The United Kingdom government has scrapped plans to delay 30 council elections in England after receiving legal advice, following a challenge by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
Local Government Secretary Steve Reed had earlier approved postponing the ballots until 2027 as part of a major reorganisation that will abolish some local authorities and replace them with new unitary councils.
However, Reform UK launched a legal challenge against the plan to delay the May elections, with the case due to be heard in the High Court on Thursday.
The move to reverse the decision was welcomed by opposition parties, who had described the delays as undemocratic.
Reform leader Nigel Farage, writing on X, said: “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. Only Reform UK fights for democracy.”
Asked by BBC London if Reed should resign, Farage said “if a government minister does something illegal, they really ought to resign”.
His remarks came after he claimed the decision to approve the election delays was “clearly unlawful”.
The government has agreed to pay Reform’s legal costs relating to the proceedings, which a party source said would be at least £100,000.
In a letter to council leaders, Reed said the government had written to the High Court to confirm he had withdrawn the original decision.
The statement said, “The secretary (of) state invited the housing minister, who was not involved in the initial decision-making, to reconsider the position afresh on a very urgent basis recognising the pressing timescales involved.
“The housing minister has decided that the elections should proceed in May 2026.”
Reed acknowledged that many of the councils undergoing reorganisation had “voiced genuine concerns about the pressure they are under” during the reforms.
He added that the government would provide an extra £63 million to the 21 areas affected.
The planned overhaul would replace the two-tier system of district and county councils in many parts of England with single-tier unitary authorities responsible for all local services.
A total of 136 local elections were originally scheduled across England for May. Of these, 63 councils were eligible to request postponements because of the reorganisation, and in January it was announced that 30 would be delayed. Polls in five of those areas had already been postponed from May 2025.
The government had previously argued that some councils were concerned about their ability to conduct elections while undergoing structural changes, as well as the cost of holding votes for authorities due to be abolished.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “Following legal advice, the government has withdrawn its original decision to postpone 30 local elections in May.
“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.”
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said his party “fought tooth and nail to stop this stitch-up and the government has been forced into a humiliating U-turn”.
He added: “We cannot allow the government to cancel elections on a whim ever again.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch described the episode as “predictable chaos from a useless government that cannot make basic decisions”.
She said her party had opposed the “unnecessary cancellations at every opportunity”, writing on X: “This is the right decision.
“A one-year delay to allow new councils to be re-organised is one thing. Two years was always too much.”
Green Party leader Zack Polanski said he was “pleased the government has done another U-turn”, describing the attempt to delay elections as “part of a disturbing authoritarian trend of this caretaker prime minister”.
Laura Lock, deputy chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said election teams had “lost months of essential planning time” and now faced “an uphill struggle” to catch up.
Among the councils initially given permission to delay their elections, 15 were Labour-controlled, four were led by the Conservatives, one by the Liberal Democrats and 10 had no overall control.
