Elections should be cancelled, says Harlow Council

Harlow Council has asked government to postpone its upcoming elections because of the pressures of reorganising local authorities.

Conservative leader Dan Swords told Local Government Minister Alison McGovern that preparing for the shake-up of councils was "unprecedented in its scale, pace, and complexity".

Labour-led Basildon and Thurrock have already requested that elections be cancelled for the same reason.

All councils in Essex are due to be abolished in 2028 and replaced with somewhere between three and five all-purpose unitary authorities.

Elections for the new councils are expected in 2027.

Westminster had already told some councils in England they would agree to postponing elections because of the major shake-up to local government.

Swords said Harlow and other councils were involved "in a fundamental restructuring" that involved "the comprehensive redesign of governance, financial, workforce, ICT, legal, contract, landlord, and democratic functions responsible for stewarding billions of pounds of public expenditure each year."

Opposition parties including Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats have called for local elections to take place arguing not holding them is undemocratic.

The Conservatives have a majority of one on Harlow Council.

Swords, in the letter to McGovern, argued: "Harlow Council retains a clear and recent democratic mandate."

There was a special election for all 33 councillors in 2024 and Swords writes that "no councillor would exceed the standard four-year term that applies across English local government" if the authority was abolished in 2028 as planned.

Meanwhile, Essex County Council has stopped short of asking for its own elections to be cancelled, but its Tory leader Kevin Bentley has outlined the pressures of putting them on.

Five other Essex councils with elections due to go ahead have decided against making the request to government.

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