Exeter’s 91,000 registered electors go to the polls on Thursday 1 May to elect nine councillors to represent them on Devon County Council, with voters in Mincinglake & Whipton and Topsham also taking part in by-elections for two city council seats.
At the same time voters across the rest of Devon – except in Plymouth and Torbay, which have both been governed by unitary authorities since 1998 and are not holding elections this year – will elect another 51 county councillors in a complete renewal of the County Hall mandate.
All sixty would normally win four-year terms, but are only expected to hold office until Devon County Council is abolished as part of local government reorganisation in May 2027 or 2028.
Across the country all the seats on fourteen county councils, eight unitary authorities – including Cornwall – one metropolitan district and The Isles of Scilly will also be up for election.
Most were last contested in May 2021 at a Conservative popularity peak that long preceded Reform UK’s rise to become, by some accounts, the UK’s most popular political party.
The Conservatives were then ten points ahead of Labour in national polls, with the Liberal Democrats and Greens both still well ahead of Reform, and won 39 Devon County Council seats on a 42.4% vote share.
The Liberal Democrats won just nine seats with 17.7% of the vote, Labour seven with 15.9% and the Greens two with an 11% share.
Since then Reform has overtaken both Labour and Conservatives in several national polls with the Liberal Democrats now not far behind the latter and the Greens within shouting distance in turn.
Never before have Labour and the Conservatives both polled so poorly at the same time, but the extent to which this will translate into seats won by other parties under the first-past-the-post voting system depends on the distribution of their supporters.
The Conservatives are expected to lose from a third to a half of the 1,000 or so seats they are defending on 1 May. Labour is forecast to lose a few dozen of the just under 300 of its seats which are up, most of which are in county contests in which it usually struggles even without its post-general election popularity collapse.
Some projections have Reform winning as many of 700 the 1,641 seats that are being contested this year. However the party’s support is spread across the country: it may take votes from the Conservatives without winning in many areas, helping the Liberal Democrats in southern suburbs and rural counties, much as happened at last year’s general elections.
Concentrated Liberal Democrat support in these areas helped the party win 72 parliamentary seats in 2024, an increase of 64 from its 2019 result. As several of this year’s council elections are being held in the same places the Liberal Democrats won last year, the party is expected to successfully defend the 200 local council seats they hold on 1 May and gain another 200 or more on top.
The Liberal Democrats made six gains in Devon at last year’s general elections, all at the expense of the Conservatives. The outcome of a similar swing in their favour here on 1 May would certainly see the Conservatives lose control at County Hall – after holding power there for sixteen years – but whether the Liberal Democrats would take over, or even become the largest party, is another matter.
The party previously led Devon County Council for the four years from 2005 but no party won a majority in the previous elections in 2001. In 1997, however, it won an emphatic majority on the same day that Tony Blair led a national Labour landslide.
It has typically gained much less support in Devon county elections that have not coincided with general elections. However, electoral boundary changes in 2005 and 2017 impede reliable vote share comparisons over time.
Recent More In Common polling suggests the Liberal Democrats are likely to become the largest party on Devon County Council, leaving them potentially placed to govern with support from the same Independents in East Devon with whom they run the district council.
It also suggests support for the Greens will translate into a larger number of county seats this year, possibly at the expense of Labour in Exeter.
Electoral Calculus, however, reckons the Conservatives will lose control of the county council but nevertheless remain its largest party, partly because it thinks centre-left voters tend to over-estimate the likelihood that they will vote.
The Liberal Democrats are certainly managing expectations here. While they hope to take control in currently Conservative-run Gloucestershire, Shropshire and Wiltshire they are more circumspect about their prospects in Devon.
Leader Ed Davey said his party has a “mountain to climb” in Devon during a recent visit but is “working hard” to make gains. In any case none but the most optimistic Liberal Democrat supporter would hope to revisit the party’s 1997 Devon success.
Devon’s results will nevertheless have much wider significance than simply deciding who runs County Hall for the next year or two before the county council is dissolved. The current distribution of political power across the county has led to its councils submitting more local government reorganisation proposals than anywhere else in the country, most of which are at odds with each other.
A Liberal Democrat ascendancy at County Hall would greatly strengthen the party’s hand in negotiations with government following its results in recent Devon district elections, especially when its alliances with Independents in several of these councils are taken into account.
The county results could also be significant in addressing the challenges posed by peninsula-wide devolution.
The Liberal Democrats are expected to do well in unitary Cornwall, currently run by a Conservative and Independent Conservative-aligned minority which won a majority in 2021 but has since shrunk.
They are projected to emerge as the largest party after the elections, to lead Cornwall Council, which would give them a broad democratic mandate across the peninsula just as the local government reorganisation process gets properly under way.
Thursday’s county council elections are likely to have less lasting import in Exeter politics. Perhaps as a result, only Exeter Green Party and Exeter Liberal Democrats have published profiles of each of their candidates on their website.
Exeter Labour has only managed a single web page with the names and photos of each while Exeter Conservatives have published little more about their candidates on their website than a group photo that doesn’t say who is who.
Meanwhile Reform UK says it has an Exeter branch, but all its local party website offers is an invitation to donate or join and an email address for the party chair
Exeter Labour is defending seven of the city’s nine county council seats. At the 2021 county elections it lost vote share in seven: the exceptions were Conservative-held Duryard & Pennsylvania and Pinhoe & Mincinglake.
Exeter Green Party, in contrast, won the largest increase in vote share in every division in Exeter except Wonford & St Loye’s. In St David’s & Haven Banks it dramatically closed the gap on Labour with a vote share increase of more than 19%.
