Reform UK Gained 1,244 Councillors in a Single Night — Here's Exactly What That Means

The 2026 local elections held on 7 May produced results that have fundamentally altered the landscape of English local government. According to ITV News figures as of 9 May, the net gains and losses were:

Reform UK: +1,244 councillors, +114 councils

Labour: -1,022 councillors, -31 councils

Conservatives: -417 councillors, -8 councils

Green Party: +297 councillors, +4 councils

Liberal Democrats: +151 councillors, +3 councils

Reform UK took control of councils including Newcastle-under-Lyme, Essex County Council, Havering, Suffolk, and Sunderland. In Essex alone, 53 Reform members were elected to the county council, giving Farage’s party an outright majority.

Farage described the results as a “truly historic shift in British politics” and a “complete reshaping of British politics in every way.” Reform’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf claimed that if the results were replicated at a general election, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch “would lose her seat.”

The Green Party’s gains were equally significant in proportional terms. The Greens took control of Lewisham and Lambeth from Labour in London. Green candidate Liam Shrivastava won the Lewisham mayoralty. In Norwich, the Greens took overall control of the city council. The leader of Camden Council — the borough that includes Starmer’s own Holborn and St Pancras constituency — lost his seat to the Greens.

In Scotland, the Greens won seats in Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Southside on the same day, unseating SNP stalwart Angus Robertson and taking Nicola Sturgeon’s former constituency. In Wales, Green leader Anthony Slaughter won the party’s first ever Senedd seat.

Labour’s losses were concentrated in two distinct areas. In London, the party lost control of flagship boroughs to the Greens. In Northern England, seats fell to Reform. As ITV News election analyst Professor Jane Green noted, even in areas where Reform gained seats from Labour, this was sometimes because Labour support was being diverted to the Green Party — splitting the progressive vote.

The Electoral Reform Society highlighted the increasingly random nature of results under first-past-the-post. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, Reform won 61.4% of seats from 38.7% of the vote. In Birmingham, a highly fragmented contest across 101 seats produced an almost perfectly proportional outcome — described by the ERS as “bizarrely proportional.” In Sefton, Reform won 25% of the vote but only 7.6% of seats. In Hammersmith and Fulham, the Greens won 18.6% of the vote and no seats at all.

The elections were held for 5,066 councillors across 136 English local authorities, including all 32 London boroughs. Most of these seats were last contested in 2022, when Reform UK barely existed as a local government force.

Labour had previously attempted to postpone some of these elections. In December 2025, the government invited 63 councils to request postponement, citing local government reorganisation. The Electoral Commission criticised the move, stating there was “a clear conflict of interest in asking existing Councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters.” Following a legal challenge by Reform UK, the government withdrew its postponement plans on 16 February 2026.