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May’s local elections will be postponed by a year in nine areas of southern England under plans to radically reorganise councils and roll out further devolution.
East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey will all delay their polls as they draw up detailed plans for new authorities.
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the move was part of a “devolution revolution” that would save money by creating larger, more efficient councils to which further powers could be handed down from Westminster.
She also confirmed six new groupings of councils on a “priority” list for devolution deals: Cumbria, Cheshire and Warrington, Norfolk and Suffolk, Greater Essex, Sussex and Brighton, and Hampshire and Solent.
The news comes just weeks after ministers said they were planning the biggest local government shake-up in half a century.
All areas currently under a two-tier council structure, in which district councils provide neighbourhood services such as bin collections and county councils provide social care, are to be radically overhauled.
Ministers intend to scrap all 164 district councils and create new single-tier authorities of about 500,000 people instead.
County councils were in December asked to make initial proposals on the geographies of such a move, including any requests to delay elections while new authorities are set up.
Rayner said she had rejected half those requests, but added that Labour was “not in the business of holding elections for bodies that won’t exist and where we don’t know what will replace them”.
“This would be an expensive and irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ money,” she said.
Responding to the poll delays, Reform UK, the right-wing populist party, accused Labour and the Conservatives of “colluding” to “officially cancel over 5.5mn votes in May”.
Reform, which took the lead in a national poll for the first time this week, had been pinning its hopes on the May elections as it looked to build support on the ground.
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The reorganisation proposals had prompted an immediate backlash after they were published in December’s devolution white paper.
The District Councils’ Network, the sector body, has claimed ministers were creating remote “mega councils” far larger than their equivalents in continental Europe.
There was also unease within Labour ranks about the move.
“I’m not sure they’ve thought this through,” said one senior party official, warning that the shake-up could diminish incentives for Labour’s own activist base by reducing the opportunity to serve as councillors.
“People are angry about it — and it’s unlikely they’re going to campaign, or at least campaign as hard, for the party after it’s scrapped their roles,” said the official.
Kevin Hollinrake, shadow local government secretary, said the reorganisation process had been “massively rushed” and warned there had been “no attempt” to seek consensus on the ground.
“Local residents have not been consulted,” he said. “Council leaders have a ‘gun to their head’ from the Labour government.”
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