Angela Rayner faced a backlash after confirming May elections have been cancelled in nine council areas.

The Deputy Prime Minister said new ballots would be held in May 2026 after the town halls are overhauled from two tier to unitary authorities.

The nine affected areas are East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey with more than five million people set to miss out on voting this year.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary also called on more two tier areas – which have both county and district councils – to come forward to shift into unitary authorities.

And she unveiled seven new potential devolution areas with “a view to mayoral elections in May 2026” across Cumbria, Cheshire and Warrington, Greater Essex, Hampshire and Solent, Norfolk and Suffolk, Sussex and Brighton, and Lancashire.

Ms Rayner told the Commons: “For certain areas, a significant amount of work is needed to unlock devolution and deliver reorganisation. For this reason, some areas requested to postpone their elections until May 2026.

“The Government’s starting point is for all elections to go ahead unless there’s a strong justification for postponement, and the bar is high, and rightly so.

“I am only agreeing to half of the requests that were made. After careful consideration, I have only agreed to postpone elections in places where this is central to our manifesto promise to deliver devolution.

“We’re not in the business of holding elections to bodies that won’t exist and where we don’t know what will replace them. This would be an expensive and irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ money, and any party calling for these elections to go ahead must explain how this waste would be justifiable.”

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But Reform leader Nigel Farage made a rallying cry to “save democracy” after the local election delays.

All but one are Tory-controlled, while Reform had been expected to perform well in areas including Essex and Thurrock.

Meanwhile, Tory shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake accused Ms Rayner of creating a new “Orwellian-sounding” system which will lead to more centralisation rather than devolution.

He told MPs: “Contrary to the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement, she is not doing away with a two-tier system, she is simply creating a new tier of Orwellian-sounding, strategic authorities which are closer to her and closer to Whitehall.

“These are for her to use as a pawn to implement this Government’s deeply unpopular socialist agenda. The reality is that this is delegation, not devolution. Not devolution but a clear centralisation.”