Why there are no elections for these Lancashire councils in 2026 - and never will be again
Candidates are already vying for votes in some areas, but it’s a different story in many others.
As several parts of Lancashire gear up for local elections next month - with leaflet-dropping, door-knocking and social media-posting all well under way - it is silent on the campaigning front elsewhere in the county.
That is because Lancashire’s 15 main local authorities operate on two different electoral cycles.
Seven of them - Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Chorley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Preston and West Lancashire councils - elect their memberships in thirds, staging polls in three years out of every four. 2026 is one of those years, meaning residents will get to have their say on local election day on 7th May.
The other eight - Blackpool, Fylde, Lancaster, Ribble Valley, Rossendale, South Ribble and Wyre, along with Lancashire County Council - hold what are known as ‘all-out’ elections once every four years, electing all their members in one go; and none are due to do so this year.
The majority of the latter group last held votes in 2023, except for Rossendale and the county council which went to the polls in 2024 and 2025, respectively. However, a forthcoming government-ordered shake-up - first mooted less than 18 months ago - means none of them will ever stage elections again in their current form.
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All 15 Lancashire councils are set to be abolished on 31st March, 2028. A much smaller number of authorities will replace them the following day, covering far larger areas than each of the existing councils - with the exception of the county authority - does at the moment.
Elections to embryonic, so-called ‘shadow’ versions of those new bodies will be held in May 2027 - instead of the polls that would otherwise have taken place for 13 of the existing councils that year. Only Rossendale and the county council were not due to have an election next year.
The new authorities will then exist - for the following 11 months - in tandem with those that they are set to replace, before officially coming into being in April 2028.
The forthcoming overhaul previously raised the prospect of even this year's scheduled elections in Lancashire being cancelled. The government invited local authorities to make the case for pulling the plug on the polls in 2026 if they felt they did not have enough capacity to stage an election alongside preparing for their abolition and the establishment of replacement councils.
Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Chorley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Preston all made that request after votes in either their cabinets or full councils, while West Lancashire’s ruling Labour group also did so.
Ministers agreed to call off the elections in all of those council areas - and almost 60 others across England - but then U-turned in February ahead of a legal challenge to the move being brought by Reform UK.
Meanwhile, the changes on the way in 2028 will end the current ‘two-tier’ split between district councils such as Preston, Lancaster and Burnley - which look after the likes of waste collection, parks and planning applications - and Lancashire County Council, which is responsible for services including social care, highways, education and public health.
The new standalone authorities will be ‘unitary’ councils - as Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen have been since 1998 - taking care of all local services within their patch.
The government is currently considering five different proposals from Lancashire which offer different suggestions for the number and shape of the councils that should be created under the new structure. The options range from two to five, with two different versions of a four-authority configuration.
A decision from Whitehall is expected over the summer.
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