United Kingdom local elections, 2005
Encyclopedia
Elections for local government
were held in the England
and Northern Ireland
on 5 May 2005 along with the 2005 general election across the entire United Kingdom
. In addition, the Isle of Wight
held a local referendum on the issue of a directly elected mayor
.
Source: BBC local election results for England
county council
seats were up for re-election.
the whole council were up for election and one had a third of the council up for election.
. The many parties and the use of the single transferable vote
meant that most councils ended up in no overall control.
The DUP gained majority control of three councils: Ards, Ballymena, and Castlereagh.
Source: ARK
research and knowledge group
Local government in the United Kingdom
The pattern of local government in England is complex, with the distribution of functions varying according to the local arrangements. Legislation concerning local government in England is decided by the Parliament and Government of the United Kingdom, because England does not have a devolved...
were held in the England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
on 5 May 2005 along with the 2005 general election across the entire United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. In addition, the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
held a local referendum on the issue of a directly elected mayor
Elected mayors in the United Kingdom
Directly elected mayors are council leaders elected by the general electorate of a council area for local government, instead of being appointed by members of a local authority, which is common in the United Kingdom. The Elected Mayor is elected from a number of candidates who put themselves up for...
.
England Results
| Party | Councils | Councillors | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Change | Total | Change | Total | ||
| +7 | 24 | +152 | 1193 | ||
| –1 | 6 | –114 | 612 | ||
| +3 | 3 | +40 | 493 | ||
| 0 | 0 | +6 | 8 | ||
| Residents Associations | 0 | 0 | –3 | 8 | |
| 0 | 0 | -3 | 2 | ||
| 0 | 0 | -5 | 1 | ||
| 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | ||
| Other | 0 | 0 | –26 | 96 | |
| No Overall Control | -9 | 4 | — | — | |
Source: BBC local election results for England
Mayoral elections
Four direct mayoral elections were held.| Local Authority | Previous Mayor | Candidate elected | Details | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doncaster Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster The Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster is a metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire in Yorkshire and the Humber Region of England.In addition to the town of Doncaster, the borough covers Mexborough, Conisbrough, Thorne and Finningley.... |
Martin Winter (Labour Labour Party (UK) The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after... ) |
Martin Winter (Labour Labour Party (UK) The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after... ) |
|||
| Hartlepool Hartlepool (borough) Hartlepool is a unitary authority in the ceremonial county of County Durham, north east England. In 2003 it had a resident population of 90,161. It borders the non-metropolitan county of County Durham to the north, Stockton-on-Tees to the south and Redcar and Cleveland to the south-east along the... |
Stuart Drummond Stuart Drummond Stuart Drummond is the first directly-elected mayor of Hartlepool in North East England. He was first elected in 2002 and was re-elected in 2005 and 2009. He was the first elected mayor in Britain to win a third term.-Biography:... (Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... ) |
Stuart Drummond Stuart Drummond Stuart Drummond is the first directly-elected mayor of Hartlepool in North East England. He was first elected in 2002 and was re-elected in 2005 and 2009. He was the first elected mayor in Britain to win a third term.-Biography:... (Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... ) |
|||
| North Tyneside North Tyneside The Metropolitan Borough of North Tyneside is a metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England and is part of the Tyneside conurbation. Its seat is Wallsend Town Hall.... |
Linda Arkley Linda Arkley Linda Arkley is the Conservative mayor of North Tyneside, England,She was elected as mayor in a 2003 by-election, following the resignation of Chris Morgan. She had previously been Deputy Leader of the Conservative group on North Tyneside Council... (Conservative Conservative Party (UK) The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House... ) |
John Harrison John Harrison (politician) John Harrison was the mayor of North Tyneside in England between 2005 and 2009. He is a member of the Labour Party.He became the elected mayor of North Tyneside on May 5, 2005 in the UK local elections, taking over from the previous Conservative mayor Linda Arkley, who later defeated him in the... (Labour Labour Party (UK) The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after... ) |
Details North Tyneside mayoral election, 2005 Elections for North Tyneside's directly elected mayor took place on 5 May 2005 on the same day as the United Kingdom General Election.John Harrison, of the Labour Party, won. Many expected the former mayor, Linda Arkley of the Conservative Party to win. The election uses the Supplementary Vote... |
||
| Stoke-on-Trent Stoke-on-Trent Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area... |
Mike Wolfe Mike Wolfe Mike Wolfe was the first directly elected mayor of Stoke-on-Trent, sitting in office from 2002 to 2005.-Time as Mayor:Wolfe left the Labour Party to stand as an independent in the mayoral race of October 2002 and narrowly beat George Stevenson, a local Labour member of Parliament... (Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... ) |
Mark Meredith Mark Meredith Mark Joseph Meredith was the second and last directly elected mayor of Stoke-on-Trent in England. An openly gay man and former amateur boxer he was elected on 5 May 2005, for the Labour Party, and defeated incumbent independent Mike Wolfe. In March 2009, Meredith was arrested on suspicion of... (Labour Labour Party (UK) The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after... ) |
|||
County councils
All shire countyShire county
A non-metropolitan county, or shire county, is a county-level entity in England that is not a metropolitan county. The counties typically have populations of 300,000 to 1.4 million. The term shire county is, however, an unofficial usage. Many of the non-metropolitan counties bear historic names...
