The clunkily-named English Devolution & Community Empowerment Act 2026, which received Royal Assent in April, represents one of the most significant reforms to local government in England for a generation. Much focus had been on the big-ticket items: strategic authorities, elected mayors and the devolution of powers from Whitehall to local areas. These have been considered widely elsewhere, including on this blog. But some of the Act’s measures have gone largely unnoticed beyond the local government bubble, despite raising fundamental questions about how councils govern themselves and how local democracy functions.
Among them are two longstanding constitutional issues. The first is whether councils should be run through executive cabinet systems or traditional committee structures. The second concerns electoral cycles: should councillors continue to be elected by thirds, with elections in three years out of every four, or should authorities move to all-out elections once every four years?
These questions are not merely administrative. They determine who exercises power, how decisions are scrutinised, how councillors represent their communities and how voters hold politicians to account. The choices made under the Act are likely to shape English local democracy for decades. However, in some aspects, as we’ll see, the legislation is designed so that many councils have no choice whatsoever.
Cabinet or committee?
Until the turn of the century, the ‘committee system’ was widespread in local government. Decisions were made by politically-proportionate committees covering distinct policy areas, such as housing, education, highways and finance. It reflected an assumption that elected councillors should govern collectively, rather than all power being wielded by a small ruling group from one party.
Then came the Local Government Act 2000, which represented a profound constitutional shift. The Blair government concluded that the committee system had become slow, opaque and insufficiently accountable, and called for local authorities to reform their structures. Most councils adopted the ‘strong-leader-and-cabinet’ model. The logic was straightforward enough: a leader and small executive group should run the authority, making it more efficient and more accountable. But the switch unintentionally relegated many elected councillors to the status of spectators, and sparked concerns of too much power being concentrated in too few hands.
And so, when the Cameron government came to office, it vowed to revisit the whole thing. The Localism Act 2011 allowed councils to return to committee governance if they wished. A number took up the invitation. Brighton & Hove City Council abandoned the cabinet system in favour of politically-balanced committees, arguing that the city’s fragmented political landscape made collective decision-making more appropriate. Kingston-upon-Thames reached a similar conclusion. But not everyone agreed. Other large authorities stayed with the leader-and-cabinet model, including unitary Swindon Borough Council – where, for transparency, your author was an elected member at the time.
The important constitutional point is this: councils were free to choose which governance model was best suited to their particular area, taking into account size, demographics, geography and a host of other factors. One of the more controversial features of the 2026 Act is that it removes that freedom of choice from most authorities. In future, councils will no longer be able to adopt the committee system. For the overwhelming majority of councils, the expected model is now leader and cabinet executive.
The legislation goes further than simply limiting future choices. Councils operating the committee system – around 40 at last count – are, in most cases, required to move to a leader and cabinet model. There are, however, important transitional protections. Authorities that adopted the committee system relatively recently following a council resolution or a local referendum don’t have to revert back for ten years. But once that statutory protection expires, they must review their governance structure. Councils undergoing local government reorganisation are also subject to separate transitional arrangements.
This creates an interesting constitutional paradox. Much of the Act is founded on the principle that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the communities they affect. Yet, on the question of how councils themselves should be governed, Parliament has moved in the opposite direction by replacing local choice with a nationally-imposed ‘default’ system. Ministers argue that a common leader and cabinet model provides clearer accountability, stronger executive leadership and greater consistency across England’s emerging devolved landscape. Critics, however, contend that it’s difficult to champion devolution while simultaneously removing one of the most significant constitutional choices that local authorities previously enjoyed. Whether or not the Act ultimately strengthens local democracy is likely to remain one of the more contentious questions.
‘Not another one!’
In 2017, Brenda from Bristol unwittingly summed up the feelings of a whole nation when told that another general election had been called. Yet for residents in many council areas, frequent polling days are nothing unusual. While some authorities do have ‘all-out’ elections just once every four years, others use the ‘thirds’ system, which sees one-third of seats contested each year for three consecutive years, followed by a welcome break in year four. According to the Institute for Government, more than a quarter of England’s top-tier authorities use the thirds method, with the remainder having all-outs. Each system has its backers and detractors.
