English devolution and local government reorganisation highlight need for PR at local level

Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities & Local Government, has announced the latest stage of the UK government’s plans for devolution and local government re-organisation within England. 

Six areas across the UK have been chosen to join the government’s Devolution Priority Programme. If each of these mayoral elections go ahead in May 2026, it will mean that the whole of northern England will be covered by elected mayor-led devolution. It will also see large parts of South East England come under the mayoral-led devolution model. 

Increasing the number of areas with elected mayor-led devolution 

This chimes with the direction set out in the UK government’s English Devolution White Paper, published in December 2024, which indicates the government’s wish to ‘complete the map’ of English devolution and its ‘strong preference that in filling the map, places do so with a Mayor over a strategic geography’. 

Alongside this, the white paper indicates that ‘we will give Mayors strong new powers over housing, planning, transport, energy, skills, employment support and more, backed up with integrated and consolidated funding’.  

As these powerful elected individuals become more numerous throughout England, it is vital that they come to power with widespread local support. Unfortunately, the previous government’s Elections Act 2022 make this less likely. The Act changed the way mayors are elected, moving from the Supplementary Vote (SV) to First Past The Post (FPTP).  

Up until 2022, if no candidate in a mayoral election received 50% of first preference votes, the second preference votes of candidates not in the top two were distributed to each of the top two candidates. This ensured the winning candidate had a wider spread of support than would have been the case had just first preference votes been counted. 

Mayors should have widespread support – but the current voting system makes this difficult 

Unfortunately, since May 2023 all mayoral elections have been conducted under FPTP, with the consequence that some mayors have been elected with very low vote shares. For example, in 2023, the Conservative candidate was elected mayor of Bedford with just a third (33%) of votes. While in 2024, the Labour candidate was elected mayor of York & North Yorkshire with just 35% of votes. Given the increasingly fractured nature of the English electorate, such winning vote shares and quite possibly lower winning vote shares, are likely to occur on a regular basis. 

We were very disappointed that there was no reference to the electoral system used for electing mayors in the government’s English Devolution White Paper.  

We should return to a fairer voting system 

When the promised English Devolution Bill is brought forward later in 2025, we strongly urge the government to include a provision for mayors to be elected by the Alternative Vote (AV) system. Under AV, each voter could rank as many of the mayoral candidates as they wish and if no candidate achieves 50% of first preference votes, the candidate with the lowest number of votes would be eliminated and their second preferences transferred to other candidates. This process would continue until one candidate reached the 50% of votes mark and is elected mayor. 

Using AV would ensure that the elected mayor would have the widest possible support from voters in the area and would remove the need for any voter to feel like they have to vote tactically. They can vote for whoever they want, safe in the knowledge that their latter preferences also have a chance of having an impact on the outcome, if their first choice is eliminated. 

Calls for tactical voting will inevitably become a part of mayoral election campaigns fought under FPTP. 

There are also opportunities for reform in our local elections 

Alongside the plans for English devolution, a parallel process of local government re-organisation is taking place in England. The white paper makes clear that UK government’s desire to end two-tier local authority arrangements in England, meaning that those areas that are currently overseen by both county and district local authorities will be required to come forward with plans to replace these bodies with single-tier unitary authorities.  

The next few years will therefore see a radical redrawing of the local authority map in England. This presents a perfect opportunity to consider how English local councillors are elected. Councillors in Scotland and Northern Ireland are elected via the Single Transferable Vote (STV), our preferred system of Proportional Representation. This system allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference and ensures that people’s preferences are accurately reflected in those representing them in the council chamber. 

Unfortunately, English local councillors are elected using FPTP, resulting in often wildly disproportional outcomes at local level. For example, in 2022 Labour won all of the seats on Lewisham council, in London, on the basis of 52% of the votes. While in 2024, the Conservatives won 90% of the seats up for election on Broxbourne Borough Council, in Hertfordshire, from 51% of votes. 

We now have the perfect opportunity to ensure that all of the new councils created in England over the next few years and indeed all English councils, properly reflect the diversity of views in those areas.