The British local elections of 2025: the maps they are a-changing

In what will likely be the last ever county council elections in the UK- the plan towards unitarisation of remaining 2-tier county councils is still in motion - there was a historic sea change.

This came, first and foremost, in the Conservative Party- the traditionally dominant party of the shire counties - losing control of every single council it won control of in 2021; even in wealthy Buckinghamshire they failed to obtain overall control, if only by 1 seat, and in Buckinghamshire they did not poll 50% or above in any division, not even Beaconsfield or Gerrards Cross & Denham where detached houses with seven-figure values are the norm rather than the exception, and the only other council where they remained the largest party was Northumberland. The post-COVID bounce they experienced in 2021 when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister more than unravelled - in County Durham they only held 1 seat and in some councils, even those where they have been in control more often than not since the inaugural 2-tier county council elections of 1973, they were reduced to single figures in terms of council seats won. A notable example of this is Kent, where having won 58 seats out of 81 in 2021 they were reduced to only 5, and 3 of these were in the wealthy, old money Tonbridge & Malling district. The only towns large enough to be allocated at least 2 county council divisions (or 3 seats on ex-county unitary councils) the Conservatives won all the divisions within said town were Bingham, Droitwich Spa, Dronfield, Hoddesdon, Lytham St Anne's, Morpeth, Ponteland, Potters Bar, Rickmansworth, and Wisbech. All of these towns have significantly higher than average levels of outright owner-occupation, a long-standing history of "old money" affluence, or both. In Lincolnshire, where at the last general election the Conservatives won 6 out of the 8 parliamentary constituencies (counting Rutland & Stamford) there at a time when the Conservatives won only 121 seats overall, the Conservatives plummeted from 54 council seats to just 14 and long-serving council leader Martin Hill only narrowly held his seat. They only gained one division across the councils up for election this year, namely Witney North & East from Labour in Oxfordshire, and the only other position they won from another party, in fact, was the mayoralty of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, won by Paul Bristow from Labour (the previous incumbent, Nik Johnson, did not stand for re-election) 10 months after he lost Peterborough to Labour at the last general election.

Labour suffered a drubbing as well, losing Doncaster heavily to Reform UK and failing to obtain even the status of official opposition on any other council up for election other than Oxfordshire. Even in County Durham which had been a Labour stronghold for almost a century before Labour lost overall control there in 2021, Labour finished 4th in terms of council seats, being reduced to just 4 seats and County Durham Council leader Carl Marshall lost his seat. They were wiped out in Devon, even in Exeter where absurdly, Labour won the most votes across the Exeter divisions of Devon County Council but failed to win a single division. In the traditionally marginal county of Staffordshire, Labour held only one seat, that of Burton East, and only narrowly. It was in their traditional heartlands that Labour lost the most divisions, a notable example being Labour failing to win a single one of the Stevenage divisions, even though Stevenage Borough Council has been under Labour control since the inaugural 2-tier elections of 1973. Labour only gained 8 divisions across England, specifically 3 in Oxfordshire, 2 in Hertfordshire, 1 in Cambridgeshire, 1 in Leicestershire, and 1 in Warwickshire. The majority of Labour's holds were in cities or towns with at least one university (the fact many universities are located in metropolitan boroughs, London boroughs, or unitary authorities that were separated from county councils in 1996) which is a key factor in why the city of Canterbury was the only city or town large enough to be allocated at least 2 county council divisions where Labour held all the divisions. In many cases the county council's university town/city was in fact the only one where Labour won any divisions at all this year (e.g. in Lincolnshire Labour only won divisions in Lincoln and in Worcestershire Labour only won divisions in Worcester). On the other hand, Labour did hold 3 of the 4 mayoralties they were defending, although in all 3 cases (Doncaster, North Tyneside, and West of England), they only narrowly held off challenges from Reform UK. 

