2026 parish elections - a small crop of farmers

A relatively small crop of parish and town council elections are happening in 2026, with 374 parishes being elected across 31 districts and boroughs. In total 3154 candidates are standing for 3371 seats.

22% of the candidates are standing for a registered political party, with Labour standing the most with 164. Local parties include Poole People (6) and Rainhill Independents (5), there are two candidates for the Animal Welfare Party, and one each for UKIP and the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

As usual, the majority of seats will be uncontested - only 125 of the 544 parish wards up this year will have a ballot on 7th May. 2272 candidates (72% of the total) have already been elected without a vote. There are 629 seats left vacant, most of which will be filled by co-option. 17 wards attracted no nominations at all.

There are new town and parish councils in Bournemouth, Poole and Broadstone, covering the whole unparished area of BCP Council. These are contested by a broad range of party candidates, although the Conservatives (who opposed the new councils) are only standing a handful of candidates in west Bournemouth.

Several other large town councils are up this year. In Eastleigh and Chandler's Ford, the largest contingent are the Liberal Democrats, who are standing 38 candidates for the 40 seats. In Sutton Coldfield, voters in Vesey ward have 20 candidates to choose from to fill 5 seats. South Swindon, West Swindon and Central Swindon North, which between them account for more than half the borough of Swindon, are all up for election.

Queen's Park Community Council in Westminster - the only parish council in Greater London - attracts some marvellous descriptions, most notably in Ward C where "I Cook Amazing Samousa" goes head to head with "Lady who saved The Ashmore Pub". Current chair of the council, international footballer Eartha Pond, is not running for re-election after serving for three terms.

In Leckhampton, Max Chatterji is "Following My Heart". Nic Wells is "Striving for a Thriving St. Ives".

In Bignall End, the contest for Most Local Resident is escalating:

  • "Bignall End - Wood Lane Proud Resident"
  • "Local resident of 40 years, Independent"
  • "Resident of Bignall End since 1982"
  • "Resident Bignall End Fifty Three Years" 

There are only three "Farmer" candidate on the ballot this year - a far cry from last year's set of elections when there were over 30 in Cornwall alone - although there is also one "Retired University Lecturer in Plant Sciences" which sounds farmer-adjacent to me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Parish council elections 2024 - an exhausted look

Image
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...
Read more

The Register of Local Parties for Local People

The Register of Political Parties is maintained by the Electoral Commission and was introduced by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 . A listing on the register is a requirement if you want your party name to appear on the ballot paper when standing in national and local elections in the UK. For reasons, there are two separate registers, one for Great Britain and one for Northern Ireland, plus a register for "minor parties" (those who only contest parish-level elections). As of 10th February 2021, there are 339 parties on the GB register - some of which stand thousands of candidates each year and some which have apparently never (yet) appeared on a ballot paper. There are large "broad church" parties like Labour and the Conservatives, campaigning organisations like the National Health Action Party, and small esoteric and extremist parties (not to mention one-person parties such as the semi-religious Church of the Militant Elvis). But there a...
Read more

Farming for votes

Image
As a break from helping to clean up the Democracy Club local elections data , I thought I'd check in with the parish elections in Shropshire. We don't need no town election, we don't need no parish poll When the Notices of Election were published, we were expecting polls in a total of 276 parishes or parish wards. The Statements of Persons Nominated give us the true figures - 16 wards do not appear to have any candidates at all, including Burford and Stockton parish councils, which should have a full complement of 7 councillors each. In a further 212 cases the number of candidates doesn't exceed the total number of seats, so those candidates - 974 of them - will be declared elected without bothering the voters. The citizens of Albrighton will be doubly disappointed - they will have neither a parish election nor a county election (although congratulations to the Conservatives' Nigel Lumby, who has been elected to both councils without expending any shoe leather). ...
Read more