2022 United Kingdom local elections

In total, 4,411 council seats are being contested in England, including irregular by-elections.[2]

Most seats in England up for election in 2022 were last elected in 2018. The exceptions are local authorities which have undergone recent boundary reviews. In the 2018 local elections, the Labour Party made gains in London at the expense of the Conservative Party, who in turn made gains in the rest of England at the expense of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Few councils changed overall control.[3] Overall, UKIP lost 237 of the 243 seats it had held before the elections.[4] According to the BBC's analysis, the results reflected a national political situation with Labour and the Conservatives "neck-and-neck".[5]

County councils are the upper tier of a two-tier system of local government, with the area each council covers subdivided into district councils with different responsibilities. These are first-past-the-post elections with a mixture of single-member and multi-member electoral divisions. County councils are elected in full every four years, with the last election having been in 2021. However, due to consultations about possible unitarisation, elections for three county councils were postponed to 2022.[6] The government has announced plans to replace the councils with unitary authorities pending Parliamentary approval.[7]

Elections to the new Somerset Council will take place in May 2022 as a unitary authority, which will run concurrently with the district councils until their abolition in April 2023.[8] The North Yorkshire Council will be elected in May 2022, with its councillors serving as county councillors for a year before automatically continuing to serve an additional four-year term as unitary councillors.[9] Cumbria's two new councils will be elected as "shadow authorities" ahead of their creation in 2023.[10]

Elections for all councillors in all thirty-two London boroughs will be held in 2022 in line with their normal election schedule. All twenty-five London borough councils which have not had a boundary review since before 2013 will be elected based on new boundaries.[11] The last elections to London borough councils were held in 2018, which saw Labour win its second-best result in any London election and the Conservatives return their lowest-ever number of councillors in the capital. In 2018, Labour won control of Tower Hamlets council which had previously been under no overall control, but did not gain control of Barnet, Wandsworth or Westminster councils, which the party had targeted. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats gained control of Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames borough councils from the Conservatives.[12]

There are thirty-six metropolitan boroughs, which are single-tier local authorities. Thirty-three of them elect a third of their councillors every year for three years, with no election in each fourth year. These councils hold their elections on the same timetable, which includes elections in 2022. Birmingham City Council holds its elections on a four-year cycle from 2018, so is also due to hold an election in 2022. Due to boundary changes, three councils which generally elect their councillors in thirds will elect all of their councillors in 2022. They will then return to the thirds schedule, apart from St Helens Council, which is moving to all-out elections every four years starting in 2022. Several other boundary reviews have been delayed to 2023 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The scheduled elections in Liverpool in 2022 have been cancelled and instead the city is expected to move to all-out elections from 2023 on new ward boundaries.[13]

By-elections or uncontested wards can cause the seats up for election to be above or below one third of the council.

Some councils which elect all their councillors every four years will do so in 2022. Gosport usually elects its councillors in halves, but all seats will be up for election due to new election boundaries. St. Albans usually elects by thirds but all seats are up on new boundaries. Harrogate was due to elect all its councillors, but the election was cancelled due to the unitarisation of North Yorkshire, with councillors' terms being extended to April 2023, after which the district councils in North Yorkshire will cease to exist.[14]

District councils which elect their candidates in halves will do so in 2022.

District councils which elect by thirds that will hold elections in 2022. Carlisle, Craven and South Lakeland had been due to have a third of councillors up for election but these were cancelled due to the creation of Cumberland, North Yorkshire and Westmorland and Furness Unitary authorities.[15]

Reading Borough Council will have all its councillors elected on new ward boundaries. The new unitary authority Somerset Council will hold its first election under the old Somerset County Council boundaries, with twice as many councillors being elected as previously. Shadow authorities for the two new unitary authorities replacing Cumbria County Council and its districts will also be elected, as will councillors for the new North Yorkshire Council ahead of its creation in 2023.

Unitary authorities that elect councillors in thirds will do so in 2022.

The Court of Common Council is the main decision-making body of the City of London Corporation, which governs the City of London. The 100 councillors were elected across twenty-five wards. Elections were due on 18 March 2021, but as a result of the coronavirus pandemic were delayed to 23 March 2022.[16][17]

There will be six local authority mayoral elections and one metropolitan mayoral election.

There will also be a referendum in Bristol on whether to continue using the mayor-and-cabinet system or to change to the committee system.

Ballot paper used for the elections in the Victoria Park ward of the Glasgow City Council. The vote is held using the single transferable vote, which allows voters to rank their choices.

Elections will be held for all councillors in all 32 local authorities in Scotland. Local elections in Scotland are conducted by the single transferable vote (STV), which results in the number of seats won by each party more proportionally reflecting their share of the vote.[18] As a consequence, local elections in Scotland result more often in no overall control and local authorities being governed by minority or coalition administrations.[18]