All the information you need about the elections on 4 May

To check if there’s an election in your area, you can enter your postcode into our search. If you do have an election, you’ll also be able to see who the candidates are and where your polling station is.

Local council elections

There might not be a local council election in your area on 4 May, because not all councils have elections every year.

Some councils vote by thirds. This means a third of councillors are elected every year over a four year period. There are no elections in the fourth year.

Other councils vote by halves. If your council votes by halves, half of the councillors are elected every two years.

Some councils, including all of the London boroughs, have local elections every four years, and elect all councillors at the same time.  

Parish and town council elections

There might be a parish or town council election taking place in your area. Our search does not include these elections, and there are three main reasons why: scale, geography, and uncontested elections.

We work with Democracy Club to gather the data, and you can read their blog about parish council elections to find out more about this. 

If there is a parish or town council election in your area, you will receive a poll card with the information a few weeks before polling day.

When you enter your postcode into our search, you’ll be able to view a list of the people who are standing as candidates in your area. The list will include the candidate’s name and party, or if they’re an independent candidate. 

You can also visit Democracy Club’s Who Can I Vote For? search to find out more about the candidates in your area.

The information about candidates is gathered from the Statements of Persons Nominated (or SoPNs) that are published on council websites after the close of nominations.

Other information about candidates available on Who Can I Vote For?, such as policies and contact details, is added by the candidate, their team, or by a Democracy Club volunteer.

When you vote in person, you go to the polling station allocated to you based on your address.

Your polling station might not be the closest one to where to you live, and it might have changed since the last time you voted. You have to go to your allocated polling station, and you can't go to a different one close to where you work, for example.

If you're voting at the polling station at the local elections in England on 4 May, you'll need to take photo ID with you.

Polling station data

Before each election, we work closely with Democracy Club to gather polling station data from councils.

Once Democracy Club have the polling station data from councils, it goes through an extensive quality assurance process to make sure there aren't any issues or anomalies. For elections in May, polling stations are added to the search as early as March, right up until the day before polling day.

Sending polling data isn’t compulsory for councils, but all councils with elections this year have provided their data. We’re pleased that councils understand the importance of this service.