Labour has confirmed that a total of 29 council elections scheduled for May will be postponed.Ministers asked 63 councils in England last month if they wanted to delay their elections until 2027 so they could bed in a local government shake-up.Of those councils, 29 have decided to take up the offer and push back elections, affecting around 4.5 million voters.The Government has said the remaining 34 councils also going through reorganisation will still hold local elections in May, meaning the majority will go ahead as planned.
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Councillors in areas where elections are postponed will have their terms extended, the Local Government Secretary has said.Steve Reed told MPs in the Commons: “In areas where elections are postponed, existing councillors will have their terms extended for a short period.“Once the new unitary councils are agreed, we will hold elections to them in 2027.”He added: “To those who say we’ve cancelled all the elections, we haven’t.“To those who say it’s all Labour councils, it isn’t. I’ve asked, I’ve listened, and I’ve acted.“No messing about, no playing politics, just getting on with the job of making local government work better for local people.”Labour’s planned local government shake-up will see two-tier councils combined into single unitary authorities.The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has said streamlining councils will “eliminate confusion and duplication” to allow more cash to be spent on “things the public want”.LATEST DEVELOPMENTS ‘It’s madness!’ Top Tory shreds Chagos deal and hails Donald Trump for ‘forcing Europe to step up’Labour FINALLY backs Britain’s churches as Keir Starmer makes 15th U-turnTreasury set for business rates tax cut as Rachel Reeves targets pubs and hotels with higher billsShadow housing, communities and local government secretary James Cleverly has accused Mr Reed of “putting pressure on councils” to cancel their elections and argued that it is due to “the Labour Party’s collapse in the opinion polls”.Mr Cleverly said: “Why did he write to councils asking them to ask him to cancel the elections? And why, when they didn’t give him the answer that he wanted, did he write to them again asking basically the same question?”Why was his department putting pressure on councils to ask for cancelations as late as last night? I know why. He knows why. We all know why.“It’s because he wants to shift the blame. He wants to say ‘I didn’t make them do it’. He wants a political gotcha.”He is putting councils in an impossible position, squeezing them financially, imposing the cost and disruption of large scale reorganisation on them, making promises about structures, about timescales, about funding, and then reneging on those promises.”Reform UK is taking legal action against the MHCLG over the plans to allow councils to delay elections.On Tuesday, lawyers for Nigel Farage’s party told the High Court in London that if a date for a full hearing could be set relatively quickly, then they would not seek a temporary block on the plans.Julian Blake, representing the MHCLG, said the Secretary of State was content to agree to a “reasonable amount of expedition” in the matter so it could be resolved before March 27 and therefore the application was “unnecessary”.Mr Blake said in written submissions: “The powers that are the subject of the claim are properly a product of primary legislation.“They have been used on many occasions, including for example, to allow for postponement of local elections in areas contemplating and undergoing local government reorganisation.”Timothy Straker KC, representing Reform UK, said in written submissions that the party wanted to ensure that anyone who might want to be associated with the party “should be considered and scrutinised by the claimant well in advance of the election”.A two-day hearing of the legal challenge is expected to begin on February 19.The full list of councils where legislation will be brought forward to postpone elections is: Adur District CouncilBasildon Borough CouncilBlackburn with Darwen CouncilBurnley Borough CouncilCannock Chase District CouncilCheltenham Borough CouncilChorley Borough CouncilCity of Lincoln CouncilCrawley Borough CouncilEast Sussex County CouncilExeter City CouncilHarlow District CouncilHastings Borough CouncilHyndburn Borough CouncilIpswich Borough CouncilNorfolk County CouncilNorwich City CouncilPeterborough City CouncilPreston City CouncilRedditch Borough CouncilRugby Borough CouncilStevenage Borough CouncilSuffolk County CouncilTamworth Borough CouncilThurrock CouncilWelwyn Hatfield Borough CouncilWest Lancashire Borough CouncilWest Sussex County CouncilWorthing Borough Council
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