2024 Local, Mayoral and PCC Elections

There is just 18 days until millions of folks across England and Wales have the chance to cast ballots, in the final large-scale say of opinion before the General Election.

Thursday May 2nd sees 2,655 seats be contested across the UK, with 107 Councils and a few others with By-Elections, having ballots which most were contested in 2021 and some being done on New Boundaries.

According to BBC analysis, the Tories are defending 989, Labour 973, Lib Dems 418, Independents and Others 135, the Greens 107 and Localists 35, with 2021 being a very good year for a sitting Government as a result of the Vaccine Bounce.

There are also 10 Mayoral Contests, the London Assembly and 37 Police and Crime Commissioner seats up for grabs.

London, the West Midlands and Tees Valley and the new Mayoralties in East Midlands (Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire) and York and North Yorkshire are the key one’s to watch.

To see what polls you have in your area, do see and search in the postcode checker below and no doubt this will be an extremely fascinating set of polls.

The councils up for election are mainly in urban areas in the North of England, across parts of the Midlands, and in the commuter belt surrounding London.

Most of the seats were last contested in May 2021 - when Boris Johnson was the prime minister; the Covid vaccination programme was well under way; and partygate had yet to be reported.

It was a good election result for the Conservatives. They gained control of 13 more councils and added over 200 councillors - although not all these councils are up in 2024. Labour did not fare so well - losing 300 seats and control of eight councils.

The Green Party made almost 90 gains but the Liberal Democrats made almost no progress, adding just eight seats.

Local elections 2024: Is there an election in my area?

Use our lookup to see if there is an election in your area and who you can vote for on 2 May

www.bbc.com

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

They're expected to be a bloodbath for the Tories: firstly because their national polling is currently dire, and second because, as mentioned above, the vaccine bounce among other things made the Tories do better than expected in 2021, so improved on already high numbers, but this means the only way really for them is downwards now.

Khan is looking set for re-election despite the FPTP system change, mainly because Susan Hall is even worse than Shaun Bailey was 3 years ago. Andy Street maybe a tougher task for Labour to beat however.

brad465 said:

They're expected to be a bloodbath for the Tories: firstly because their national polling is currently dire, and second because, as mentioned above, the vaccine bounce among other things made the Tories do better than expected in 2021, so improved on already high numbers, but this means the only way really for them is downwards now.

Khan is looking set for re-election despite the FPTP system change, mainly because Susan Hall is even worse than Shaun Bailey was 3 years ago. Andy Street maybe a tougher task for Labour to beat however.

Click to expand...

I understand that Andy Street is giving minimal if any reference to being a Tory. He sees a greater chance of re-election on his own record than as the Tory candidate.

Houchen out.

317 forever said:

I understand that Andy Street is giving minimal if any reference to being a Tory. He sees a greater chance of re-election on his own record than as the Tory candidate.

Click to expand...

Same with high Viz Houchen in tees valley. He doesn't follow any whip, he says, despite being enabled by his mate Johnson and voting Tory 19 times in the lord's since arriving!

What is he ashamed of?

DarloRich said:

Houchen out.


Same with high Viz Houchen in tees valley. He doesn't follow any whip, he says, despite being enabled by his mate Johnson and voting Tory 19 times in the lord's since arriving!

What is he ashamed of?

Click to expand...

Some say he follows no rules, regulations or laws either!

317 forever said:

I understand that Andy Street is giving minimal if any reference to being a Tory. He sees a greater chance of re-election on his own record than as the Tory candidate.

Click to expand...

Yes he is really flapping now, promising about a billion miles of new railway and tramway lines by 2040. His propaganda seems to use green a lot and hardly any blue, how strange!

birchesgreen said:

Yes he is really flapping now, promising about a billion miles of new railway and tramway lines by 2040. His propaganda seems to use green a lot and hardly any blue, how strange!

Click to expand...

Even stranger considering his partner is a Tory MP.

brad465 said:

They're expected to be a bloodbath for the Tories: firstly because their national polling is currently dire, and second because, as mentioned above, the vaccine bounce among other things made the Tories do better than expected in 2021, so improved on already high numbers, but this means the only way really for them is downwards now.

Khan is looking set for re-election despite the FPTP system change, mainly because Susan Hall is even worse than Shaun Bailey was 3 years ago. Andy Street maybe a tougher task for Labour to beat however.

Click to expand...

This is what I can’t understand with the local elections

My local conservative councillor is pretty good. He’s young so still at the stage where he is visible and tries to get things done. He isn’t one of those old councillors who is a council lifer who you never see and just gets re-elected every 4 years for decades.

But if you follow the national media narrative I should vote him out and vote in the unknown Labour candidate because of Rishi, Boris, Partygate etc etc. It makes no sense to me.

The local MP, who is standing down anyway, is a different story…

Busaholic said:

Even stranger considering his partner is a Tory MP.

Click to expand...

I saw him deliver a leaflet to my house during the last election for Street, i only caught a glimpse but you can't mistake that "hair" for anyone else

Andyh82 said:

I should vote him out and vote in the unknown Labour candidate because of Rishi, Boris, Partygate etc etc.

Click to expand...

end of discussion.

Andyh82 said:

This is what I can’t understand with the local elections

My local conservative councillor is pretty good. He’s young so still at the stage where he is visible and tries to get things done. He isn’t one of those old councillors who is a council lifer who you never see and just gets re-elected every 4 years for decades.

