Ministers have abandoned plans to delay elections for 30 English local councils, following what it says is new legal advice.
Those 30 councils – a fifth of the overall 136 elections due to take place this year – will now have elections on 7 May as originally planned.
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The elections had been delayed to allow those councils to focus on a massive programme of council mergers across England.
Why has this happened?
The government says it has changed its mind on postponing the elections “in light of recent legal advice”.
Local Government Secretary Steve Reed – who originally took the decision to postpone the elections – said he invited Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, to reconsider the decision following the new legal advice.
Mr Pennycook decided that the elections should now go ahead as initially planned.
The government says it will not make that new legal advice public.
Mr Reed has written to council leaders confirming the reversal, offering an extra £63m of funding to help with local government reorganisation, and saying civil servants will be in touch to offer further practical support.
The government have said they will pay Reform UK’s legal costs – which Sky News understands is a six-figure sum.
Ministers say they’ll take the “necessary steps” to revoke the legislation that postpones the elections.
What were the plans?
Mr Reed announced in January that 29 councils impacted by local government reorganisation would have their elections postponed. He added a 30th council, Pendle, in February.
It followed Mr Reed’s team in December writing to 63 councils affected by the reorganisation, offering to postpone them if they could provide evidence it would help with reorganisation.
The government had argued holding elections for councils that will soon be abolished is a waste of time and money.
Of those 30 postponements, five – East Sussex, West Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Thurrock – were originally meant to have elections last year, which were postponed to this year.
That meant they would have had elections postponed two years in a row – and councillors there would have served terms of almost seven years, significantly higher than the usual four-year terms.
These councils cover areas of more than three million people.
Ministers had also delayed elections for four new mayors in Norfolk and Suffolk, Hampshire and the Solent, Sussex and Brighton, and Essex.
What had Reform UK said?
Reform UK had mounted a legal challenge to try and prevent the elections being postponed. Reform claims the party would have won many of the elections that are now not going ahead.
The High Court was due to hear the case on 19 and 20 February.
Reform leader Nigel Farage said in a statement: “We took this Labour government to court and won.
“In collusion with the Tories, Keir Starmer tried to stop 4.6 million people voting on May 7th.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) confirmed the government had withdrawn its original decision to postpone the elections.
“Providing certainty to councils about their local elections is now the most crucial thing and all local elections will now go ahead in May 2026,” they said.
What does this mean for the government?
This is the 15th U-turn for the government, according to Sky News’s tally.
It came the same afternoon Sir Keir Starmer told BBC Radio 2 that he would “absolutely” stick to his course following a number of government reversals.
It also came following a bruising two weeks for the prime minister, after he was almost toppled following the Mandelson scandal.
What is local government reorganisation?
In December 2024, then local government secretary Angela Rayner announced the biggest shake-up of councils in England since the 1960s.
The government is reorganising local councils so that all areas have one over-arching council. In practice, this will often mean the merging of several neighbouring councils.
For example, 12 existing councils in Surrey are being merged into two new councils – West Surrey and East Surrey.
They will be the first of the new councils to be elected this May, ahead of being officially set up in April 2027.
(c) Sky News 2026: What’s happening with this year’s local elections in England?
