This section provides short updates to keep councillors informed.
Letter to the Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
Cllr Stephen Atkinson, Leader of the Reform UK Group
In October, I asked the Secretary of State directly whether the Government intended to postpone scheduled local elections.
He told us that democracy must be protected at all costs.
He then pushed ahead with postponement.
When I continued to raise this at every opportunity, my concerns were not taken seriously. I make no apology. When democratic accountability is placed at risk, silence is not an option.
Now the Government has been forced into retreat. Its decision has been withdrawn. Reform UK’s legal costs will be paid. The position we took from the outset has been completely vindicated.
Let us be clear about what happened.
Thirty councils.
4.6 million voters.
Scheduled elections placed in doubt, then postponed.
Not because of war.
Not because of national emergency.
Not because of constitutional necessity.
Because it was politically inconvenient.
It was presented as administrative practicality. It was defended as capacity management. It collapsed under legal advice and the prospect of judicial scrutiny, and it failed the basic test of democratic principle.
And while ministers cancelled elections, predominantly in areas controlled by Labour, councils paid the price.
Returning Officers were forced into chaos. Electoral teams were left planning for polls that might not happen. Candidates selected in good faith were left in limbo, unsure whether to keep campaigning, whether they would even have an election to fight, and whether the effort and cost of standing would simply be wiped away by a ministerial decision.
Now councils are expected to pick up the pieces at speed and deliver elections on a compressed timetable, absorbing disruption and cost that were entirely avoidable, on top of severe financial pressure and major structural reform.
At the LGA, Reform UK was the only group office to publish a formal statement and the Party pursued this all the way to the High Court. When others stayed silent, we chose principle.
We have seen before what happens when institutions stay quiet, when awkward questions are dismissed as inconvenient, and when reputation management takes priority over the public interest. Silence does not contain damage. It compounds it.
Silence when democracy is being tampered with is not neutrality. It is complicity.
Those who supported postponement will now answer to voters. Those who chose not to defend the principle of democracy when it was under pressure must explain why.
Serious questions now arise for the Secretary of State. A decision of this magnitude, withdrawn at the eleventh hour, is no minor error. He must publish all the legal advice, and if what he did was unlawful then he must reflect carefully on his position.
Elections are not a favour granted by ministers. They are a right held by the public.
The Government tried to defer the electorate’s say. It failed.
The elections will proceed in May 2026, as they should have all along.
The voters will deliver their verdict.
Cllr Stephen Atkinson, Leader of the Reform UK Group
Elections should take place when they are scheduled, not when those in power decide it is convenient to hold them.
That is a basic democratic principle. The independent Electoral Commission has been clear that capacity constraints are not a legitimate reason to delay long-planned elections, that extending mandates risks damaging public confidence, and that asking sitting councils to decide when they next face voters creates a conflict of interest.
These are statements of democratic principle, not partisan argument.
The LGA seeks wherever possible to operate on a consensual basis. Unfortunately, on this matter no shared position was reached, and therefore, the Reform UK Group believes it is necessary to set out its own position clearly.
Democracy is often described as depending on the consent of those who lose elections, but that rests on a deeper assumption: that elections themselves are guaranteed. Consent has meaning only if a contest takes place. When the act of holding elections becomes discretionary, that safeguard is quietly bypassed.
With campaigns under way and candidates selected, voters are now being left uncertain about whether scheduled elections will happen at all, a situation the Electoral Commission has described as unprecedented.
Democracy rarely disappears in one dramatic moment. It erodes a step at a time, and before you know it you have moved a very long way. First came delays to the May 2025 elections, followed by the recent postponement of the inaugural mayoral elections, and now language from the Government that treats electoral timetables as flexible, to the point where the right of millions of people to be represented through elections can no longer be taken for granted, including at a general election.
The right to vote was hard fought and hard won, including by women who campaigned for decades for equal participation. Elections should proceed as promised, and democratic accountability should not be deferred.