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The Labour Party has dropped plans to delay voting in 30 councils
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This after a legal challenge from the Reform Party. Now election officials are warning that they face an uphill struggle
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to be ready for May's local elections and organisers say months of planning have been lost
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while critics warn confidence in the process has been damaged. Joining us now from Cheltenham is GBNU's national reporter Jack Carson
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Jack, now a mad scramble to get this vote set up. Well, that is the situation that now these local authorities, some 30 of them that decided to postpone their elections locally this year, now face
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Of course, it's following new, what the government are calling new legal advice to them
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Following new legal advice, they said in a statement yesterday, the government has withdrawn its original decision to postpone 30 local elections in May
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It all comes after the Reform UK party took the government to court around this issue
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This here in Cheltenham is a Liberal Democrat-run council. It was the only Liberal Democrat-run council that opted to postpone them
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And at the time, their leader, Councillor Rowena Hay, said the decision to postpone these elections was the right one
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due to boundary changes in 2024. All 40 of the councillors were only elected two years ago
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And so they only two years into a four year term So they saw no reason for these elections to take place All of them had the option to postpone around the country because of new changes coming to local government The merging essentially of those big county councils with those more local district and borough councils
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creating bigger unitary authorities where people could go to one place rather than, say, multiple locations
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But we've been speaking to people here on the streets of Cheltenham, on this beautiful high street here
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finding out what they thought of the decision to reinstate the elections this summer
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I think it's a great idea, and it shouldn't have gone in the way that it did in the first place
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We're all entitled to vote. You shouldn't be able to stop people voting when it's due
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It does sound a bit of a confusion, doesn't it? It sounds like they're not really sure whether they can or whether they can't
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Now they've changed their minds again, so who knows what they're trying to do? I think they should never have been not on
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So, yeah, I think they should be back on. I know it's costly, but you need to have the election
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Everyone's glad in this town that we're going to get a chance to vote again. Because Gloucester had the right to vote, but Cheltenham didn't, which doesn't seem..
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Yeah, it is a sense, really, from everyone that we've spoken to here on the street here
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that there was almost confusion as to why the elections were cancelled in the first place
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People wanted their voice to be heard. They wanted that element of democracy to still be in place
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And on the point that you heard one of the people say about, you know, it costs money to put these elections on, Steve Reid, from, of course
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the local government department has said that the government would provide an extra £63 million
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to the 21 areas affected by this U-turn
