Local elections will be held by councils up and down the country in 2025 – but Leeds will be one of the authorities where local elections will not take place this year.
The reason there will be no elections in Leeds is that each of the 33 council wards is represented by three councillors who are each elected to serve a four-year term. It’s an electoral system called ‘voting by thirds’.
As the elections section on the council website explains: “Their terms are staggered so that we only select one councillor in each local election.
“This system is called voting by thirds because a third of councillors are elected each year, over a four year cycle. Due to this, once every four years, there are no local elections. This is called a fallow year. The next fallow year in Leeds will be 2025.
“In 2018 we elected three councillors in each ward. This is because the ward boundaries had been independently reviewed to reflect changes in population and ensure each ward contains a similar amount of electors. It is likely there won’t be another ward boundary review in Leeds for around 15 years.”
The only reason an election would be called in Leeds is if a by-election is held due to the departure of an existing council, like in Farnley & Wortley last October.
The 2025 local elections will be held across the country on 1 May 2025. All seats on all 21 county councils in England and ten unitary authorities in England will be up for election.
Two existing combined authority mayors and two existing single authority mayors will be up for election. In addition, the inaugural election for the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire is expected to take place on 1 May 2025, along with the inaugural election for the mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire.
Reuters Factcheck, meanwhile, reports that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s planned council reorganisation will likely lead to the postponement, not cancellation, of some local council elections in the UK this year.