This coming Thursday, we hit an important civic milestone, the first local elections since the 2024 General Election. On the first day of May, 1,641 council seats will be up for grabs across 24 local authorities, including 14 county councils and eight unitary authorities, all in England. Most of these seats were last contested at the 2021 local elections.
Alongside council seats, there will also be six mayoral elections, including the first election of this type for the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire. To further add intrigue, the first Parliamentary by-election of the Starmer Government will also take place in Runcorn and Helsby, after the now former Labour MP Mike Amesbury infamously assaulted a local constituent.
While it’s not the biggest set of elections, (with nine areas sitting out due to government reorganisation), millions of people will still have their say, and these contests will set the tone for the rest of the year and beyond. Journalists and political pundits have, and will continue to, use these results to speculate about which party is up or down, and fuelling political intrigue in Westminster.
But actually, that’s a bit of a distraction.
The purpose of these elections is about choosing representatives at the closest level of government to you. While often overshadowed compared to MPs, Councillors in many ways have a more direct impact to your life, especially if they end up leading the Council. Your local representatives could dictate key local services that you use every day, from fixing that infuriating pothole across your street, from how often your bin gets collected, to how much Council Tax is set, and how they spend it, including on local amenities. Planning is also a key responsibility, notwithstanding Labour’s attempts to centralise it.
In the thousands of doors I’ve knocked, it is still often the local issues that gets voters most agitated, and for those lucky enough to be in an area with an election, your choice will matter. Sure, many voters will use their vote as a protest related to national issues, (bad news for Labour), and voting based on national ‘vibes’ also explains partly why the Conservatives are defending so many seats, given the vaccine bounce of 2021.
But I hope there is also a real consideration about the direct person you might be voting for. Wards are much smaller than a constituency for a MP. A voter, quite reasonably, should expect a diligent campaigner to have at least tried to engage their patch leading up to the election, perhaps via a leaflet introducing themselves, but ideally a door knock and a decent conversation on what they will do.
For Councillors defending their seats, residents deserve to be shown some demonstrative record for their years of service. Have they actually fulfilled their promises? Have they bothered to engage with residents in non-voting years? People are reasonable, we are aware that there are limits to a power of a single Councillor, but honesty about difficult decisions and having the sincerity of at least trying to serve their community, can count for a lot.
For democracy to work well, representatives who do good work and stay close to the residents they represent via unglamorous but often vital hard work, should be recognised. It is a real pity therefore that local elections often have abysmal turnouts, typically less than half of a General Election. Sometimes turnouts can drop to below 25%, and Council by-elections can be even worse.
Voting holds candidates accountable, but there is an additional benefit. It can act as the first step to being engaged in local issues, triggering a flicker of curiosity on why some things are the way they are, and can lead to a larger spark to want to do something about it too. That’s how we collectively improve our neighbourhood and drives better policy making. This is clearly much needed in a period where cynicism is growing ever higher.
It’s up to us to take all elections seriously, to look closely at who’s standing and most importantly, to vote if you have the chance this year.
