Pressure mounts on Exeter ahead of crunch election debate

Pressure is mounting on Exeter ahead of a deadline linked to whether the city will seek to postpone its elections.

A crunch meeting is scheduled to take place on Friday just over a mile from the city council’s headquarters about the issue, and opposition politicians have submitted a motion urging them to go ahead.
A special meeting has been called by Devon County Council, which wants all its 60 councillors to form a view about the prospect of Exeter City Council postponing elections in the city.
And Councillor Diane Moore (Green Party, St David’s), a member of Exeter City Council, has submitted a motion urging the council to honour the scheduled elections in May.
Local government minister Alison McGovern wrote to 64 councils in December stating that Westminster had been contacted by several councils that had raised concerns about their ability to run elections amid the ongoing process of local government reorganisation.
That process will see two-tier areas, such as Devon, where both county councils and district councils operate in the same geographic area, changed to unitary councils that will oversee all services in their areas.
Elections for the new unitary councils when they are formed are pencilled in for 2027, and are expected to begin operating in 2028.
“I’m pretty sure there will be cross-party condemnation [by Devon County Council councillors] of the government for meddling with democracy, which is dangerous,” Councillor Julian Brazil (Liberal Democrat, Kingsbridge), the leader of the county council, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Cllr Moore sent a notice of motion today (Monday 5 January) in a bid to discuss the issue at Exeter City Council’s full council meeting next week.
It calls on the city council to “resolve to inform government that elections will take place as scheduled for Exeter City Council on 7 May 2026”.
“As the leader has been silent on the issue, I think it’s time councillors discussed it,” Cllr Moore added.
After Devon County Council’s meeting on Friday, it’s likely Cllr Brazil will write to the government to express that council’s view.
Cllr Brazil added that Friday’s meeting at County Hall could also be a platform for the wider issues of local government reorganisation, and devolution, the process through which areas are supposed to secure directly elected mayors.
“The government promised devolution in its manifesto, and not local government reorganisation, but we’re getting the latter and not the former,” Cllr Brazil added.
“Is it a coincidence that the mayoral set-up costs government money and the local government reorganisation doesn’t but does cost councils money? I don’t think so and I believe that’s why reorganisation is going ahead.”
Some areas, such as Surrey, have been told how their councils should be reorganised yet have not been informed about the prospects for directly elected mayors yet, which is something they were expecting.
In terms of scheduled elections this year, councils have complained that the process of developing reorganisation proposals has been extremely resource intensive, and that holding elections in May – just before they could be told how they have to reorganise themselves – could be problematic.
“Now that we have received all proposals, it is only right that we listen to councils who are expressing concerns about their capacity to deliver a smooth and safe transition to new councils, alongside running resource-intensive elections to councils who may be shortly abolished,” Ms McGovern’s letter said.
“We have also received representations from councils concerned about the cost to taxpayers of holding elections to councils that are proposed to shortly be abolished.
“Previous governments have postponed local elections in areas contemplating and undergoing local government reorganisation to allow councils to focus their time and energy on the process. We have now received requests from multiple councils to postpone their local elections in May 2026.”
Ms McGovern said the government “will listen” to representations from council leaders who believe postponing their local elections makes sense.
Both Plymouth City Council and Exeter City Council have scheduled elections in May 2026, and while Plymouth was quick to confirm their poll would go-ahead, there has been no formal confirmation either way from Exeter.
Cllr Brazil has criticised the notion of councils being allowed to postpone elections, and was opposed to the prospect at the county council when the former Conservative administration requested the postponement of the 2025 local elections. That request was not accepted by the government.
Exeter City Council has a full council meeting on Tuesday 13 January – just two days before it has to formally tell the government whether it wishes to postpone its elections or not.
The agenda for that meeting has not yet been published, so it is not clear whether the city council will dedicate time in that meeting to the issue of postponing the elections, although Cllr Moore’s motion is likely to force the issue onto the agenda.
Last week, a spokesperson for the city council said nothing had yet been decided about the May 2026 polls.