents will receive better services and more streamlined services. The local government minister, Alison McGovern, said announcing this that actually it was town halls that had asked for postponements because they'd expressed concern about running resource intensive elections alongside this transition.

5:46This is an extremely rare thing and something that has ruffled a lot of feathers among politicians. What are the implications of this for Britain's democracy? Obviously, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is hoping for big wins in the local elections in England in May. Yeah, so I mean, obviously, Nigel Farage, Reform UK's leader is pretty angry about this. He's branded the government a banana republic. He's also accused the Tories as well of colluding with Labour's plans to cancel elections, because many of the ones that could be cancelled are in Conservative held areas where reform are polling extremely well.

6:25And he sort of said this is a way of stopping the rise of reform. There were local elections in May this year in areas that didn't have them cancelled. And we did see reform win a large number of those town halls, places like Kent, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire. Reform did win a huge number of councils. Also, the Liberal Democrats as well are quite angry about this because they are the third biggest party in government, but they do tend to do very well in local elections. and Sarah Davy, the leader of the Lib Dems, has said he's also accused the Tories of supporting the government and saying delaying elections yet again just because they're running scared of the Liberal Democrats because they are also hoping to take a lot of seats off the Conservatives in areas where it's sort of either Lib Dems or Conservatives usually win, places like Surrey.

7:12Although I have heard that Surrey and Hampshire elections are likely to go ahead in May, but many of these other areas could be postponed until 2027. And are local elections actually a good indicator of what will happen on a national scale? Are they significant in that way? The thing is, local elections do show the popularity of parties. Obviously, far fewer people vote in local elections than they do at the general election, or have done in previous polls anyway. But they do certainly give an indication of how popular parties are, how well they may do at the next general election, which is a few years off yet.

7:48If parties like Reform, which are now running town halls across the country, but do have very few MPs, they start doing well on a local level. That is going to worry some in government, I think. And also Labour won a massive landslide general election last year, coming in with a huge number of MPs. And then if he then does extremely badly in local elections in May, that could be a sort of indication of how voters think the party is doing in government. Obviously, there's been a lot of talk as well around leadership challenges to Keir Starmer and many people saying that after the local elections in May, there could be some Labour MPs that are looking to oust him as leader.

8:33So this is something, it just doesn't look very good for the government. And putting it out just before Christmas, particularly when just even this week we're saying that they will go ahead, does not look particularly great. Let's go to an ad break. Coming up, will elections in London be affected by these proposals? We'll see you back here in just a moment.

9:05Welcome back. So, Rachel, can we maybe talk a bit more about the state of local government or why Labour are trying to change things? These proposals have been around for a long time. It It was something Labour did vow to do when it first came in. It was first announced by Angela Rayner when she was Deputy Prime Minister. It's a sort of streamline the way local government is run, reduce the number of councillors, increase the number of elected mayors. So you've got a single sort of figurehead kind of in charge of things. And what have the reactions been so far to this news? Shadow Minister and Conservative election spokesman James Cleverley said Labour was running scared of voters, that they could completely overhaul local government and stack the deck in their favour.

9:50But they're wrong about that. He's accused Labour of fiddling the democratic process to serve their own political interests. Other Conservatives have come out and said very similar things. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick also made similar comments saying that even during the pandemic, elections were not cancelled for a second year running. Proposals like this are hallmarks of a government that doesn't trust the people. These are very controversial proposals. councils, particularly for a government that is not polling particularly well at the moment, despite having a huge number of MPs and winning that landslide general election victory last year.

10:25They are floundering in polls and, you know, tell millions of voters that actually the elections that you were due to have in May will not be going ahead. It does not look great for them. I mean, they're arguing that this is a process that is taking longer than they perhaps thought it would that councils are struggling to do this and they would struggle to do this alongside running elections. I think not particularly popular with parties that are hoping to win these upcoming elections. It's not got many particularly favourable comments so far from it. Obviously, the government is arguing that some councils came forward and asked the government about perhaps delaying them for another year.

11:03So they have not named the town halls that asked postponements but said that there were multiple town halls that did. It's a sort of controversial proposal and one that seems to have kind of come out of nowhere because, as I said, Steve Reid, the local government secretary, was saying that they definitely would be going ahead. So it's not something that's gone down very well with councillors, with the chair of the district council's network, and certainly not with rival parties. But this decision won't be confirmed until January. Is that right? So local authorities have until mid-January to request delays.

11:3963 councils that have been written to. We may see some of them say they don't want delays, but a number of them do. There will be millions of voters that were expecting to go to the polls in May and they will not be able to. And there will only be a few months notice. Those elections will be delayed until May 2027. Finally, is there anything else you want to add? Interestingly, elections in London, where Labour do hold the majority of councils, they do run the majority of town halls in the capital, they are going to go ahead. They've been confirmed they will go ahead in May 2026. And that is a place we haven't seen much from the Greens parties talking these proposals down.

12:20I think that's perhaps because the elections where they're hoping to make big gains in places like the capital, they will be going ahead.

12:32and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk if you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here tomorrow morning we'll see you then