On 29 April 2026, the English Devolution & Community Empowerment Bill received Royal Assent. This means that it has passed all stages of its parliamentary progress, through the House of Commons and House of Lords and has become law, as the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act.
The Act covers a wide range of policy areas, but we’ve been paying particularly close attention to what it means for democracy and elections.
Goodbye to First Past the Post for Mayors
The most welcome change from our point of view is the scrapping of First Past the Post (FPTP) for the election of mayors (of both the Local Authority and Strategic Authority variety).
When elected mayors were first introduced in the early 2000s, they were elected using the Supplementary Vote system. This meant voters could put down a second choice when voting for these positions – ensuring that mayors were not elected with the support of just a small portion of the local community.
The previous government imposed First-Past-the-Post on Mayoral elections via their Elections Act (2022), which we strongly opposed – arguing that it would allow for powerful mayors being elected with a mandate from fewer local people. We also pointed out that it would reduce choice for voters, potentially forcing them to use their one vote tactically to vote for a candidate who was not their first choice, with the aim of keeping out a candidate they really disliked.
Can First Past the Post hold up in our ever increasing multi-party era?
With the rise of multi-party politics in England, the issue of candidates being elected on very low vote shares under FPTP has become even more acute. Sure enough, in May 2025, two Strategic Authority Mayors were elected with the support of fewer than 30% of voters.
In Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, the Conservative candidate was elected mayor with the support of just 28.4% of voters. Meanwhile, in the West of England Mayoral contest (covering Bristol; South Gloucestershire; and Bath & North East Somerset local authority areas) the Labour candidate was elected with just a quarter (25%) of all votes.
Supplementary Vote is back – a step forward, but not the finish line
The legislation passed yesterday means that mayoral elections will revert to being conducted under the Supplementary Vote system. We welcome this as a big step in the right direction but also called for a system upgrade – to the Alternative Vote. This would have meant voters could have expressed as many preferences as they wished when casting their vote, rather than being restricted to a single back-up vote. It would have meant fewer wasted votes and mayors being elected with a mandate from a bigger portion of local people.
Unfortunately, despite amendments tabled by both MPs and peers, the government decided to stick with SV, rather than switch to AV. It is important to re-iterate though, that SV is far preferable to FPTP.
The change isn’t coming in this May
The legislation has come too late for the six local authority mayoral elections (Croydon; Hackney; Lewisham; Newham; Tower Hamlets; Watford) that will happen on Thursday 7 May 2026 and which will be the last to take place under FPTP. We will keep a close eye on these results for any mayors elected on low vote shares, like we saw in May 2025.
At the same time, we will also be closely monitoring the results of the English local council elections, also due to take place on 7 May. Around 5,000 councillors will be elected, across 136 local authorities, all under First-Past-The-Post. We fully expect that the FPTP roulette wheel will be in evidence again, producing highly disproportional and chaotic outcomes on individual councils. We will report back on the most wild examples, in the aftermath of the elections.
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