2025 United Kingdom local elections

2025 United Kingdom local elections

1 May 2025

1,641 council seats
23 county, unitary, and metropolitan councils
6 directly elected mayors
2 sui generis authorities
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Nigel Farage Ed Davey Kemi Badenoch
Party Reform UK Liberal Democrats Conservative
Leader since 3 June 2024 27 August 2020 2 November 2024
Seats before 128 seats
0 councils
3,009 seats
37 councils
5,034 seats
49 councils
Projected vote share 30%
28 pp
17%
15%
10 pp
Seats won (2025) 677
10 councils
370
3 councils
319
0 councils
Councillors (after) 804
10 councils
3,197
40 councils
4,403
33 councils
Net change (notional) 678
10 councils
163
3 councils
676
16 councils

  Fourth party Fifth party
 
Leader Keir Starmer Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay
Party Labour Green
Leader since 4 April 2020 1 October 2021
Seats before 6,322 seats
108 councils
850 seats
1 council
Projected vote share 20%
14 pp
11%
2 pp
Seats won (2025) 98
0 councils
79
0 councils
Councillors (after) 6,124
107 councils
895
1 council
Net change (notional) 187
1 council
44
0 councils

  Reform UK
  Liberal Democrats
  Labour Party
  Conservative Party
  No overall control

The 2025 United Kingdom local elections were held on 1 May 2025 for 1,641 council seats across 24 local authorities. All seats on 14 county councils and eight unitary authorities in England 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.

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 elections were described as a sweeping victory for Reform UK. The party placed first, winning the most seats and took control of a number of local authorities. The governing Labour Party and opposition Conservative Party suffered historic losses. 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 major gains for the Liberal Democrats who won three new councils and won more seats 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.