What the rise of Reform UK might mean for planning after the 1 May local council elections

The rise of Reform UK looks set to be the biggest story from the May local council elections, potentially sounding a note of caution for developers previously buoyed by Labour’s work to streamline planning processes and deliver urgent growth across energy and housing.

Elections will be held for 23 councils and six metropolitan mayors in England on Thursday 1 May, with polls in a further nine areas delayed until 2026 due to major reorganisation.

The first non-by-election polls since Labour came to power nationally, these elections will be a major electoral test for the current popularity of the main political parties, and on the face of it, could provide Reform UK with an opportunity to flex muscles at a grassroots level.

For Labour, the elections will take place at a time when the impact of some of the party’s harder hitting policies is starting to be felt, including employer National Insurance increases and welfare reforms. Polling by Electoral Calculus suggests that Labour will lose as many as 40 local council seats to be ranked in fourth place of all the main parties on the basis of seats won on 1 May. But that could be as much a result of the places where the elections are being held. 

Nineteen out of the 29 councils  where people will head to the polls are currently under overall Conservative control. That’s partly because 2025 is the traditional fallow year for the metropolitan councils (which are generally Labour) and have elections for three years in a four-year cycle. In this gap year for the cities, elections take place in the larger shire counties, where all seats are up once every four years. These authorities are much more rural and are therefore traditionally more likely to elect Tories. More pertinent is that those Conservative-led councils were last up for election in 2021, when the Tories were at a high watermark in the polls and did very well.

That means that, once again, the big story on election day looks set to be the rise of Reform UK. Reform UK is looking to build further on their success in stealing votes from the Conservatives in the 2024 general election, and have promised to field a candidate for almost all of the 1,600 local council seats that are up for grabs, six mayoral races and a parliamentary by-election to replace ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury in Runcorn and Helsby.

Suggesting losses for Labour and the Conservatives, and significant gains for Reform UK, an Electoral Calculus poll on behalf of the Daily Telegraph predicts the Conservatives will maintain overall control of only three of the 19 authorities where the party currently holds the reins – Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire and Wiltshire. They will remain the biggest party in seven of those areas, opening the door to power sharing agreements with Reform UK.

Reform UK is predicted to end up in overall control in Derbyshire (Con), Doncaster (Lab), Durham (Ind/Con/LIB), Kent (Con), and as the biggest party in three areas – Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire.

It also looks set to be another successful day for the Liberal Democrats, who are predicted to become the largest parties in Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire,  and Shropshire, but with no overall control. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey says the party will be vying for votes in 20 Tory-run council areas and aiming to overtake the Conservatives as the second-biggest party in local government.

So, what does this all mean from a planning and policy perspective?

The wisdom goes that the party in overall control of any one council will also dominate planning and policy decisions in that area.

Reform UK had no clear policy on housing and planning in time for the July 2024 general election, mainly saying it wanted to prioritise brownfield development. The Conservatives had pledged to build 1.6m new homes if they had won the election.

Homebuilding therefore does not feel like it will become a major political battleground, although there will always be differences to iron out.

But both Reform UK and the Conservatives are unequivocal in their view that the quest for net zero should not be a priority. This places them firmly at odds with the policy of the Labour government, which wants to remove nearly all fossil fuels from UK electricity production through its Clean Power 2030 Action Plan.

Labour is expanding renewable energy and said in its election manifesto it would invest £8.3bn in Great British Energy, a state-owned clean energy company, over five years.

Will the outcome of the local council elections in these 23 boroughs now slow Labour’s green dream? 

That’s unlikely given Labour’s own reforms, which might have spiked opposition guns before they were even unholstered.

In particular,  the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, introduced on March 11, 2025, with the aim of “streamlining planning processes, removing bureaucratic delays, and facilitating the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure”, now appears entirely timely. 

We would say this, but advocacy and engagement will now be more important than ever if developers are to achieve the outcomes dictated by national policy without the potential for delays introduced by Reform and Tory planning committee members, who may now have more principles than they have power to do anything about them.

Against that background, consultation, collaboration, compromise, and consensus will be key.