county council
County council
A county council is the elected administrative body governing an area known as a county. This term has slightly different meanings in different countries.-United Kingdom:...
seats were up for re-election.
| Council | Previous control | Result | Details | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bedfordshire Bedfordshire County Council Bedfordshire County Council was the county council of the non-metropolitan county of Bedfordshire in England. It was established in 1889 and was abolished on 1 April 2009. The county council was based in Bedford. It was replaced with three unitary authorities: Bedford Borough Council, Central... hold |
|||||
| Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire County Council Buckinghamshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Buckinghamshire, in England, the United Kingdom. Its area of control does not include Milton Keynes, which is a unitary authority... hold |
|||||
| Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire County Council Cambridgeshire County Council is the county council of Cambridgeshire, England. The council currently consists of 69 councillors, representing 60 electoral divisions. The Conservative Party has a majority on the council, having gained control in the 1997 local elections... hold |
|||||
| Cheshire Cheshire County Council Cheshire County Council was a County Council, of the second highest level of United Kingdom Government for the residents of Cheshire. Founded in 1889, it ceased to exist on 1 April 2009, when it and the district councils in Cheshire were replaced by two unitary authorities; Cheshire West and... hold |
|||||
| Cornwall Cornwall County Council Cornwall Council is the unitary authority for Cornwall, in England, United Kingdom. The council, and its predecessor Cornwall County Council, has a tradition of large groups of independents, having been controlled by independents in the 1970s and 1980s... gain |
|||||
| Cumbria Cumbria County Council Cumbria County Council is the county council of Cumbria, a county in the North West of England. Established in 1974, following its first elections held a year before that, it is an elected local government body responsible for the most significant local services in the county, including county... hold |
|||||
| Derbyshire hold |
|||||
| Devon Devon County Council Devon County Council is the county council administering the English county of Devon. Based in the city of Exeter, the council covers the non-metropolitan county area of Devon... gain |
|||||
| Dorset Dorset County Council Dorset County Council is the county council of the Dorset in England. It provides the upper tier of local government, below which are district councils, and town and parish councils... hold |
|||||
| Durham hold |
|||||
| East Sussex hold |
|||||
| Essex hold |
|||||
| Gloucestershire gain |
|||||
| Hampshire Hampshire County Council Hampshire County Council is the county council that governs the majority of the county of Hampshire in England. It provides the upper tier of local government, below which are district councils, and town and parish councils... hold |
|||||
| Hertfordshire Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Hertfordshire, in England, the United Kingdom. It currently consists of 77 councillors, and is controlled by the Conservative Party, which has 55 councillors, 17 Liberal Democrats, versus 3 Labour... hold |
Details Hertfordshire Council election, 2005 -Election results:The Hertfordshire County Council election was held on Thursday 5 May 2005 when all 77 seats were contested.The Labour Party was the main "loser" on the day with a net loss of 11 County Council Seats and being beaten into 3rd place in the popular vote.The Conservative Party and... |
||||
| Kent Kent County Council Kent County Council is the county council that governs the majority of the county of Kent in England. It provides the upper tier of local government, below which are 12 district councils, and around 300 town and parish councils. The county council has 84 elected councillors... hold |
Details | ||||
| Lancashire Lancashire County Council Lancashire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Lancashire, England. It currently consists of 84 councillors, and is controlled by the Conservative Party, who won control of the council in the local council elections in June 2009, ending 28 years of... hold |
Details | ||||
| Leicestershire Leicestershire County Council Leicestershire County Council is the county council for the English non-metropolitan county of Leicestershire. It was originally formed in 1889 by the Local Government Act 1888. The county is divided into 52 electoral divisions, which return a total of 55 councillors. The council is controlled by... hold |
|||||
| Lincolnshire hold |
Details | ||||
| Norfolk hold |
|||||
| North Yorkshire hold |
|||||
| Northamptonshire gain |
Details Northamptonshire Council election, 2005 The 2005 Northamptonshire Council election took place on 5 May 2005 to elect members of Northamptonshire County Council England. The whole council was up for election and the Conservative party gained overall control of the council from the Labour Party.... |
||||
| Northumberland Northumberland County Council Northumberland County Council is a unitary authority in North East England. It was originally formed in 1889 as the council for the administrative county of Northumberland and reformed in 1974 to cover a the newly formed non-metropolitan county of Northumberland... hold |
|||||
| Nottinghamshire hold |
|||||
| Oxfordshire Oxfordshire County Council Oxfordshire County Council, established in 1889, is the county council, or upper-tier local authority, for the non-metropolitan county of Oxfordshire, in the South East of England, an elected body responsible for the most strategic local government services in the county.-History:County Councils... gain |
|||||
| Shropshire gain |
Details Shropshire County Council election, 2005 The 2005 elections to Shropshire County Council took place on May 5, 2005, alongside the 2005 general election across the entire United Kingdom.... |