But if you follow the national media narrative I should vote him out and vote in the unknown Labour candidate because of Rishi, Boris, Partygate etc etc. It makes no sense to me.

The local MP, who is standing down anyway, is a different story…

Click to expand...

It's a symptom of the trivialisation of local government and its subornment to the punch and judy show of Westminster which is probably itself a symptom of the death of local journalism along with the elevation of political journalists at Westminster at the expense of other journalistic roles (which is part of the reason every story comes with a political lens because its being covered by a political journalist).

This is quite corrosive because local government is, in reality, the wing of the State that most people probably have the most interaction with on a day to day basis. Local government empty the bins, sweep the streets, maintain the roads, subsidise the buses, organise social care, etc etc. Obviously other people will have more interaction with other wings of the State (someone who is seriously ill will clearly deal more with the NHS for instance). But on the average day for the average person its probably local government they have the most contact with.

And yet what is most coverage of the upcoming local elections about? Is it about the coming crisis of funding? The slow but steady transition of local governments becoming care providers who happen to empty bins on the side? The parlous state of many even essential council services? Nope, the coverage is about what it can tell us about the upcoming General Election and how many seats Labour may win and the Tories may lose.

I've seen precious little coverage of what these candidates are actually standing for, their records if they're seeking re-election, or how they might change things if they're trying to win a seat. National journalists don't care (and, to be fair, I'm not sure that's their job) and local journalists are so thin on the ground they can basically only cover the biggest races such as the Mayoral elections (and even then it feels half-hearted).

We urgently need a serious discussion about what we want local government to do, how we wish to fund it and what the governance structures should be (should we have fewer councillors but paid at a level that means they can actually do it full-time for instance helping to avoid it being a side gig for the already wealthy or the retired)?

But that seems unlikely to happen. National media don't care about local government beyond what it tells them about national elections and Westminster will never easily give up the catastrophic levels of centralisation that we now live with (for instance Central Government loves that Councils now have to bid for funding from the various levelling up funds, will they stop doing that? Feels unlikely...).

As to your actual problem, I will disagree with @DarloRich here (I'm already preparing my bunker for incoming fire) on it being an "end of discussion issue", in local elections I always try and vote for the candidate that I think will do the best job locally. So if that happens to be a Tory I would say hold your nose and vote for the candidate that will do the best job. Personally I am in the easy position of only voting on a Police and Crime Commissioner and Metro Mayor (Lord Houchen, see Private Eyes ad nauseum). Both Tory, both mired in scandal so it's an easy decision to vote for Labour candidates instead.

But if we were having full elections here I would be torn. One of my councillors is Labour and I'm content with him so that's an easy vote, the other is a Tory but I know she does a good job at keeping on top of local issues and is visible in trying to get things sorted. So do I vote to boot her our because of the party she represents for someone unknown? Usually I'd say no, vote for the candidate you think will do a good job but with the state of the Tory party right now it is harder to stick to my views. If she came to the front door to campaign for my vote I suspect I'd end up telling her "I'd love to vote for you as an Independent but I can't in good conscious when you're a representative of this Tory party".

Thankfully, for me, as I said the decision is easy this time out.

ainsworth74 said:

As to your actual problem, I will disagree with @DarloRich here (I'm already preparing my bunker for incoming fire) on it being an "end of discussion issue", in local elections I always try and vote for the candidate that I think will do the best job locally. So if that happens to be a Tory I would say hold your nose and vote for the candidate that will do the best job. Personally I am in the easy position of only voting on a Police and Crime Commissioner and Metro Mayor (Lord Houchen, see Private Eyes ad nauseum). Both Tory, both mired in scandal so it's an easy decision to vote for Labour candidates instead.

Click to expand...

It is an end of discussion moment. I have never voted Tory and I never will. Ever. They are a disgrace and need flushing away.

This lot aren't even Tories anyway: They are corrupt, lazy, crank right, nationalist, populist chancers and they need to go. I HONESTLY don't know how any one in thier right mind could think of voting for them.

Local Councillors are complicit in the destruction of our public services by advocating for the very polices that cause the problem. They provide the base for the national party and provide the local cover for destructive polices that damage our communities and make lives harder than they should be.

PS don't get me started on Houchen. I will have an aneurism

Busaholic said:

Even stranger considering his partner is a Tory MP.

Click to expand...

I never knew this - an odd couple if ever there was one

DarloRich said:

It is an end of discussion moment. I have never voted Tory and I never will. Ever. They are a disgrace and need flushing away.

Click to expand...

Agreed on the later part and I never intend to vote Tory in a national or regional election. I *might* vote for a Tory councillor, but probably only after seeing them in action (so I might vote to re-elect a Tory councillor that's proven they're not a venal corrupt idiot). Such as the one I mentioned above who is doing a good job but we're only voting on Mayoral and PCC up here and those are, thankfully, a very easy decision when it comes to working out how to vote!

ainsworth74 said:

Such as the one I mentioned above who is doing a good job but we're only voting on Mayoral and PCC up here and those are, thankfully, a very easy decision when it comes to working out how to vote!

Click to expand...

I cant compute that they might be doing a good job! I would just assume thier incompetence and corruption simply hadn't reached the surface yet

DarloRich said:

I cant compute that they might be doing a good job! I would just assume thier incompetence and corruption simply hadn't reached the surface yet

Click to expand...

Plenty of them do a good job. Not sure the level of incompetence and corruption varies much between the main political parties as any reader of Private Eye will have noticed.