Local Government Reorganisation

Monday 26th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Statement

19:58

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 22 January.

“This Government were elected on a promise to repair the broken foundations of local government. In 2024, councils were on the brink financially, while a third of the country was left paying for wasteful duplication as a result of having two tiers of councils in their area. That cannot be acceptable. Years of underfunding has led to a crisis in social care, the decline of our town centres and rubbish piling up in our streets. That visible failure contributes to a decline in trust, and it was caused by Tory austerity and 14 years of economic mismanagement.

This Government will not stand by and let that decline continue. We cannot just snap our fingers and reverse the last 14 years overnight, but we can act now to secure a better future. To get there, we have already announced fairer funding that realigns resources with need, but we also need to eliminate the financial waste of two-tier councils, so that we can plough the savings back into the front-line services that local people care about the most. Today’s announcement is part of that.

We must move at pace to remove the confusion and waste of doubled-up bureaucracy. Local residents do not know which of their two councils is responsible for which services. No one would ever design a system in which one council collects rubbish and another gets rid of it. In many parts of the country, residents’ hard-earned council tax pays for two sets of councillors, two sets of chief executives, and two sets of financial directors. That is wasting tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

The previous Government sat back and ignored this problem, but this Government will not. We are committed to the most ambitious local government reorganisation in a generation. My priority is cutting out this waste, so that we can invest more in the front-line services that residents care about. That means moving as quickly as possible to the new, streamlined, single-tier councils that can make that happen. I have asked councils to tell me where holding elections this year to positions that will rapidly be abolished would slow down making these vital reforms, which will benefit local people, and I have listened to what councils told me.

In December, the Minister for Local Government and Homelessness wrote to 63 councils that were due to hold elections in May 2026, asking to hear their views. I have carefully assessed more than 350 representations from those councils that have elections scheduled for May, and from others interested in the outcome. I have carefully considered arguments made about capacity, reorganisation and democracy, and I am grateful to everyone who took the time to express their views.

I can now confirm my decisions to the House. I have decided to bring forward legislation to postpone 29 elections; I have deposited a list of those in the House of Commons Library. I received one further representation this morning, which I will consider; I will then report back to the House on my decision. In all other areas, council elections will go ahead as planned; many councils offered no evidence that elections would delay reorganisation in their area. That means that of the 136 local elections across England that were scheduled for May, the vast majority will go ahead as planned.

In areas where elections are postponed, councillors will have their terms extended for a short period. Once the new unitary councils are agreed, we will hold elections to them in 2027. I have written to councils confirming these decisions, and I will shortly lay the necessary legislation before both Houses.

I am not the first Secretary of State to seek to delay elections to speed up essential reorganisation. The shadow Secretary of State suggested on Tuesday that the previous Government had not done the same thing, but he has perhaps forgotten the postponements in Weymouth and Portland in 2018; in Aylesbury, Chiltern, South Buckinghamshire and Wycombe in 2019; or in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset in 2021.

To those who say we have cancelled all the elections: we have not. To those who say it is all Labour councils: it is not. I have asked, I have listened and I have acted —no messing about, no playing politics, just getting on with the job of making local government work better for local people”.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we are considering today a Statement of real constitutional significance. It concerns the decision to cancel scheduled local elections, and in doing so, raises fundamental questions about where responsibility lies, how accountability is exercised, and how seriously we take the rights of the citizen to choose who governs them.

The Secretary of State has made no secret of his views. He has spoken of a system he regards as wasteful, of the need for greater focus and capacity, and of elections which he has described, in his own words, as “pointless”. If that reflects a settled judgment, noble Lords in this House are entitled to ask why it has not been stated with equal clarity here, and why Ministers have appeared reluctant to accept openly the consequences of that position.

At the centre of this lies a more troubling question. Are elections now to be treated as an optional feature of local democracy, to be set aside when they become inconvenient or administratively awkward? Elections are not a discretionary exercise. They are the means by which consent is renewed and authority sustained. They are an integral part of our democracy.

