2007 United Kingdom local elections

2007 United Kingdom local elections

← 2006 3 May 2007 2008 →
All 36 metropolitan boroughs, 45 out of 46 unitary authorities, 231 out of 238 English districts, all 32 Scottish council areas, and 3 directly elected mayors
First party Second party   Leader David Cameron Tony Blair Party Conservative Labour Leader since 6 December 2005 21 July 1994 Percentage 40% 27% Swing 1% 1% Councils 165 36 Councils +/- 39 18 Councillors 5,458 2,225 Councillors +/- 932 665   Third party Fourth party   Leader Menzies Campbell Alex Salmond Party Liberal Democrats SNP Leader since 2 March 2006 3 September 2004 Percentage 26% — Swing 1% — Councils 23 0 Councils +/- 4 1 Councillors 2,337 363 Councillors +/- 255 182
Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results.

The 2007 United Kingdom local elections were held on Thursday 3 May 2007. These elections took place in most of England and all of Scotland. There were no local government elections in Wales though the Welsh Assembly had a general election on the same day. There were no local government elections in Northern Ireland. Just over half of English councils and almost all the Scottish councils began the counts on Friday, rather than Thursday night, because of more complex arrangements regarding postal votes.

These elections were a landmark in the United Kingdom as it was the first time that 18- to 20-year-olds could stand as candidates for council seats. The change was due to an alteration of the Electoral Administration Act. At least fourteen 18- to 20-year-olds are known to have stood as candidates for council seats^[1] and as a result William Lloyd became the youngest person to be elected to official office in Britain. There were also a number of councils which used new voting methods such as internet and telephone voting in addition to the traditional methods of polling stations and postal votes.

These were the final elections to be overseen by Labour leader and prime minister Tony Blair, who resigned the following month after a decade as prime minister to be succeeded by chancellor Gordon Brown. His party only finished in second place with a narrow lead over the third-placed Liberal Democrats, whose leader Menzies Campbell would also resign later in the year, while it was a strong showing for the Conservatives under David Cameron.

Summary of results

There was a suggestion in February 2006 that many of the 2007 local elections in England would be cancelled due to a reform of local government.^[2] However, since then possible reforms are still in the consultation stage and no decisions have yet been made.

312 English district councils, nearly all districts in England held some form of election – either thirds or full – on Thursday, 3 May 2007.

The final results are summarised below; firstly, with a table ranked by the party with the greatest number of councillors elected.

Party		Councils		Councillors
		Number	Change	Number	Change
	Conservative	165	39	5,458	932
	Liberal Democrats	23	4	2,337	255
	Labour	36	18	2,225	665
	SNP	0	1	363	182
	Residents	1		67	19
	Green	0		62	17
	BNP	0		10	1
	Liberal	0		9	1
	Scottish Green	0		8	8
	Mebyon Kernow	0		7	1
	UKIP	0		5	1
	Health Concern	0		4	1
	Respect	0		3
	Solidarity	0		1	1
	Scottish Socialist	0		0	1
	Socialist Alternative	0		0	1
	Other	4		949	162
	No overall control	85	27	n/a	n/a

Source BBC BBC NEWS | Politics | Vote 2007 | English councils map

England

All 36 English Metropolitan borough councils had one third of their seats up for election.

Whole council

In 25 English unitary authorities the whole council was up for election.

Third of council

In 20 English unitary authorities one third of the council was up for election.

District councils

Whole council

In 153 English district authorities the whole council was up for election.^[3]

^[3]

Third of council

In 78 English district authorities one third of the council was up for election.

Mayoral elections

Scotland

All 32 Scottish councils had all their seats up for election - all Scottish councils are unitary authorities. These local elections were held on the same day as the Scottish Parliament general election. They were the first election for local government in mainland Great Britain to use the Single transferable vote (the system is used in Northern Ireland), as implemented by the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004.^[4]

Summary of results

Councils

The notional results in the following table are based on a document that John Curtice and Stephen Herbert (Professors at the University of Strathclyde) produced on 3 June 2005, calculating the effect of the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote on the 2003 Scottish Local Elections.^[5]

Pre-election predictions

A Newsnight poll by the analysts Rallings and Thrasher some days before the election predicted the following results for the English council elections:

Con 38% (Conservatives gaining 330 seats and losing 2% of the vote on 2006)

Lab 24% (Labour losing 500 seats and losing 2% of the vote on 2006)

LD 29% (Liberal Democrats gaining 110 seats and gaining 2% of the vote on 2006)

However, these predictions, as in 2006, were largely inaccurate, underestimating Conservative support and grossly overestimating the Lib Dems' performance. However, it did accurately predict the number of seats Labour would lose.

Notes and references