Letter to Secretary of State regarding election postponements - 15 January 2026

Dear Secretary of State,

I am writing to follow up on a constructive and helpful meeting with Baroness Taylor this week, and to reply to Minister McGovern’s letter to me, to provide formal input into your decision-making process over requests made by local authorities to delay elections currently scheduled for May. 

I think we all agree that scheduled elections should as a rule go ahead as planned, and only be postponed in exceptional circumstances. It is important that voters have a say on who represents them at local level, and that electoral administrators, who are already well advanced in their planning for May, have certainty over which polls they are expected to deliver. Parties and candidates also need clarity so they can plan and begin to deliver campaigns with confidence ahead of polling day.

We recognise the pressures that local government is under, and agree that the logistical challenges facing those local authorities who are about to undertake significant reorganisations should rightly be considered carefully, as should the expectations and interests of voters. However, we do not accept that capacity challenges resulting from the Government's timescales for reorganisation is a legitimate reason to postpone scheduled elections in May.  Elections teams plan and prepare well in advance for every poll, to ensure their local authority is well placed to support the delivery of polls. 

We are particularly concerned about the clear conflict of interest in asking existing councils to effectively decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters. Similarly, some areas will see ‘double postponements’ where elections had already been deferred from 2025. Outside of the unique circumstances of the pandemic in 2020, there is no precedent for this, and the extension of some councillors’ terms by two years raises significant concerns about their mandate.  There is an additional risk that, if the process of reorganisation is not completed this year, there could be further double - or in some cases triple - election postponements affecting elections which would be expected in 2027.
 

It is essential that the public have confidence in the democratic legitimacy of those they elect. This underpins broader public confidence in the UK’s electoral system. I would encourage you to consider this risk and the evidence of voter expectations when you make your final decisions about postponements in May.

I wanted to reiterate the offer our CEO made to Baroness Taylor, for the Commission to discuss this further with Ministers and officials. 

I am copying this letter to your Ministerial colleagues. 

Yours sincerely,

John Pullinger
Chair