Everything You Need To Know About The 2024 Local Elections

On Thursday, the public will be able to vote in a number of different elections across England and Wales, including for local council seats, regional mayors, and police and crime commissioners.

Here is everything you need to know:

If there are elections in your area, you can vote if you are aged 18 or over, registered at an address in the area, and a British, Irish, EU or eligible Commonwealth citizen, and you must have registered to vote by the deadline of midnight on Tuesday 16 April, which has now passed. 

You can vote either in person at your local polling station, by postal vote or by nominating a proxy, but you must have arranged either postal or proxy voting in advance of polling day. If you vote in person, you must bring along an acceptable form of ID, such as a passport or driving licence – this includes ID which has expired as long as you still look like the photo.

At the local elections on 2 May, 2,660 council seats will be contested across 107 areas in England, with Labour and the Conservatives defending almost 1,000 seats each.

In 2023, the Conservatives lost a third of their councillors and more than half their councils on a 4.5 per cent swing to Labour and 1.5 per cent swing to the Lib Dems. There is therefore a widespread expectation that Tories will also perform badly across the elections this year, losing seats to both Labour and the Lib Dems.

While local election results cannot be directly mapped to predict general election results, they can be a good indication of upcoming changes in Westminster voting intentions. At previous transitions of power in 1979, 1997 and 2010, the party about to enter government made significant gains in the local elections prior to the general election.

LABOUR

Labour are