That leads, inevitably, to the issue of responsibility. By asking councils to make the request, Ministers avoid coming to the Dispatch Box to say plainly that they have chosen to deny more than 3.7 million people their vote. Is this not, in effect, a means of shifting a difficult and politically uncomfortable decision away from those who have in fact taken it?

This sits uneasily alongside the broader story of reorganisation itself. A year on from its announcement, there remains little clarity about boundaries, structures or timetables—by timetables, I mean for the whole project across the country. Councils are being asked to manage disruption and cost while certainty moves ever further out of reach. When it will happen seems still unknown by the Government, or, if it is not unknown, it is unannounced.

From our consideration of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, we know that this legislation centralises powers, risks increasing costs for working people and leaves communities with a diminished voice.

Elections have been postponed before, but never on this scale and never in this manner. In the past, elections have always been postponed in a planned way, with plenty of time for councils to organise themselves and, particularly, plenty of time for them to talk to their communities who are affected and give them a voice and some clarity.

Democracy is not strengthened by avoidance nor protected by the quiet displacement of responsibility. If Ministers believe that elections should not take place, they should say so plainly, take responsibility for that choice and defend it openly. Surely the Government have learned from their mistakes at last year’s elections.

The Electoral Commission has been clear that scheduled elections should proceed as planned and that capacity constraints are not a legitimate justification for delay. I ask the Minister: why was the independent guardian of our electoral system not consulted before a Labour Government took the decision to cancel local elections, and what does that say about how lightly this decision was made?

Finally, will the same thing happen again next year?

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, the Government are presenting this latest round of election cancellations as an unexceptional administrative move that is justified by precedent, but I think that is fundamentally wrong. Cancelling elections should be a matter of last resort, triggered by global war or a domestic catastrophe. We should take pride in our commitment to democracy. We should have a pride that crosses party boundaries and enthuses Ministers about the value and preciousness of democracy. Instead, unfortunately, the Government seem to be treating elections as an administrative inconvenience, something to be brushed aside rather than cherished.

I could get all fire and brimstone and dust off grand quotes from Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln or Fawcett, but, really, I am just disappointed by how lightly the Government seem to be treating this matter. Exhibit A is the comments of the Secretary of State, who said that fixing potholes was more important than running scheduled elections—no regrets, no apologies and no reluctance about cancelling but, instead, that poverty of low expectations, as if fixing potholes and running polling days are just too much and just not possible.

The Government claim that there is precedent for all that they are doing, but I have listened and read very carefully what has been said: all the peacetime examples that have been cited extended the time in office of councillors only by up to an extra year. But rather than one or two extra years, the Government’s plans will mean that many councillors, elected for a four-year term of office, will end up being in power for a full seven years—three years on top, in a completely unprecedented way.

This is not what the Government said they were going to do. The Minister said last March, when we were debating a previous round of election cancellations:

“We have no plans to postpone district council elections in 2026”. —[Official Report, 24/3/25; col. 1516.]


Likewise, the Minister also said that it was a

“postponement for 12 months only”.—[Official Report, 24/3/25; col. 1514.]

We are, of course, now in a rather different situation. That U-turn has not been justified by precedent, and certainly not by the need to fight the scourge of potholes; it is a U-turn, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, that flies directly in the face of the Electoral Commission’s very specific advice that

“we do not think that capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections”.

It also strikes me as being an unwisely short-term perspective to cultivate a culture in which elections are so often cancelled and in which terms of office that are meant to be four years get extended up to seven. Is that really a wise legacy to leave for a future Government of who knows what political complexion?

