Local election 2021 candidates: Who is standing in my area?
LOCAL elections scheduled to take place last year in England and Wales were postponed when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Voters made their way to polling stations on Thursday to have their say. Here's everything you need to know about the candidates.
🔵 Read our Elections 2021 live blog for the very latest updates
Which local council and mayoral elections are taking place?
There are 343 councils in England, but not every authority is holding elections.
This is because elections take place in four-year cycles, so different councils hold polls in varying years.
The (LGIU) said that “with two years worth of elections, it’s going to be ‘Super Thursday’.”
It adds that in England, the 2021 elections include more than 150 local authority elections in hundreds of wards and divisions for both the delayed elections of 2020, plus the scheduled elections of 2021.
Votes have also be cast on:
- 143 English local councils - some 5,000 seat
- 13 directly elected mayors
- 39 police and crime commissioners
- 25 London Assembly seats
- 129 Scottish Parliament MSPs
- 60 Welsh Senedd MSs
- By-elections
- Neighbourhood Plan referenda
- Parish councils
There are about 5,000 council seats up for grabs across England.
The Welsh Government also held an election on May 6, 2021, and voters in Wales cast their ballot for members of the Welsh Assembly and police and crime commissioners.
In Scotland, candidates are vying for 129 seats in the .
There are no local elections taking place across Northern Ireland.
Who's standing for election in my area?
Thousands of candidates are running for various post in the May 2021 elections.
To find out who is standing in your area, you can put your postcode into .
Some of the stand-out elections are:
London mayoral election
- Labour: Sadiq Khan is seeking a second term as Mayor after being re-selected as the Labour candidate in 2018. While widely praised for showing the capital as open and inclusive, his leadership has been marred by a perceived inability to tackle big issues such as transport infrastructure and knife crime.
- Conservative: Shaun Bailey attempted to be selected in a number of London constituencies in 2017, including Kensington, Croydon South and Uxbridge South and Ruislip. He joined the Army cadets while still a teenager and remained with them for another 10 years.
- Green: Sian Berry is once again fighting for the Greens. The party co-leader finished third behind Khan and his rival Zac Goldsmith in 2016.
- Lib Dem: Luisa Porritt is a Camden councillor who served as an MEP between 2019 and 2020 for the Lib Dems.
- Find details on the rest of the candidates here
Hartlepool by-election
A by-election in the UK parliamentary constituency of Hartlepool was held on May 6 following the resignation of the sitting MP Mike Hill.
The seat is considered to be in a set of constituencies known as the red wall, historically supported by Labour.
It was confirmed this morning that Jill Mortimer had won the Hartlepool by-election.
This is the first time the Conservative party has held the seat since it was created.
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- Labour: Paul Williams, who served as MP for Stockton South from 2017 to 2019.
- Conservative: Jill Mortimer, a North Yorkshire councillor and farmer.
- Lib Dems: Andy Hagon, who stood for the party in the constituency in both the 2017 and 2019 elections.
- Northern Independence Party: Thelma Walker, the former Labour MP for Colne Valley.