'Southend will be having elections in May'

Southend's Labour council leader Daniel Cowan has said: "This council will be having elections; this council has never considered cancelling elections."

The government invited 63 English councils to request cancelling this May's local elections by Thursday if they were struggling to carry out local government reorganisation (LGR) as well.

Southend-on-Sea City Council's members unanimously backed elections going ahead, which will be for a third of the unitary authority's seats, at an extraordinary council meeting on Monday, brought by Reform UK.

Cowan told the BBC last week he would not be putting in a request or writing to government.

It is being proposed that the mixture of unitary councils in Southend and Thurrock, and the two-tier county council and district council system in the rest of Essex, is replaced with between three and five all-purpose unitary councils.

That had led to consultations about elections under the current system being cancelled while that reorganisation takes place.

Southend's Reform UK councillor Daniel Nelson said the government "had created ambiguity" and he was "deeply concerned" about whether the city council would have elections in May.

Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Collins said: "There is a clear conflict of interest in asking existing councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters."

But Cowan told the council chamber: "We've been clear from the very beginning [that] this administration will not be postponing any elections."

Last week, Basildon Borough Council's Labour-led administration agreed to write to central government to back the cancellation of the elections. It is due to hold elections for a third of its council seats in May.

Council leader Gavin Callaghan said last week: "We are giving the people of this borough one big powerful council.

"We are removing the inefficiency, the bureaucracy, the duplication that exists with the two-tier system. It is gone with local government reorganisation."

Basildon's Labour group argued they did not have the time to hold elections alongside the task of LGR.

A report by council officers said there was a "risk of delay or failure" in carrying the biggest reshape of local government in Essex in half a century if elections were held.

But opponents accused Callaghan of cancelling democracy.

Those arguing against that say elections to the proposed new unitary councils are expected to take place in May 2027 ahead of the current local authorities ceasing to exist in 2028.

Southend City Council, like Basildon, is in "no overall control", meaning no political party has a majority by itself. Labour runs Southend with the Liberal Democrats and Independents.

Conservative councillor James Moyies told the meeting: "I have no doubt that if Labour had a majority they would be cancelling our elections as well."

Cowan retorted that cancelling elections while reorganising councils was "a Conservative idea" and that local elections had been cancelled under the previous government.

The Conservative opposition leader James Courtenay told the chamber it was "a chaotic restructuring" and the Labour government was "pushing councils into an impossible timetable".

The Labour council leader responded that "LGR is a huge undertaking... our officers are stretched to the limit".

He added that Southend was in a "more fortunate position" compared to other authorities, with 1,800 staff compared to about 400 at Basildon.

Thurrock Council's cabinet is meeting on Tuesday evening to decide whether to request its elections get cancelled in May.

Council leaders do not need to hold a public meeting; they can write to the government unilaterally.

It is understood the Conservative leader of Essex County Council, Kevin Bentley, will send a letter to central government this week.

"The question of whether elections are cancelled or not should be up to the government, not Essex County Council," he said.

Bentley told the last full council meeting he would not be requesting that last year's postponed county elections should be cancelled again.

Councils themselves cannot cancel a scheduled election — the final decision rests with the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government.

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