On 18 December, the Minister for Local Government and Homelessness, Alison McGovern, indicated that the Government had invited local authorities to advise on whether there should be a one-year delay to local elections. This invitation arises amidst plans to replace the “ineffective and inefficient” two-tiered system of district and county councils with unified local authorities. Plans to delay local elections are ostensibly designed to ensure that resources are not spent on electing councils that will soon be abolished. However, the Government has been widely criticised, as up to 63 councils could be affected by the changes and this episode amounts to a second year-long delay to some local government elections.
The independent watchdog, the Electoral Commission has expressed disappointment about “both the timing and the substance” of the announcement. The Commission has taken the view that “capacity constraints” are not a legitimate reason to delay long-planned elections. It argues that this delay could undermine public confidence in democracy and the legitimacy of local government. Similarly, politicians have accused Labour and the Conservatives of colluding to shield themselves from losing support at the local level. Sir Ed Davey has asked the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to investigate “the Government’s cavalier approach to our elections” while the Liberal Democrat leader of Devon County Council described the move as “double dealing and dishonesty.” Nigel Farage of Reform UK claimed that election delays amount to another step in turning the UK into a “banana republic” and a Labour-Conservative stich up.
There is a need then, to contextualise the impending dispute, and to describe the process for postponing local elections, historical examples and objections to a similar postponement last year. This blog post demonstrates that while repeated delays to local government elections appear to be contrary to convention, there are no legal rules regulating the Secretary of State’s powers to postpone local elections. Drawing on last year’s parliamentary debates, it suggests that the Government should have anticipated – and should continue to anticipate – considerable parliamentary opposition.
The process
Local government councillors are ordinarily elected every four years, though dates for local elections vary. Section 85 of Local Government Act 2000 (LCA) sets out three basic schemes governing the frequency of local elections, in addition to the proportion of councillors who are elected on different occasions or subject to retirement. The Secretary of State does not necessarily determine the scheme followed by different authorities, but she has the power to change the year of elections in relation to any local government authority. Section 87(1) of the LCA empowers the Secretary to use delegated legislation – in the form of an order – to make provisions varying the year on which councillors are ordinarily elected. Although this delegated power can only be used to change the year of local elections, Parliament does not provide any details on the circumstances in which an election may be postponed but delegates this task to the Executive despite its democratic importance. This is a substantial discretionary power to a give to a minister.
Orders postponing local elections are ordinarily made by Statutory Instrument (SI) under so-called negative procedure. This process enables SIs to be laid before Parliament for a certain period during which either House can veto the instrument. During this time, the Order will ordinarily be scrutinised by two separate committees for legal issues, drafting errors, and matters of policy importance. In theory, the Order may be used to “modify any enactment”, pursuant to section 105(5) of the LCA. If this is the case, the Order will be made subject to the draft affirmative procedure, which requires Parliament to positively approve the instrument before it comes into force. This procedural exception matters because it means that technically the power of postponing local government elections is a prospective Henry VIII power, which enables a minister to use delegated legislation to change primary legislation. The use of a prospective Henry VIII clause is relatively rare and constitutionally objectionable, as it enables ministers to overturn parliamentary decisions. However, this specific Henry VIII clause is perhaps not so glaringly problematic. It may only be used to vary the year of a local government election. Moreover, the wider legislative context is that rules on local government elections are highly disorganised. The rules are scattered across over 17 Acts and 30 pieces of secondary legislation, which makes delegated legislation the most expedient means to tidy up different provisions.
In short, Parliament has conferred upon the Secretary of State the power to decide the timing of local government elections and while there are some procedural oddities, and areas for improvement, there are few clear rules on how this power should be used.
Precedent
By convention, local government elections are not ordinarily postponed without good reason. There are a range of extenuating circumstances which have delayed elections, including war, the outbreak of disease and political events. In 2001, local elections were postponed by a month from May to June due to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. In 2004, the day of local government elections was changed so as to coincide with the day of the European Parliament’s election. In 2020, the outbreak of Coronavirus led to nation-wide cancellations of elections. There is even some recent precedent for local government reorganisation leading to the postponement of elections. In February 2021, the Conservative Minister for Housing and Local Government, Robert Jenrick, announced consultations on merging a number of local councils to create unitary authorities six weeks prior to local elections. Consequently, elections to six local councils were postponed by a year.