Exeter Conservatives are defending the city’s other two county council seats, after holding Duryard & Pennsylvania and Wearside & Topsham comfortably in 2021 despite losing support in both divisions, again primarily to the Greens.
To the surprise of many, Andrew Leadbetter, who is the county cabinet member with responsibility for its failing SEND children’s services, is standing again in Wearside & Topsham at this year’s elections after 28 years at County Hall.
Carol Whitton, Labour county council group leader, will be hoping that her party’s run of victories in the city council Topsham ward, which began with paper candidate Josh Ellis-Jones’ surprise win in 2022, will combine with enough voters deserting the Conservatives for the 48% vote share Andrew Leadbetter received in 2021 to melt away in her favour.
She is standing in Wearside & Topsham after representing St David’s & Haven Banks for eight years, apparently to avoid the threat posed by the Green Party’s Andy Ketchin, who has represented overlapping Newtown & St Leonards on the city council since 2013.
If Exeter Conservatives hope to hold Wearside & Topsham, they will also hope to gain Wonford & St Loyes, where Labour incumbent Marina Asvachin is standing down. Conservative city councillor Peter Holland came within twenty votes of taking the seat from her in 2021.
City council Conservative group leader Anne Jobson, who has represented St Loye’s ward since 2021, will be working hard to head off Reform in a division that will otherwise remain in Labour hands.
Elsewhere Labour and the Conservatives are not so much trading blows as candidates.
Rob Hannaford is hoping to capitalise on the popularity of long-serving Conservative Percy Prowse, who is standing down in Duryard & Pennsylvania. He has been a Devon county councillor for twenty years, winning Exwick & St Thomas for the Liberal Democrats in 2005 and 2009 before defecting to Labour and winning for it instead in 2013, 2017 and 2021.
He left the party to sit as an Independent last January after what he described as “many years of abusive, aggressive, controlling, discriminatory, unacceptable behaviour from some Labour city and county councillors”.
He then lost his Exwick city council seat to Labour last May, before completing his political odyssey by joining the Conservatives at County Hall and crossing the river to stand in Duryard & Pennsylvania this year.
But he may have reckoned without the combination of Conservative vote-splitting Reform and the high profile of Liberal Democrat candidate Michael Mitchell, another political veteran who co-leads the opposition on the city council where he has represented Duryard & St James since 2019.
Meanwhile Rob Hannaford has left Exwick & St Thomas wide open for John Harvey, who has also crossed the political Rubicon in the other direction to stand for Labour there having unsuccessfully stood for the Conservatives in no fewer than eight Exeter elections over the past ten years.
This will be the third county council division in which John Harvey has campaigned, after standing for the Conservatives in Heavitree & Whipton in a 2019 by-election and Pinhoe & Mincinglake in 2021. He has also stood for the party in four different city council wards.
He must be thinking his political ship has finally come in. He is defending a Labour vote share of more than 51%, won by Rob Hannaford in 2021.
Devon County Council Exeter electoral divisions.
Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2019.
Labour incumbent Su Aves is standing down in St Sidwell’s & St James to bequeath newcomer Lucy Findlay, whose prominent Social Enterprise Mark venture entered insolvency this time last year, with an even larger 52% party vote share to defend from 2021.
Green candidate Thomas Richardson is likely to Labour a run for its money, helped by Liberal Democrat Will Aczel and, no doubt, the prospect of the city council selling the controversial Clifton Hill sports centre site for £1 million less than its market value, a decision that has been quietly postponed from March until after the elections take place.
City council controversies also accompany the contest in Pinhoe & Mincinglake. Alongside growing public anger at the plan to close Northbrook Pool, a council decision to sell a ransom strip that has been preventing a development of 100 greenfield homes in Exeter’s northern hills above Pendragon Road has also been quietly postponed from March to May.
Labour newcomer Paula Black will presumably be hoping neither topic scuppers her chances of replacing incumbent Tracy Adams, who is standing down after a single term.
At the same time Labour county councillor Danny Barnes, who left Heavitree & Whipton Barton without County Hall representation for more than a year then failed to sign funding agreements worth £14,600 to local community groups has not exactly rolled the pitch for Liz Pole, who is hoping to emulate her city council win in Mincinglake & Whipton last year by holding the division for Labour.
Two city council by-elections are also taking place on Thursday, following the resignations of Labour councillors Naima Allcock in Mincinglake & Whipton and Josh Ellis-Jones in Topsham. Both quit during the third year of four-year terms.
Conservative Keith Sparkes is hoping to reclaim the Topsham seat he previously held then lost to Josh Ellis-Jones in 2022. Newcomer James Cookson is defending Labour’s vote share margin of just over 8% from last year, when Keith Sparkes came second.
Paula Black is also standing for Labour in the city council Mincinglake & Whipton ward. She may face strong support for Independent candidate Angela Martin following last year’s contest, which saw Independent Clive Hutchings come within 67 votes of taking what had been Exeter Labour’s safest city council seat at several previous elections.
The Pendragon Road ransom strip sale, the closure of Northbrook Pool and the continuing fallout from the row over the Heavitree & Whipton active streets trial may all play key roles in this ballot too.
The city council is administering all the elections that are taking place in Exeter on 1 May. Details of candidates and their agents are available on its website for both county council (PDF) and city council (PDF) elections.
Devon’s other seven district councils are each also administering Thursday’s elections in their areas. Details of candidates and their agents in all sixty contests are available on the county council website.
Six mayoral elections also take place on 1 May, as well as a parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby that is being held after Labour MP Mike Amesbury resigned following a conviction for assault.
It will be the first parliamentary by-election since Kier Starmer became Prime Minister, in Labour’s sixteenth-safest seat. Despite the party’s 14,700 majority some bookmakers are tipping a Reform win.