Supporters of elections by thirds argue simply that frequent elections mean more accountability. The ruling group, indeed all parties, know they’re never very far from the judgement of the electorate. Then there’s the ‘continuity’ argument: control of a council may shift gradually rather than dramatically, reducing the risk that long-term projects are abandoned with every passing electoral cycle.
The disadvantages, however, are obvious. Local government can begin to resemble a permanent election campaign. All decisions risk being viewed through the prism of next May’s polling day, so that necessary but unpopular reforms are sidelined if they become politically awkward. Quite apart from which, it’s a frankly bewildering system, with the average voter having little chance of understanding whether in any given year their council is due to elect everyone, some people or nobody at all.
Those favouring all-out elections make an almost mirror-image argument: electing the whole council once every four years gives the administration a clear mandate and encourages it to take decisions whose benefits will become apparent only in the longer term. Opponents, however, say a ruling group is handed four years of almost unfettered control. If they make serious mistakes, or public opinion shifts sharply midway through the cycle, there’s little formal opportunity for voters to hold them to account.
Additionally, according to historical analysis by the Electoral Commission, the all-out system creates more by-elections. Under the Local Government Act 1972, if a councillor resigns midway through their term, no by-election is necessary if the next scheduled election is less than six months away. Councils using the thirds method can thus frequently ‘hold over’ most vacancies and fill them concurrently with next May’s polling day. Administrations with the all-out system, however, are prone to mid-term by-elections scattered across their four years, creating uncertainty and eating into the supposed financial savings of fewer scheduled polls.
Unlike its approach to governance structures, the 2026 Act does not impose a single electoral cycle on councils. Instead, it largely preserves the existing statutory framework under which councils operate, leaving authorities to continue pretty much as they please. The exception is where existing legal mechanisms are used to change the electoral timetable. These include structural change orders made as part of local government reorganisation or specific statutory orders made by the Secretary of State. In other words, the Act does not itself settle the long-running constitutional argument between the different electoral cycles.
Ministers argued during the Bill’s passage that there was insufficient evidence that one pattern of elections consistently produced better governance than another. Existing arrangements therefore continue, with a hotch-potch of different electoral cycles. The practical effect is that, in many council areas, local residents will only realise there’s an election on the way when the inevitable forest’s worth of campaign literature starts landing on their doormats.
The Act does strengthen Westminster’s ability to manage election timing to facilitate local government reorganisation or the creation of new strategic authorities. As we saw earlier this year, however, that power can often be challenged and is itself subject to the whims of ministers changing their minds, leading to confusion, anger and shouts of ‘democratic deficit’ from those beyond SW1. Whether the Act can avoid a repeat of this year’s on, off, on again election cycle, remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the constitutional significance of the English Devolution & Community Empowerment Act 2026 lies not in whether more councils choose committees over cabinets, or all-out elections over thirds. It lies in recognising that, once again, Westminster and Whitehall are sending mixed messages to Wolverhampton and Wiltshire. On the one hand, local authorities have been told it’s the cabinet model or bust; nanny knows best. But when it comes to the fundamental democratic question of how often to hold elections, local councils are largely free to make their own decisions.
Rejecting a one-size-fits all solution is to be applauded, and makes a refreshing change. But the Act itself feels like a basket of disparate measures desperately searching for a coherent narrative. In the end, the real test of the legislation will not be whether every council reaches the same conclusion, but whether each authority is able to successfully navigate the Act’s provisions and come up with a model that suits its own local circumstances. And on that, the jury is most definitely out.
Peter Heaton-Jones.
Peter Heaton-Jones was MP for North Devon 2015-2019. He was parliamentary private secretary in two government departments and served on several select and legislation committees. He now works in public affairs and the media.
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.