However, the current impending delay is particularly controversial first because it is not an isolated event and second because of the scale of disruption. Last year, local elections in nine councils were delayed from 2025 to May 2026 to facilitate major reorganisations. Speaking to Parliament in February 2025, then-Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner claimed that this plan ensured that elections would not be held in authorities that would soon be disbanded, given this would be “expensive and an irresponsible waste of money.” Rayner emphasised that 16 out of 21 county councils requested postponements, but that the Government only agreed to postpone half of those requested.
Parliamentary debates on last year’s postponement are worth revisiting because they emphasise that this decision was highly controversial. The postponement was implemented by the Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025. Despite being subject to the negative procedure – which is ordinarily associated with a minimal degree of scrutiny – the Order faced a considerable amount of parliamentary opposition. The Order itself was short. Article 2 postponed the day of election of councillors to nine specified county councils from 2025, to 2026, without providing any justification. Nor does the Explanatory Memorandum elucidate the Government’s reason for this postponement.
The Order was laid before Parliament on 10 February 2025, came into force 4 March and the period for parliamentary objection ended on 1 April. Soon after being laid, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee flagged the Order for being politically important and criticised the Government for not providing a justification for the electoral delay within the Explanatory Memorandum. On 25 March, the Order was debated by a temporary Delegated Legislation Committee (DLC) in the Commons for over thirty minutes. By one MP’s own admission, the debate was “unusually rich” for a DLC, as it covered procedural and practical problems raised by delaying elections. Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs objected to the Government’s lack of a clear timetable, and the absence of a strategy clarifying the interactions between elections and devolution. Ultimately, though, MPs did not veto the Order. Nevertheless, two Peers – from the Liberal Democrat and Green parties – tabled “Fatal” Prayer Motions which sought to annul the Order on the grounds that it undermined democratic accountability. One of these motions was withdrawn, and the Government defeated the other attempt to scuttle the Order. The very fact that this vote was held matters, as the House of Lords will not normally seek to exercise its powers to veto delegated legislation. The Government should have taken heed of this episode. It was an indication parliamentarians would be quick to oppose any future attempts to delay local government elections, particularly at a much larger scale.
In the Government’s defence, reforming local authorities is a legitimate pursuit, and it is financially wasteful to hold elections in councils that will soon be abolished. Labour’s 2024 election manifesto pledged to “transfer power out of Westminster, and into our communities, with landmark devolution legislation.” Labour committed to review governance arrangements for local authorities to “unblock decision-making” and to give local government more powers over transport, adult education, housing, planning and employment. These commitments were later fleshed out by a White Paper and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which is now before Parliament. The Bill introduces new devolution structures at a larger scale and finalises plans to replace two-tier local councils with unitary authorities representing 500,000 people. This “unitarisation” is designed to enhance the efficiency of public services, make it easier for residents to understand who is responsible for local decisions and it should cut costs. These plans are undoubtedly radical, but they are not entirely new in substance as much of this was begun last year.
Conclusion
It is difficult to untangle political expediency from policy justifications. If local government elections were to go ahead in 2026, they are likely to yield gains for Reform and the Liberal Democrats and losses for the Labour and Conservative parties, reflecting current opinion polls. Constitutional objections to the proposals, regardless of the electoral arithmetic, are legitimate, though. Delaying elections for two years in a row is damaging for public confidence in democracy, not least because as many as 63 councils could be affected. While the repeated nature and scale of delaying local elections is concerning, it is important to stress the Government’s policy reasons are not spurious. The re-organisation of local councils was a manifesto pledge and will lead to a shift in power away from the centre. It is a waste of public money to hold elections for authorities that will shortly be axed. The Government has also clarified that only councils affected by reorganisation will be able postpone elections. It is inevitable that major devolution reforms will affect when elections should be held, but parliamentarians did raise this problem in their discussion of the 2025 Order to delay local government elections
It is regrettable the Government did not take heed of parliamentary objections to similar plans last year. In delaying local elections at scale for a second year in a row without consulting Parliament beforehand, the Government risks giving the public the impression that it seeks to undermine, rather than champion, democratic reform.
Tasneem Ghazi.
Tasneem is a PhD student at the UCL Faculty of Laws. Tasneem previously completed the Barrister Training Course while working part-time as a research assistant at the Constitution Unit. In 2021, she interned at the Institute for Government and at the UK in a Changing Europe. Tasneem holds an MA in History from King’s College London, and an LLB in Politics, Philosophy and Law.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.