{"id":429036,"date":"2026-02-16T18:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T18:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/429036\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T18:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T18:05:08","slug":"government-abandons-plans-to-delay-30-council-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/429036\/","title":{"rendered":"Government abandons plans to delay 30 council elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reform leader Nigel Farage, writing on X, external<\/a>, said: “We took this Labour government to court and won.<\/p>\n

“In collusion with the Tories, Keir Starmer tried to stop 4.6 million people voting on May 7th. Only Reform UK fights for democracy.”<\/p>\n

Asked by BBC London if Reed should resign, Farage said “if a government minister does something illegal, they really ought to resign”.<\/p>\n

His remarks came after he claimed the decision to approve the election delays was “clearly unlawful”.<\/p>\n

The government has agreed to pay Reform’s legal costs relating to the proceedings, which a party source said would be at least \u00a3100,000.<\/p>\n

In a letter to council leaders, Reed said the government had written to the High Court to confirm he had decided to withdraw the original decision. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“The housing minister has decided that the elections should proceed in May 2026.”<\/p>\n

Reed said he recognised that many of the councils undergoing reorganisation “voiced genuine concerns about the pressure they are under” as part of the reforms.<\/p>\n

He added that the government would provide an extra \u00a363m to the 21 areas affected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform leader Nigel Farage, writing on X, external, said: “We took this Labour government to court and won.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-429036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}