Councils race to organise elections after U-turn

Councils are working to arrange elections for May after they were reinstated by the government.

The decision followed legal advice amid a challenge to the delays, which had affected 30 authorities - including six across Sussex.

A government spokesperson said providing certainty over local polls on 30 May was now the most crucial priority.

East Sussex County Council (ESCC) warned its workload would intensify with the added demand of organising elections.

A spokesperson for the local authority said councils already faced "huge additional work" as they were undergoing reorganisation.

The government has proposed reforms to replace the two-tier system of district and county councils which exists in many parts of England with new unitary authorities responsible for delivering all council services in their areas.

Votes are now set to take place at district level in Adur, Worthing, Crawley and Hastings, as well as county councils in both East and West Sussex.

On X, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, James MacCleary, described the decision as "a welcome U-turn".

He said it meant the councils could "get back to delivering for residents, be it roads or SEND", referring to provisions for children with special educational needs.

MacCleary said the government had played "hokey cokey" with the plans - claiming repeated changes had seen local democracy "shaken all about".

Jess Brown-Fuller, the Lib Dem MP for Chichester, told BBC Radio Sussex the government had cancelled the elections because they were "running scared" of Reform UK.

Party leader Sir Ed Davey said the government needed to be "held to account for its decisions" and the chaos it had caused.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Haywards Heath, he said the Liberal Democrats were considering using a parliamentary procedure called a Humble Address to force the government to publish the legal advice it received.

"It's not a way to run our great country," he said. "It's not a way to run our democracy.

"They shouldn't have tried to cancel elections in the first place and now they have to be held to account for the chaos they've caused."

Labour leader of Adur District Council Jeremy Gardner said the change was a "suprise", but not a "headache" for the local authority.

"We have been preparing for an election," he told BBC Radio Sussex.

He urged residents to "please vote for people who will genuinely put the work in and improve your community".

Gardner said Labour was "definitely not" fearful of the challenge by Reform UK.

"We are confident we will be standing on our record. We are a council that is getting things done. We are supporting people struggling with the cost of living, fixing council homes, planting trees," he continued.

Leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage called the government U-turn a victory for his party and the millions of people whose vote was "being denied".

"We've won," he said. "It is called democracy. We have stood up for it."

Reform UK had launched a legal challenge against the postponement, accusing both Labour and the Tories of conspiring against it to avoid losing votes.

The party's Sussex Weald branch called the reversal "great news".

Julia Hilton, Green Party councillor in Hastings, said Labour was lurching from one U-turn to another.

"Frankly, it has been an utter shambles.

"We were happily working away as a local council getting stuff done - this was imposed on us," she told BBC Radio Sussex.

"We really just want to get on with the job of delivering for people in Hastings."

Duncan Crow, who leads the Conservatives on Crawley Borough Council, said the government was "making a complete shambles out of their local government reorganisation and devolution, that nobody asked for in the first place."

"We were told Sussex Mayor elections would happen this year and then the government suddenly delayed them by two years to 2028," he said.

"We were also told council elections would be delayed so that new unitary council elections would happen in 2027.

"Now they have U-turned on that too."

Additional reporting by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

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