6th January 2026
In a further update on this year local council elections, the Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, has written this week to Council Leaders to confirm which elections are going ahead and which are being postponed.
As planned, it has now been confirmed there WILL be elections for Essex County Council, Brentwood Borough Council and Epping Forest District Council this May.
The letter from the Secretary of State if attached below so you can read which councils elsewhere will be holding elections, and which have chosen to postpone again until next year.
15th January 2025
The Leader of Essex County Council, Councillor Kevin Bentley, has this week written to the Minister for Local Government Alison McGovern, MP to confirm the Council will not be requesting Essex County Council elections scheduled for May 2026 are postponed.
In 2024, the Labour Government delayed long planned-for elections due to be held in May 2025 in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Surrey, East and West Sussex, and Hampshire. A year later, in December 2025, the Government said that they will again cancel more elections, including at both council and mayoral levels this time.
Let me be clear from the start, these elections should go ahead and I am very pleased Cllr Bentley and Essex County Council share this view. It would be wrong to deny electors the right to elect their own representatives for the second time under this Government.
The Electoral Commission, which this Labour Government has ignored, has stated that scheduled elections should only be postponed in exceptional circumstances. Such circumstances are not what we face; this is happening because of the Government’s rushed, botched and flawed local government reorganisation. It is the Government’s fault, not local leaders’ faults.
The letter from Cllr Bentley to the Minister for Local Government is attached to this article.