As the Government seem set on this course, let me ask three specific questions of the Minister. First, will the Government reimburse councils for the cost of preparing for elections that are now being cancelled? Secondly, given how much the Government have talked up the benefits of their plans to introduce elected mayors, which are part of the wider picture of election delays, will the Government publish estimates of the cost to economic growth of those delays in bringing in the elected mayors? Thirdly, given the importance of protecting our democracy—even in the face of potholes—will the Government commit to giving the Electoral Commission proper independence and removing the Government’s power to give it instructions over policy and strategy? That would show a real commitment to protecting and valuing democracy.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, in 2024, councils were on the financial edge and sat as part of a patchwork map that did not make any sense to anybody—it did not to me, and I have been involved in local government for 30 years. The consequences of that and 14 years of funding cuts were the crisis in social care, the decline of our high streets, and councils not feeling empowered to build homes or grow their economies. Inevitably, this contributed to a decline in trust, and division on our streets, as people felt they had no say in the area they see every day when they walk out of their front door. This is important because, in the past, it had always been true that people had more faith and trust in their local council than in the Government, and that was starting to slip away.

I do not think anyone can dispute that, in July 2024, local government faced a crisis. Across this House, we may have differing views on how local government got to this point, but we cannot just snap our fingers and reverse the last 14 years. We can commit to a better future and to doing something different for that, with local councils empowered to make the right decisions for their communities and with communities really feeling empowered because they have councils that look after the full range of services that support them.

Let me be absolutely clear: this Government do not take lightly the postponement of elections. Democratic accountability is fundamental and of course elections are not optional. The vast majority of elections will be going ahead, but we are undertaking the most fundamental reform of local government for generations, and I think it is important that we are doing so.

These temporary postponements, where they have been requested, are intended to help us move to unitary councils quicker and strengthen local democracy, not weaken it. They apply only where the councils themselves have demonstrated a clear case, where reorganisation is already under way and where holding elections now would risk the transition to new councils by introducing confusion and duplication, and by wasting money.

Governments of all political colours have postponed local elections during periods of structural reform, including under the previous Conservative Government, and there is clearly statutory precedent for doing so. What would be truly irresponsible would be to press ahead with elections for authorities that may shortly cease to exist, and when councils party to those elections have told us they could put at risk services being ready for the transition to new councils.

Some have argued that the Government are acting out of political convenience. That argument does not withstand scrutiny. The postponements are driven by local views and circumstances, not partisan interest. Indeed, Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour councils have all come forward with concerns, on which we have acted. We have had that as formal feedback, but I have also had many conversations with local council leaders.

Those of us who have worked in local government know both the direct demands of running elections and the wider organisational impacts, including the diversion of critical senior officer time and focus during the pre-election period. Freeing up that capacity allows councils to prioritise service delivery and manage the reorganisation effectively. Running elections for short-lived authorities while simultaneously preparing for new unitary councils would impose avoidable expense while councils are focused on setting up new authorities and protecting front-line services.

Reorganisation, done properly, offers the opportunity to reduce duplication, clarify accountability and redirect resources to essential public services that have suffered years of neglect. Councillors’ terms are being extended for a clearly defined period, and fresh elections for the new unitary authorities will take place in 2027, once reorganisation proposals are agreed. Residents will have their say on stronger, more coherent councils, with one set of councillors with clearer responsibilities. This is a pragmatic decision, taken in partnership with local government, grounded in precedent and evidence, and focused on delivering better public services for the communities we serve.

I turn to the specific questions that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord asked me. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, has mentioned the lack of a timetable several times, both here and during debates on the English devolution Bill. There is a very clear timetable. Something is clearly causing confusion here, but I will briefly set out the timetable again. For Surrey, there will be elections to the new unitaries in May 2026. In April 2027, the new unitaries will come into force. For the six devolution priority areas, the consultation is now closed. Decisions for them will be taken by March 2026. In May 2027, there will be elections to the new unitaries. In April 2028, the new unitaries will come into force. In May 2028, mayors will be elected to Sussex, Norfolk and Suffolk, Hampshire, and Essex mayoral combined authorities. For the remaining 14 areas, in February 2026, we will launch our consultation. By May 2026, the consultation will close. Decisions will then be announced around the time of the Summer Recess in 2026. In May 2027, there will be elections to the new unitaries and the new unitaries will come into force in April 2028.

We do not believe in imposing these things on local authorities, which is why we have done it in consultation, rather than sitting in MHCLG, drawing a map and saying, “That’s what it’s going to look like”. We have been working very hard with our local authorities. That is why we did not set the boundaries ourselves. We have asked local authorities to work together on geographies that made sense to them, which was absolutely the right way to go.

