page_title: UK Independence Party
section_title: Local government
hierarchical_section_title: UK Independence Party / Representatives / Local government
caption_attribution_description: English: UK Independence Party offices in Tunbridge Wells On Lower Green Road. Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells has an office in Rusthall. Also a place for Belgian people to send complaint letters to!! See http://www.neurope.eu/articles/Farage-To-Belgium-/99439.php about Nigel Farage UK Independence MEP problems.
context_page_description: The UK Independence Party is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. As of 2020 it has a single Member of the Senedd. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest UK party in the European Parliament. The party is currently led by Freddy Vachha, with former acting leader Pat Mountain as Deputy Leader.
  UKIP originated as the Anti-Federalist League, a single-issue Eurosceptic party established in London by Alan Sked in 1991. It was renamed UKIP in 1993 but its growth remained slow. It was largely eclipsed by the Eurosceptic Referendum Party until the latter's 1997 dissolution. In 1997, Sked was ousted by a faction led by Nigel Farage, who became the party's preeminent figure. In 2006, Farage officially became leader and under his direction the party adopted a wider policy platform and capitalised on concerns about rising immigration, in particular among the White British working class. This resulted in significant breakthroughs at the 2013 local elections, 2014 European elections, and 2015 general election.
context_section_description: UKIP initially paid little attention to local government elections. However, this changed after Farage observed that building localised strongholds of support in various parts of the country had been the process by which the Liberal Democrats had entered the House of Commons, and that this was a strategy that could benefit UKIP. UKIP subsequently focused on the 2011 local elections, in which it fielded over 1,100 candidates, winning seven and becoming the main opposition in over 100.
  The first UKIP local council election win occurred when one of its members was elected to South Cambridgeshire District Council in 2000. A number of Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Independent local councillors in all four constituent nations of the UK defected to UKIP over subsequent years, with the most recent defections to date (May to July 2013) coming from former Conservative councillors in the London Boroughs of Merton, Richmond upon Thames and Havering, and from Labour in Northampton and North-East Lincolnshire. In May 2013, 33 English and one Welsh council held local elections, with UKIP gaining 139 seats for a total of 147, with significant gains in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Kent.
  In the 2013 local elections, UKIP won 147 seats and established itself as the largest opposition party in six English county councils. At the 2013 and 2014 local elections, UKIP made significant gains to become the fourth largest party in terms of councillors in England, and fifth largest in the UK, with over 300 seats (out of about 21,000). In the 2015 local elections, UKIP took control of Thanet District Council, its first majority control of a council. However, the party lost control later in the year after several of its councillors defected and it lost its majority. UKIP later took back control as a majority after winning the 2016 Northwood ward by-election, taking its number of councillors up to 29. In the 2016 local election, UKIP won 58 council seats, an increase of 25. In the 2017 United Kingdom local elections, UKIP lost all of the seats it was defending but gained one from Labour on Lancashire County Council. In the 
  2019 United Kingdom local elections, UKIP suffered severe losses, with its number of councillors collapsing by 145 to 31, in the districts where votes were held that year. Its worst result was in Thanet where it lost 33 councillors.
caption: UKIP office in Royal Tunbridge Wells
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