2025 United Kingdom local elections

Local elections in the United Kingdom were held on 1 May 2025 for 1,641 English council seats in 24 local authorities. All seats on 14 county councils and eight unitary authorities in the United Kingdom were up for election. They were the first local elections to follow the 2024 general election. Most of these seats were last contested at the 2021 local elections. No local elections were held in the rest of the country: Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. There were also six mayoral elections, including the inaugural election for the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, and the inaugural election for the mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire. The 2025 Runcorn and Helsby by-election was also held on 1 May. In addition, elections for the Council of the Isles of Scilly were held. The City of London Corporation held elections on 19 and 20 March. The BBC described the elections as a "sweeping victory" for Reform UK: the party won 677 seats, increasing their total councillor number to 804. Reform thus held overall control in 10 local authorities. The governing Labour Party and opposition Conservative Party lost councillors ending with 6,177 and 4,403 councillors and overall control of 107 (-1) and 33 (-16) councils respectively. This was the first time that Labour finished fourth in a local election; it was the first set of elections under the premiership of Keir Starmer. There were gains for the Liberal Democrats who took overall control of three new councils (up to 37) and won more seats (370 new councillors to end with 3,197) than the Conservatives for the second local election in a row. Some elections originally scheduled for 2025 have been delayed by up to a year while reorganisation takes place. The government announced that elections to nine councils would not take place in 2025 to allow restructuring, with elections to reformed or newly created replacement authorities taking place in 2026.