The noble Lord, Lord Pack, asked about the delaying of elections and this not being a new phenomenon. I have set out before in the House that this has been done by previous Governments when they were doing reorganisation. We have always set and maintained a high threshold for postponements. As we have done before, we are responding to serious concerns raised by councils in the reorganisation areas that the 2026 elections were putting at risk their ability to deliver on local government reorganisation.

The noble Lord asked me about the funding for elections. Spend on elections is, of course, a matter for local authorities. Our announcement was in response to representations received from councils in local government. Postponement, of course, also avoids the cost of holding elections to councils that are proposed to be abolished.

The noble Lord asked me about the cost to economic growth. We need to take a clear view on this: where councils cover all the services in their area and are empowered to take on economic growth, the delivery of housing, transport powers and all the things that drive the economic growth of their area, the aim is to have councils that are able to deliver that for their communities.

The noble Lord asked me about the Electoral Commission, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. I have had two meetings with the Electoral Commission in the last 10 days or so. We have had discussions. I spoke to the Electoral Commission only last week when the announcement came out about the postponement of elections. I have spoken to the commission extensively about the elections Bill, which is coming forward shortly, and we will work very closely together on that Bill. We have also had some very positive discussions around the capacity issues, because the commission had a view that the capacity issues we were raising were around the capacity of election teams; election teams in local authorities, particularly in district councils, are quite small. It is not that capacity that I think councils and councillors were worried about; it is the wider capacity of local authorities to manage such a significant, once-in-a-generation reorganisation alongside these sets of elections.

I hope that has answered all the questions, but I am happy to take any more.

20:16

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pack, referred to the some 250 councillors who could face seven-year terms under the Government’s plans. Four of the county councils are majority-Tory led, and they last held elections in May 2021. Noble Lords will have to cast their minds right back: Boris Johnson was Prime Minister; since then, we have had two Tory Prime Ministers and, thus far, one Labour Prime Minister; Suella Braverman had only recently been sacked as the Tory Attorney-General—for the first time. Politics is changing fast, and sometimes the Government are asking electoral officials to act fast also. The Gorton and Denton by-election is going to be held on 26 February, on the fastest possible timetable. As a measure of the degree of change in that, I note that, at the last election, the Labour Party got more than 50% of the vote, and a notional calculation for 2019 gives the Labour Party 67% of the vote in that seat, but the bookmakers today have the Green Party as favourite to win that by-election. With politics moving so fast, is this not a particularly dangerous time to be postponing elections and not giving voters a democratic say? Is this not damaging and dangerous, threating the whole concept of democracy by taking it away from people when there is so obviously a desperate desire for change?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am certainly not calling the result of the Denton by-election at this stage. I do not think we even have a candidate yet, so I think it would be unwise.

In response to the noble Baroness’s question on timing, we have been clear throughout that elections should go ahead unless there is strong justification otherwise. Many of the local elections that are due to take place in May will take place. We were very clear that if councils said they had no reason for postponement then we would listen to them, but that where a council voiced genuine concerns—we had significant evidence from those councils whose elections have been postponed—we would take it seriously. To make sure that everyone knows that this was not a rubber-stamp exercise, where anyone who asked for a postponement got it, there were two councils where we did not think the evidence was sufficient, Nuneaton and Bedworth and Pendle, and their elections are going ahead. We do not do this lightly. However, with an unprecedented reorganisation going on in local government, it is right that we took account of what local government was saying to us.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

