Peterborough elections 2024: Which parties can win?

This year’s crop of election hopefuls in Peterborough have been announced.

The city council has named the 104 candidates vying for your vote on 2nd May.

As ever, the election is being held in ‘thirds’, meaning that around a third of council seats will be contested or roughly one in each electoral ward.

Two seats are available in Werrington, though, after the resignation of former Peterborough First councillor Stephen Lane last month.

Peterborough City Council’s (PCC) election promises to be fascinating – whatever the outcome.

Not only is it happening with a general election looming, but it comes after unprecedented changes on a local level.

In November last year, Cllr Mohammed Farooq (Peterborough First, Hargate and Hempsted) became the council’s first non-Conservative leader in more than two decades after his party led a vote of no confidence against Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald (Conservatives, West) and his administration.

While Cllr Farooq is an ex-Conservative himself, he and his party worked alongside Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens to orchestrate the change of administration.

The parties informally supported Peterborough First: while they didn’t take up roles in PCC’s decision-making cabinet or enter a formal coalition, they lent their support for major votes such as approving the council’s annual budget.

The question of who will lead the council from May remains, perhaps more so than in previous years, open-ended.

Who could win?

Peterborough First, which currently runs the council without a majority, is defending four seats and has stood new candidates in four more.

Their only recourse for remaining in power is joining forces with other parties: the same is true of the Lib Dems and the Greens.

Two parties, the Conservatives and Labour, have the capacity to rule the council with a majority (holding at least 31 out of 60 council seats), but both outcomes would require landslide wins.

The Conservatives would need to retain the 14 seats the party’s defending and win nine more, which is every other seat available.

Labour would need to retain its two up for election and win 17 more out of a possible 21.

A party ruling with no overall control or a coalition is, then, more likely, but not certain.

How many candidates are the parties standing?

Only the Conservatives are standing the maximum number of possible candidates, which is 23 across 22 wards (taking into account the two seats available in Werrington).

Labour and the Greens are both standing 22 candidates: Labour has only put forward one candidate in Werrington while the Greens have not stood a candidate in Wittering.

The Lib Dems are standing 18: they have no candidate in Eye, Thorney and Newborough, Orton Waterville, Stanground South and Wittering and only one in Werrington.

Six independent candidates are also running, as well as three for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, one for the Workers Party and one for Reform UK.

The deadline for registering to vote in this year’s local elections is 16th April.