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Parish council elections 2024 - an exhausted look

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This is a light year for parish council elections - just 33 local authorities are running scheduled parish elections in 2024. As usual, most elections will be uncontested: Of 795 parish wards, 136 will have a contested poll on 2nd May (17%) Of 3709 candidates, 2746 have been declared elected without a poll (74%) Out of a total of 4207 seats, there are only enough candidates to fill 3369 of them, with most of the remainder to be filled by co-option 9 parish councils have so few nominations that they will not meet the quorum of 3 councillors, and will require fresh elections before they can sit. Over a third of the seats to be filled this year are in Dorset, which due to reorganisation has elections at 5-year intervals in 2019, 2024 and 2029, before reverting to the usual 4-year cycle along with the other county councils. The most hotly-contested election is for Kidderminster Town Council, where 64 candidates are standing to fill 18 seats. The outgoing council is made up of 11 Conserva