Like my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook, as a councillor in central Bedfordshire I have already been through unitisation. That did not involve cancelling elections; in fact, we had an additional election after two years. We were able to do that because we had a proper plan that was locally developed and supported by residents. Is not the reason that elections are being cancelled that the Government do not have plan, do not know what is happening, and have not been communicating to councils and leaders what they should do or when they should do it? It is taking too long, and we end up in the difficult situation faced by council leaders of not knowing. Can the Minister commit that the Government will provide a clear timetable, as asked for by my noble friend, for local government reorganisation and for when elections will be held? Democracy matters; it is from where local government derives its authority.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am afraid it was the failure to bite the bullet and get on with this kind of radical reorganisation for decades that has meant that we have decided that we cannot go on any longer with a broken system. Services in local government are not sustainable, the finance system is not working, and we now need to make sure that we get local government on the firm footing it deserves, that we are distributing funding more fairly, and that councils are the right size and shape to be effective to deliver efficiently key public services, as the public that we serve deserve, and drive forward our economy, housing and transport in the way that we all want to see, right across the country. The current system results in confusion and waste. We have got to get on with the job. We have had to take this unprecedented step to make sure that we are taking account of what local government tells us about its need for resources.

On the timetable, I have just set it out again. I do not understand the confusion about the timetable. We have been very clear about it and we will move ahead with that. Local authorities are working, and have worked, very well within the timetable we have set out. We work closely with them on that, as on all the other matters related to the reorganisation.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I too have been through this process. We are 15 months out from the next lot of elections and the new authorities, but these authorities do not yet know on what geography they are going to be based. To take Essex, it could be five or three, and the same is true with Norfolk and Suffolk, which could be three, four or five. Once you know that geography, I know, and I think leaders who went through what I went through will know, that one year is not a long time to deliver that change, particularly if you do not know what it is going to be at this time.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As I stated earlier, decisions on the six devolution priority areas will be made by March 2026. Their geographies will be decided by then. We are going out to consultation on the remaining 14 areas, and it is important that we do that. The local authorities have come forward with their proposals. We want to find out what the local views on them are, so they have gone out to consultation. That consultation closes in May 2026, and we will make decisions on the geography of those remaining authorities before the Summer Recess.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The Minister said, and I very much agree, that the officers, staff and structures of the councils that have asked for extensions are extremely stretched—I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. One of the alternatives would have been for the Government to provide the resources to ensure that those councils were able both to hold elections and to continue with the plans for reorganisation. Can the Minister say whether the Government made any calculation for what allocation of funds from the Government here in Westminster would have been necessary to allow those elections to go ahead? What would the cost have been if those resources had been provided?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

With respect to the noble Baroness, putting in new resources at this stage would not really help matters. Councils have their programmes of work under way. They are all working very hard on the reorganisation programme, as they are on the transition. They have an enormous job to do on working out the transition for key public services and on how they are going to drive growth and housing programmes going forward and put new resources into that. When you have new councillors and council officers coming in, it takes quite some time for them to get up to speed and be able to deliver at pace. Councils have considered that very carefully and will have made their own decisions. That is why we had 29 of them submit requests to postpone their elections.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

As there is still time, I will come back on a couple of things that the Minister said. The Minister spoke of the need for fundamental reform. Can the Minister answer the following questions that I have asked previously? What real additional powers, and what funding, will come to local government from the Government? Secondly, the Minister said that local government funding was not sustainable, so why, through the Government’s unfair funding proposals, will many councils suffer some of the sharpest cuts that they have seen?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The fair funding formula that we announced this year has given local government a significant increase in funding. Having spent the 17 years that I was a council leader cutting budgets every year, I know that has been a welcome change for some of our councils.

On the new powers that local councils will get, I know that we are in the process of considering the English devolution Bill and that we will debate it tomorrow afternoon. The seven areas of competence that are included in that are just the starting point for devolution. We want to see a widespread devolution of things that are currently decided in Whitehall; we want to see them being decided in local areas by local people. Once those combined authorities are established, the mayors will be able to apply for further powers that they see as necessary for their areas. It is important that those are driven by mayors. We have seen that existing mayoral areas have different needs. Some areas have a much greater need for powers on skills, for example, while others have greater need for powers on health and transport, and it can be all three. It is very important that that is driven at a local level. The very wide-ranging competences that we have set out in the English devolution Bill will enable local governments to take the powers that they need to drive their local areas forward. That is a huge move forward, and I welcome it.

House adjourned at 8.28 pm.