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Local election preview: How Thursday’s Nottinghamshire County Council vote is seen as a critical moment in UK politics

By Lauren Monaghan, Junior Local Democracy Reporter

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This Thursday’s Nottinghamshire County Council election could be the last of its kind with local government reform looming – but the result is still being very closely watched locally and nationally.

Nottinghamshire residents will head to the polls on May 1, and results will follow on Friday. As it’s a county council election, it’s not open to people who live in the city – which is controlled by a different authority.

There are just 23 local elections of England’s 317 local authorities happening on May 1, Nottinghamshire County Council being one of them.

All 66 seats at the currently Conservative-led county authority are open to the poll – this election is not for smaller individual district and borough councils.

However, two seats in Mansfield North will be decided at a later date, following the recent death of Trade Union and Socialist Coalition candidate Karen Seymour. A by-election is expected to take place sometime around June.

The County Council is currently held by the Conservatives with a slim majority. They have 34 seats. This is the minimum number needed to take overall charge.

There are currently 14 Labour councillors, 15 councillors in the Independent Group – led by the Ashfield Independents – as well as one Reform councillor and one unaligned independent member.

County councils are responsible for larger services such as adult and children’s social care, education, roads and waste disposal, whereas district and borough councils have more localised responsibilities such as waste collection and parks.

It is likely the last-ever Nottinghamshire County Council election in its current format due to ongoing local government reform which could see councils overhauled and new “strategic authorities” and combined councils created between 2027 and 2028.

Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire also saw their first-ever combined authority created following the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) Election in May 2024.

Labour’s Claire Ward triumphed with 40.3 per cent of the vote – and a 50,000 vote majority – over the Conservative candidate Ben Bradley.

The Green Party came third in that EMCCA election, with 50,000 votes and Reform UK followed closely with 49,000 votes.

Labour’s momentum with the electorate continued into the 2024 General Election, just two months later during which the party took 412 parliamentary seats at a national level.

In Nottinghamshire, Labour gained six seats, a stark difference to the losses in 2019.

However, since then, key areas of Nottinghamshire have experienced an unusual political rumble  – largely owing to a difficult first few months for the Labour Government.

In January, 18 Labour Broxtowe Borough councillors stepped down to form the independent Broxtowe Alliance group.

In doing so, the group spoke out against the Labour Government’s cuts to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.

Reform UK, which has also been making strides in national opinion polls, has also seen some preliminary gains in Nottinghamshire under non-election circumstances.

Three Independent Mansfield District councillors defected to the party in October 2024, followed by Independent County Councillor John Doddy’s defection in January this year.

Reform UK have candidates running in all 66 seats in Thursday’s election. There were just eight Reform candidates in the 2021 local election.

Ashfield MP Lee Anderson also became Reform’s first elected MP in that July 2024 General Election.

Reform’s foothold taking shape brings uncertainty for the Ashfield Independents group in this week’s election. The group currently holds 10 County Council seats and control of Ashfield Disitrct Council.

A running national YouGov poll – reflecting the public’s voting intention – currently reports 26 per cent of respondents saying they would vote Reform UK in a hypothetical general election.

This puts Reform ahead of Labour, in national popularity at least. Only 23 per cent of respondents would choose Labour and 20 per cent Conservative in the most recent data, published April 28.

The running poll has shown a battle between Labour and Reform in these voting intentions since January 2025, with both parties performing better than the Conservatives.

The poll, alongside Reform’s increase in local councillors, could point towards Nottinghamshire County Council’s current Conservative majority, which is already thin – disappearing in Friday’s result.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service last Thursday (April 24), Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch declined the opportunity to rule out a Conservative-Reform UK coalition if it was necessary to maintain control of the authority.

Meanwhile, the Mansfield North division election is to be rearranged following the death of TUSC candidate Karen Seymour. It will be held on a date following Friday’s poll. The division returns two seats to the council, meaning a final result could be delayed if voting is close on Thursday.

Local elections typically have a lower turnout than general elections, with a 40.7 per cent turnout in the 2021 Nottinghamshire County Council election.

The 2024 general election saw 59.7 per cent of the electorate vote – this was down 7.6 per cent from the 2019 general election.

As far as the final result goes, the only thing normally guaranteed in a Nottinghamshire County Council election is drama.

Nottinghamshire County is one of the most unpredictable when it comes to polls. Since 2005 the authority has changed hands three times between Labour and the Conservatives.