Elections are taking place on 1 May 2025
Local elections are taking place across parts of England on 1 May 2025. In total, 25 councils will see elections take place, with 1,641 seats up for grabs.
The full list of candidates in every election was announced on April 3 and, thanks to data crunching carried out by Election Maps UK, we now know how many candidates each party is standing across the country.
There are five parties that are standing in the majority of the seats up for election, Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems, Reform UK and the Greens.
Surprisingly, Reform are standing the most candidates, with just 11 seats not having a candidate from Nigel Farage’s party. Both Labour and the Tories are also standing in over 90 per cent of the seats up for election this year.
The big five parties are standing the following number of candidates:
- Reform: 1,630 (99.3% of seats)
- Tory: 1,594 (97.1% of seats)
- Labour: 1,540 (93.8% of seats)
- Lib Dem: 1,396 (85.1% of seats)
- Green: 1,182 (72.0% of seats)
As for the smaller parties, the left wing Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition are standing 97 candidates, the hard right Heritage Party are standing 24, and the Cornish Party Mebyon Kernow are standing 18.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
Image credit: Oatsy40 – Creative Commons
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