2022 United Kingdom local elections
Local elections in the United Kingdom will be held on 5 May 2022. These will include elections for all London borough councils, and for all local authorities in Wales and Scotland. Most seats in England were last up for election in 2018 and in Scotland and Wales in 2017. The elections will coincide with the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election. England. Background. In total, 4,411 council seats are being contested in England, including irregular by-elections. Most seats in England up for election in 2022 were last elected in 2018. The exceptions are local authorities  which have undergone recent boundary reviews. In the 2018 local elections, the Labour Party made gains in London at the expense of the Conservative Party, who in turn made gains in the rest of England at the expense of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Few councils changed overall control. Overall, UKIP lost 237 of the 243 seats it had held before the elections. According to the BBC's analysis, the results reflected a national political situation with Labour and the Conservatives "neck-and-neck". County councils. County councils are the upper tier of a two-tier system of local government , with the area each council covers subdivided into district councils with different responsibilities. These are first-past-the-post elections with a mixture of single-member and multi-member electoral divisions. County councils are elected in full every four years, with the last election having been in 2021. However, due to consultations about possible unitarisation, elections for three county councils were postponed to 2022. The government has announced plans to replace the councils with unitary authorities pending Parliamentary approval. Elections to the new Somerset Council will take place in May 2022 as a unitary authority, which will run concurrently with  the district councils until their abolition in April 2023. The North Yorkshire Council will be elected in May 2022, with its councillors serving as county councillors for a year before automatically continuing to serve an additional four-year term as unitary councillors. Cumbria's two new councils will be elected as "shadow authorities" ahead of their creation in 2023. London boroughs. Elections for all councillors in all thirty-two London boroughs will be held in 2022 in line with their normal election schedule. All twenty-five London borough councils which have not had a boundary review since before 2013 will  be elected based on new boundaries. The last elections to London borough councils were held in 2018, which saw Labour win its second-best result in any London election and the Conservatives return their lowest-ever number of councillors in the capital. In 2018, Labour won control of Tower Hamlets council which had previously been under no overall control, but did not gain control of Barnet, Wandsworth or Westminster councils, which the party had targeted. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats gained control of Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames borough councils from the Conservatives. Metropolitan boroughs. There are thirty-six  metropolitan boroughs, which are single-tier local authorities. Thirty-three of them elect a third of their councillors every year for three years, with no election in each fourth year. These councils hold their elections on the same timetable, which includes elections in 2022. Birmingham City Council holds its elections on a four-year cycle from 2018, so is also due to hold an election in 2022. Due to boundary changes, three councils which generally elect their councillors in thirds will elect all of their councillors in 2022. They will then return to the thirds schedule, apart from St Helens  Council, which is moving to all-out elections every four years starting in 2022. Several other boundary reviews have been delayed to 2023 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The scheduled elections in Liverpool in 2022 have been cancelled and instead the city is expected to move to all-out elections from 2023 on new ward boundaries. Election for one third of councillors. By-elections or uncontested wards can cause the seats up for election to be above or below one third of the council. District councils. Election for all councillors. Some councils which elect all their councillors every four years  will do so in 2022. Gosport usually elects its councillors in halves, but all seats will be up for election due to new election boundaries. St. Albans usually elects by thirds but all seats are up on new boundaries. Harrogate was due to elect all its councillors, but the election was cancelled due to the unitarisation of North Yorkshire, with councillors' terms being extended to April 2023, after which the district councils in North Yorkshire will cease to exist. Election for half of councillors. District councils which elect their candidates in halves will do so in 2022. Election for one  third of councillors. District councils which elect by thirds that will hold elections in 2022. Carlisle, Craven and South Lakeland had been due to have a third of councillors up for election but these were cancelled due to the creation of Cumberland, North Yorkshire and Westmorland and Furness Unitary authorities. Unitary authorities. Election for all councillors. Reading Borough Council will have all its councillors elected on new ward boundaries. The new unitary authority Somerset Council will hold its first election under the old Somerset County Council boundaries, with twice as many councillors being elected as previously. Shadow authorities for the  two new unitary authorities replacing Cumbria County Council and its districts will also be elected, as will councillors for the new North Yorkshire Council ahead of its creation in 2023. Election for one third of councillors. Unitary authorities that elect councillors in thirds will do so in 2022. City of London Corporation. The Court of Common Council is the main decision-making body of the City of London Corporation, which governs the City of London. The 100 councillors were elected across twenty-five wards. Elections were due on 18 March 2021, but as a result of the coronavirus pandemic were  delayed to 23 March 2022. Mayors. There will be six local authority mayoral elections and one metropolitan mayoral election. Local authorities. There will also be a referendum in Bristol on whether to continue using the mayor-and-cabinet system or to change to the committee system. Northern Ireland. The next election to the Northern Ireland Assembly will be held on 5 May 2022. Scotland. Councils. Elections will be held for all councillors in all 32 local authorities in Scotland. Local elections in Scotland are conducted by the single transferable vote (STV), which results in the number of seats won by  each party more proportionally reflecting their share of the vote. As a consequence, local elections in Scotland result more often in no overall control and local authorities being governed by minority or coalition administrations. Wales. Elections will be held for all councillors in all 22 local authorities as well as for all community council seats in Wales. In all twenty-two councils, the elections will be contested under new boundaries. This will be the first time Welsh councils can choose between conducting the vote with the current first-past-the-post system or the proportional single transferable vote (STV) system , although practically this will not come into effect until at least 2027, as councils need to give advance notice of such a change.