2 weeks Ago
Ninety-eight unitary council seats will be contested, along with 308 parish council elections. Only Cornwall has a higher number of individual elections. The Conservatives have been in overall control at County Hall, Trowbridge since May 2000, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister and Britney Spears topped the charts with Oops! I Did it Again.
The most recent council elections were held in May 2021, when the Tories were enjoying the pandemic ‘vaccine bounce’ under popular Prime Minister Boris Johnson. This time the Tories are less popular nationally, and face being flanked from the right from Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Already the political big guns have been brought in to campaign.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, on a visit to a defence manufacturer near Salisbury Plain, said the election would be ‘challenging’, while Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said momentum was with his party. Meanwhile Nigel Farage, Reform’s charismatic leader, performed for a capacity crowd at Trowbridge Civic Centre back in February. The party is fielding 98 candidates – the only challenger party to have a candidate in every seat.
Labour are putting up 45 candidates and the Green Party 44. There are also 16 independents in the running. Wiltshire residents will be invited to cast their votes on Thursday, May 1 – last time just under 40 per cent of the 380,000-strong electorate exercised their democratic right.
More than 350 polling stations, run by 1,000 Wiltshire Council staff and paid volunteers, will be open between 7am and 10pm. But there will be no overnight vote counting. Instead, the tally will take place at County Hall in Trowbridge, The Olympiad in Chippenham, and Five Rivers leisure centre in Salisbury on Friday, May 2.
Results could be known by mid-afternoon, although if results are challenged the county’s Returning Officer has set aside Saturday for recounts. Candidates will be able to watch live results from around the county on massive video screens, which will be installed at the three count centres. It will be a nail-biting time, especially for Conservative group leader Richard Clewer, councillor for Downton and Ebble Valley, who is expected to be at the Salisbury count, and Lib Dem leader Ian Thorn, councillor for Calne Central, who will attend the count at Chippenham.
The current make-up of the council is 57 Conservative, 29 Liberal Democrat, six Independent, three Labour, and three ungrouped. In the first-past-the-post system, the first party to win 50 seats will take control of the council. If no single party wins a majority, the party with the largest number of votes will be invited to form a coalition with a rival.
The council could also operate with no overall political control, as it did between 1997 and 2000. The party with overall control will then appoint its cabinet members and portfolio holders – who take responsibility for one or more services provided by the council – before the first meeting of the new council on May 20. Since May 2023 voters will need to show photo ID to vote at the polling station.
If you had registered, a poll card will have been sent to you around six weeks before an election. Your poll card tells you where your polling station will be. You do not need your poll card to vote although it will help the staff at the polling station if you bring it with you.
You must bring your photo ID with you to vote at the polling station. If you would like to find out where your polling station is in the run-up to an election, contact the Electoral Services team on 0300 456 0112 or [email protected].
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