West Sussex County Council

West Sussex County Council is a two-tier English county council representing approximately 900,000 residents across the county. Its 2026 relevance is primarily parliamentary: on 9 February 2026, the Commons held an adjournment debate titled "Elections to West Sussex County Council", during which Robert Jenrick MP told the House that legal advice received during his own tenure as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government had already established that postponing local elections for a second year was not legally sustainable. Six days later, on 16 February, Secretary of State Steve Reed MP formally reversed the government's postponement policy for 30 elections, citing updated legal advice.

If Jenrick's Hansard account is accurate, the Starmer government had access to, or could have obtained, advice pointing in the same direction before it announced postponements. The government has not published either the prior or the updated legal advice. West Sussex is also one of the county councils within the broader Sussex and Brighton Devolution Priority Programme area, whose elected combined-authority mayor has been postponed to May 2028. West Sussex County Council itself is scheduled for eventual reorganisation under LGR but continues to function as the principal council authority in the interim.

West Sussex is significant less as a place than as a procedural venue: the adjournment debate it lent its name to created the first public parliamentary record suggesting the government may have had access to adverse legal advice before announcing the postponement. That Hansard entry is now the primary evidence in any accountability argument about whether ministers were candid with Parliament, and it will be the reference point if a future inquiry revisits the episode.