Protesters demonstrate outside County Hall against the Conservative Cabinet’s proposal to seek the suspension of May’s elections (photo: Gabriel Carlyle).
ESCC requests postponement of May’s elections
East Sussex County Council yesterday decided to apply to join the devolution fast track and in the process have May’s elections postponed. A motion in an Extraordinary Full Council meeting urging the Cabinet not to seek the suspension of the elections was lost. Nick Terdre reports, research and graphics by Russell Hall.
East Sussex County Council Cabinet, which consists of seven Conservative councillors, yesterday accepted a recommendation from chief executive Becky Shaw that leader Keith Glazier should write to Jim McMahon, the minister of state for Local Government and English Devolution, confirming the council’s commitment to devolution, asking to join the Devolution Priority Programme and seeking to have the elections scheduled for May postponed for a year.
Cllr Johnny Denis presents the Green Party motion (image: ESCC webcast).
The move came after a lengthy debate at an extraordinary meeting of the Full Council in which a Green Party motion was tabled urging that the elections should not be suspended. It argued that the current minority Conservative administration would have no mandate to enter into negotiations on devolution and local government reorganisation on behalf of the council after 30 April.
An amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrat group similarly rejected suspending the elections, stating that they supported increased regional powers but not at the expense of local democracy.
During the debate Cllr Julia Hilton, also the HBC leader, said it was not necessary to suspend the elections in order to apply to join the Devolution Priority Programme. “The way the government has managed this process is frankly outrageous, imposing the biggest reorganisation of local government in decades on a crazy timescale,” she said.
The plans explicitly excluded district and borough councils from playing any role, she said. A different model was needed for big counties such as Sussex with a densely populated coastal strip.
Both motions were lost by 23 votes to 21. Apologies for absence were received from two Conservative councillors and three Liberal Democrats, so the outcome might have been different had the latter been present.
Minority administration
The majority held by the Conservative group after the last elections has since disappeared as its number of councillors has fallen to 23 out of 50. However, it can rely on the support of two independents. But members of the opposition parties find it ironic that a minority Conservative administration, which they were hoping to dislodge from power in May, has been offered a lifeline by a Labour government which could keep them in power for up to three years.
The Cabinets of the other two upper tier Sussex councils, West Sussex County Council and Brighton & Hove City Council, also agreed unanimously to apply to join the devolution priority programme, with WSCC seeking to have its May elections suspended for a year. The next elections for Brighton & Hove are scheduled for 2027.
Cllr Keith Glazier, ESCC leader, addresses Cabinet (image: ESCC webcast).
“This is historic for Sussex; bringing together the three authorities and our partners to discuss the future of local government in the area and the benefits to our residents, businesses, and communities it could bring,” Cllr Glazier said.
“We have all looked closely at the Government’s white paper, together discussed its benefits and what it offers and believe that we have come to the right decision to put forward an expression of interest for a Strategic Mayoral Authority for Sussex.”
In a joint statement the three Sussex upper tier councils asserted that a Mayoral Strategic Authority “will bring funding and local decision-making powers down from central Government” and “give the people of Sussex a stronger voice in how national decisions affect them and greater power to shape major projects across the area.”
Strong opposition
Last week Hastings & Rye MP and HBC leader Julia Hilton wrote to McMahon opposing ESCC’s application, saying, “On behalf of the residents of Hastings, we are writing to express our strong opposition to East Sussex, or ‘Sussex,’ being fast-tracked in this way, as more time is needed to build consensus on a devolution approach that works fairly for the community we represent.”
As a council with ‘no overall control,’ “…the administration clearly does not have a mandate to push ahead in this way on behalf of East Sussex.”
The leaders of Eastbourne, Hastings, Lewes and Wealden councils have also written to McMahon opposing the cancellation of the elections. “It is unacceptable that our residents, the voters, won’t decide who runs the county council – the body national government have deemed responsible for reorganisation,” they said. “It must be up to our residents to decide who makes these changes to services.”
If the three councils’ application to join the fast track is accepted, a period of public consultation will immediately follow. Cllr Glazier made the pragmatic case on Thursday that, as soon as this consultation had finished ESCC would be going into ‘purdah’ in the run-up to county elections on 1 May, a period of sensitivity when announcements or decisions that might have an effect on the election campaign are to be avoided, so progress on devolution would be hindered until after the elections and any new councillors had completed induction.
It was reported by the Financial Times on Thursday that 13 out of 21 county councils in England are considering seeking to have May elections postponed. Speaking at the Local Government Association’s finance conference the same day, Jim McMahon said that there had been a “flurry” of interest in joining the Devolution Priority Programme and that “assuming we receive credible applications in good faith, we don’t see a reason to decline any areas.” A “credible” application, according to McMahon, is one showing the applicants have “organised” and that if they had previously been reluctant they could “prove that isn’t their story” any longer.
Also on Thursday Commons Leader Lucy Powell told Parliament that, “We will only consider postponing elections where this will help deliver reorganisation and devolution in the most ambitious timeframe possible”.
What happens next
The decision to accept the councils’ applications, and to postpone elections, falls to McMahon. Assuming he accepts their request this month, the next step, as mentioned above, is for government to run a six-to-eight week public consultation. The results of this will inform a Ministerial decision as to whether to proceed with forming a Mayoral Strategic Authority across Sussex, initially consisting of the three upper tier councils and overseen by a mayor to be elected on 7 May 2026.
The government’s spending review, expected in June, will set out future multiyear mayoral investment funds for new mayoral areas and legislation will be laid before Parliament to create the Strategic Authorities.
If Sussex gets the go-ahead to form a Mayoral Strategic Authority, there will follow a separate process of local government re-organisation. East and West Sussex will submit proposals to form single-tier unitary authorities with elections to shadow unitaries as soon as 6 May 2027, opening the way in 2028 to a mayoral combined authority, at which point the unitary authorities in each of the constituent parts of the county will become operative.
At this time, according to the government’s devolution timeframe, the county councils, along with district and borough councils, will be abolished. While town and parish councils will remain, it is the failure of the devolution white paper to spell out how local government at the level currently performed by district and borough councils will then operate, if indeed this is what is intended, which has caused widespread outrage, as was evidenced at Hastings Borough Council’s Cabinet meeting on Monday.
Eighteen months after the mayoral combined authority is formed it becomes eligible for Established Mayoral status. It is this status that unlocks the full funding and powers of devolution.
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