It was Reform UK's surge from nowhere (and I mean it literally - they won no seats at all in county council/ex-county unitary council elections of 2021) that proved to be the election story of the night. They won the most seats of those that were up for election, namely 677, and won control of 10 councils, namely County Durham, Derbyshire, Doncaster, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, and West Northamptonshire, and became the largest party in Cornwall, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. They also won the newly mayoralties of Greater Lincolnshire and Hull & East Yorkshire; notably in the former case with former Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who defected to Reform UK earlier this year. In the Runcorn & Helsby by-election that took place the same day, it was another former Conservative, Sarah Pochin (she was the Conservative candidate in the now abolished constituency of Bolton South East in 2017), who won the seat for Reform UK, by just 6 votes, the lowest ever margin of victory in a British by-election since universal suffrage was introduced in 1918 (the previous record low was 57 votes in the Berwick-upon-Tweed by-election of 1973, which coincidentally was also part of a surge for a smaller party, namely the Liberals). Of the 14 aforementioned councils, only 2 of these (Cornwall and Kent) are south of a line stretching from the Wash to the Bristol Channel. This happened even though the highest overall vote share Reform UK achieved on any council was 41.2% in Staffordshire, and only a minority of divisions saw Reform UK poll more than 50% of the votes cast (e.g. in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Sutton-in-Ashfield, and Worksop in the former coalfields of Nottinghamshire). Their surge primarily came from working-class voters dissatisfied with both the Conservatives and Labour and who had elected councillors and MPs from both of those parties in the last decade, but also significantly from retirees living in seaside towns and villages that have fallen on hard times, a key example being Reform UK winning every division in the boundaries East Lindsey, Lincolnshire, and in the boundaries of Thanet, Kent. This mirrors, on a much larger scale, UKIP surges on many of the same councils in 2013 (Kent and Lincolnshire in particular), although shortly after those elections the UKIP group in Lincolnshire collapsed due to infighting, and the same happened to the UKIP group who won control of Thanet District Council in 2015. Will the same fate happen to the Reform UK groups that have won majority control?

The Liberal Democrats proved to be the other success story, winning the second most seats up for election- the first time ever in the history of 2-tier county council elections in the UK that they managed to achieve a top two finish in terms of seats won by political party. They won overall control of Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Shropshire for the very first time, and it was also the first time they had achieved largest party status in Gloucestershire and Hertfordshire, and they won largest party status in Wiltshire for the first time in 28 years; their wins were by no means mainly in affluent, well-educated towns and cities although once again this is where they performed best. Only in Nottinghamshire did they lose seats overall, when Steve Carr, the sole Liberal Democrat elected to Nottinghamshire County Council in 2021, held his seat as an Independent with the Liberal Democrats not winning any other divisions in Nottinghamshire. The only other Liberal Democrat losses this year were in Chesterfield and the division of Hemel Hempstead St Paul's.

The Green Party more than doubled the number of seats they won in 2021 across county councils and ex-county unitary councils, and for the first time ever won a majority of county council divisions within a particular district, namely the bohemian district of Stroud where they won 6 divisions out of the 11 divisions of Gloucestershire County Council that lie within Stroud. They also won a plurality of divisions within the districts of East Hertfordshire, Malvern Hills, Warwick and Worcester, but only gained 2 coastal divisions (even accounting for the fact that of the 7 county councils whose elections were delayed, 6 have coastlines with Surrey being the only landlocked council of those 7) even though coastal erosion and flooding are becoming serious long-term problems in the UK, and no primarily rural divisions outside Gloucestershire.

Independents and localist parties generally performed poorly, with the Ashfield Independents losing 9 of the 10 seats they won in Nottinghamshire, holding only Hucknall North, and the South Holland independents losing all 3 of their seats in Lincolnshire. Mebyon Kernow lost 2 of the 5 seats it was defending in Cornwall and both the Derwentside Independents and the North East Party lost all their seats in County Durham. However, several local Independents significantly increased their majorities, with ex-Mebyon Kernow councillor Loic Rich achieving the highest majority of any council candidate standing for election or re-election, 59.8% in Truro Tregolls. The personal votes of many politicians standing for political parties were often not enough to hold or gain seats, and few former MPs were successful in gaining council seats, notable exceptions being Ruth George in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire and Dan Rogerson in Bodmin St Mary's & St Leonard, Cornwall.