||||
| Somerset Somerset County Council Somerset County Council is the county council of Somerset in the South West of England, an elected local government authority responsible for the most significant local government services in most of the county.-Area covered:... gain |
|||||
| Staffordshire hold |
|||||
| Suffolk Suffolk County Council Suffolk County Council is the administrative authority for the county of Suffolk, England. It is run by 72 elected county councillors representing 63 divisions... gain |
Details | ||||
| Surrey Surrey County Council Surrey County Council is the county council that governs the non-metropolitan county of Surrey in England. The council is composed of 80 elected councillors.The council is controlled by the Conservative party.The leader of the council is David Hodge.... hold |
|||||
| Warwickshire hold |
Details | ||||
| West Sussex West Sussex County Council West Sussex County Council is the authority that governs the non-metropolitan county of West Sussex. The county also contains 7 district and borough councils, and 159 town, parish and neighbourhood councils. The county council has 71 elected councillors... hold |
Details | ||||
| Wiltshire Wiltshire County Council Wiltshire County Council was the county council of Wiltshire in the South West of England, an elected local Government body responsible for most local government services in the county.... hold |
Details Wiltshire Council election, 2005 Elections to Wiltshire County Council were held on 5 May 2005. The whole council was up for election and the Conservatives held onto control.Most electoral divisions had boundary changes, and several were new, including three new two-member divisions, in Salisbury and Trowbridge.As with other... |
||||
| Worcestershire gain |
|||||
Unitary authorities
In three unitary authoritiesUnitary authorities of England
Unitary authorities of England are areas where a single local authority is responsible for a variety of services for a district that elsewhere are administered separately by two councils...
the whole council were up for election and one had a third of the council up for election.
| Council | Proportion up for election |
Previous control | Result | Details | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol | 1/3 hold |
|||||
| Isle of Wight Isle of Wight Council The Isle of Wight Council is a local council. It is a unitary authority covering the Isle of Wight, South East England. It is currently made up of 40 seats, with the Conservatives as ruling party with 24 councillors at the latest local election in June 2009.... |
All gain |
Details Isle of Wight Council election, 2005 The 2005 Isle of Wight Council elections were held on the Isle of Wight, England, on 5 May 2005. The result led to a landslide Conservative victory gaining 22 councillors, leading the Isle of Wight to Conservative control from no overall control previously.... |
||||
| Isles of Scilly Isles of Scilly The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula of Great Britain. The islands have had a unitary authority council since 1890, and are separate from the Cornwall unitary authority, but some services are combined with Cornwall and the islands are still part... |
All hold |
|||||
| Stockton-on-Tees Stockton-on-Tees (borough) Stockton-on-Tees is a unitary authority area and borough in the Tees Valley area of north east England, with a population in 2001 of 178,408, rising to 185,880 in 2005 estimates.... |
All gain |
|||||
Northern Ireland district and borough councils
All seats were up for election in the 26 districts of Northern IrelandDistricts of Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is divided into 26 districts for local government purposes. In Northern Ireland local councils do not carry out the same range of functions as those in the rest of the United Kingdom, for example they have no responsibility for education, for road building or for housing...
. The many parties and the use of the single transferable vote
Single transferable vote
The single transferable vote is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through preferential voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or...
meant that most councils ended up in no overall control.
The DUP gained majority control of three councils: Ards, Ballymena, and Castlereagh.
Results summary
| Party | Councillors | Votes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Change | Total | % share | Total | ||
| +51 | 182 | 30 | 208,278 | ||
| +18 | 126 | 23 | 163,205 | ||
| -39 | 115 | 18 | 126,317 | ||
| -16 | 101 | 17 | 121,991 | ||
| +2 | 30 | 5 | 35,149 | ||
| -14 | 20 | 4 | 27,677 | ||
| +3 | 3 | 1 | 5,703 | ||
| -2 | 2 | 1 | 4,591 | ||
| United Unionist United Unionist Coalition The United Unionist Coalition, formerly known as the United Unionist Assembly Party, was formed by three unionist members of the Northern Ireland Assembly who were elected as "independent unionists" in 1998. They were Fraser Agnew, Boyd Douglas and Denis Watson... |
0 | 2 | 0.3 | 2,064 | |
| Newtownabbey Ratepayers Newtownabbey Ratepayers Association The Newtownabbey Ratepayers' Association was a minor political party operating in Newtownabbey, Northern IrelandIt has contest elections for Newtownabbey Borough Council from 1997 to 2005 and registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission in 2001.The party had 2 councillors elected... |
0 | 1 | 0.3 | 1,897 | |
| 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 1,321 | ||
| 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 1,164 | ||
| 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 1,052 | ||
| 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 828 | ||
| -1 | 0 | 0.1 | 738 | ||
| -2 | 0 | 0.1 | 734 | ||
Source: ARK
Northern Ireland Social and Political Archive
ARK is a Northern Irish website in collaboration with Queen's University Belfast and University of Ulster. It is designed to make social and political information about Northern Ireland available freely to the public....
research and knowledge group