Minister says elections to ‘zombie councils’ pointless as 23 authorities request delays – UK politics live

Alison McGovern, local government minister, said request to postpone local elections are likely to be approved

Good morning. Before Christmas the government announced that 63 councils in England (there is a full list of them here) would be asked if they wanted to postpone local elections due in May. They are all in areas where local government is being reorganised, and the government said, because reorganisation takes up time and money, some of them might find running elections at the same time difficult. Alison McGovern, the local government minister, wrote to council leaders saying they had until midnight on 15 January (tonight) to reply. The government will take the final decision, but McGovern said, if councils request a delay, it will be minded to agree.

Most councils have now taken a decision and a BBC survey says that 23 of them have decided to ask for a delay, and 34 will let the elections go ahead as planned. The other seven have not said. Max Kendix from the Times has done the same exercise and he says, by the end of the day, he expects 27 councils to have come out in favour of a delay – and ministers to approve all 27 of those applications. He says:

The councils cover more than 5.2 million people and 3.7 million registered voters who will no longer get to choose their local councillors this year.

Almost 600 councillors, including just under 200 Labour councillors, will not have to defend their seat this year. Two thirds of the Labour councils which were asked whether they wanted to delay chose to say that they did, compared with just under a third of Tories.

The Conservatives, who themselves delayed elections in North Yorkshire, Somerset, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, are confused.

On the one hand they won’t stand in the way if their local leaders want delays, but on the other they accuse Labour of being “scared of voters”.

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Source: www.theguardian.com

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