Currently Conservative-led Nottinghamshire County Council election could be the last of its kind with local government reform

Today’s (Thursday’s) Nottinghamshire County Council election could be the last of its kind with local government reform looming – but the result is still being very closely watched locally and nationally.

Nottinghamshire residents will head to the polls on May 1 — with just 23 local elections of England’s 317 local authorities happening, Nottinghamshire County Council being one of them — and results will follow on Friday.

All 66 seats at the currently Conservative-led county authority are open to the poll – however, two seats in Mansfield North will be decided at a later date, following the recent death of Trade Union and Socialist Coalition candidate Karen Seymour. A by-election is expected to take place sometime around June.

The County Council is currently held by the Conservatives with a slim majority. They have 34 seats. This is the minimum number needed to take overall charge.

There are currently 14 Labour councillors, 15 councillors in the Independent Group, one Reform councillor, and one unaligned independent member.

County councils are responsible for larger services such as adult and children’s social care, education, roads and waste disposal, whereas district and borough councils have more localised responsibilities such as waste collection and parks.

It is likely the last-ever Nottinghamshire County Council election in its current format due to ongoing local government reform which could see councils overhauled and new “strategic authorities” and combined councils created between 2027 and 2028.

Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire also saw their first-ever combined authority created following the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) Election in May 2024.

Labour’s Claire Ward triumphed with 40.3 per cent of the vote – and a 50,000 vote majority – over the Conservative candidate Ben Bradley.

The Green Party came third in that EMCCA election, with 50,000 votes and Reform UK followed closely with 49,000 votes.

Labour’s momentum with the electorate continued into the 2024 General Election, just two months later during which the party took 412 parliamentary seats at a national level.

In Nottinghamshire, Labour gained six seats, a stark difference to the losses in 2019.

However, since then, key areas of Nottinghamshire have experienced an unusual political rumble – largely owing to a difficult first few months for the Labour Government.

In January, 18 Labour Broxtowe Borough councillors stepped down to form the independent Broxtowe Alliance group, and Reform UK, which has also been making strides in national opinion polls, has also seen some preliminary gains in Nottinghamshire under non-election circumstances.

However, a running national YouGov poll – reflecting the public’s voting intention – currently reports 26 per cent of respondents saying they would vote Reform UK in a hypothetical general election, putting Reform ahead of Labour, in national popularity at least.

Only 23 per cent of respondents would choose Labour and 20 per cent Conservative in the most recent data, published April 28.

The poll, alongside Reform’s increase in local councillors, could point towards Nottinghamshire County Council’s current Conservative majority, which is already thin – disappearing in Friday’s result.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service last Thursday (April 24), Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch declined the opportunity to rule out a Conservative-Reform UK coalition if it was necessary to maintain control of the authority.

Local elections typically have a lower turnout than general elections, with a 40.7 per cent turnout in the 2021 Nottinghamshire County Council election.

The 2024 general election saw 59.7 per cent of the electorate vote – this was down 7.6 per cent from the 2019 general election.

As far as the final result goes, the only thing normally guaranteed in a Nottinghamshire County Council election is drama — since 2005 the authority has changed hands three times between Labour and the Conservatives.