The government argued that some councils were worried about the cost of running elections for authorities which are due to be abolished in a major reorganisation of local government.<\/p>\n
Local elections in Norfolk, Suffolk, Blackburn, Lincoln, Thurrock and two dozen more parts of England, will now take place on 7 May, and about \u00a363 million will be made available to local authorities who are undergoing changes.<\/p>\n
Some organisers said they were still preparing anyway, aware there was a legal challenge to the government’s decision to postpone votes in their areas, which was due to be heard in the High Court on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) said it was “extremely disappointed” that months of “essential planning time” had been lost. <\/p>\n
The AEA’s deputy chief executive Laura Lock said returning officers, electoral registration officers, and electoral administration teams would be affected. <\/p>\n
“These teams now face an uphill struggle to catch up to where they should be,” she said.<\/p>\n
The AEA represents electoral officials in the UK, and provides training. <\/p>\n
Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, told BBC Breakfast the elections would put pressure on “hard-working council officers”.<\/p>\n
“It will be done, as always, by hard-working council officers just going the extra mile, working harder, doing the extra hours, giving up their weekends. They can do it, but I don’t think it’s fair to ask them to”, he said.<\/p>\n
He said the situation “damages our democratic process”, and warned the last-minute change sends the message that “these elections are optional”.<\/p>\n
Matthew Hicks, leader of Tory-run Suffolk County Council said: “Local councils across the country are experiencing whiplash as major government decisions shift repeatedly and without warning.”<\/p>\n
Hicks said the uncertainty impacted on the ability “to plan effectively” and “deliver stability for residents”.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the leader of Labour-run Thurrock Council Lynn Worrall said it was “disappointing that this decision has been reversed so late in the day”.<\/p>\n
The announcement made on Monday was welcomed by opposition parties, who had called the delays undemocratic.<\/p>\n
In celebration of his win, Nigel Farage, writing on X, said: “We took this Labour government to court and won.”<\/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
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said his party “fought tooth and nail to stop this stitch-up and the government has been forced into a humiliating U-turn”.<\/p>\n
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said it was “predictable chaos from a useless government that cannot make basic decisions”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government argued that some councils were worried about the cost of running elections for authorities which are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-430031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430031","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=430031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}