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Is delaying local elections just making plans for Nigel?
The Independent
|December 20, 2025
Yet another local government shakeup is in progress, but slow delivery risks a democratic deficit
Like asking turkeys if they’d like to postpone Christmas, the government has written to a number of Conservative and Labour local authorities to see if they’d like to push May’s elections back to 2027.
In some cases this means a further postponement for contests that were first due in 2025, meaning those councils will have been unchanged for seven years, somewhat stretching the democratic elastic. Certain new directly elected mayoralties in new merged authorities won’t be chosen by the electorate until 2028. Some say it’s a democratic outrage.
Why is this happening?
This story is from the December 20, 2025 edition of The Independent.
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