The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) confirmed on 16 February 2026 that six of its Devolution Priority Programme mayoral elections would not take place on schedule. Cheshire and Warrington plus Cumbria are pushed back to May 2027. Greater Essex, Hampshire and the Solent, Norfolk and Suffolk, and Sussex and Brighton are pushed back to May 2028. The four 2028 combined authorities cover counties that are themselves holding full county council elections on 7 May 2026.
The postponement creates a layered accountability gap. In Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, voters will elect county councillors on 7 May into a system with no combined-authority mayor above them until 2028, and with the counties themselves scheduled to be abolished before then under the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) programme MHCLG confirmed on 25 March. The councillors therefore represent authorities that will not exist by the time the mayors who would coordinate them are first elected.
The Institute for Government noted that the six postponements were originally announced alongside the wider policy to delay 30 local elections for a year. That wider delay was reversed on 16 February after the Jenrick Commons statement and the Reform UK Divisional Court challenge. The mayoral postponements survived the reversal because they were tied to the LGR timetable, not the legal question about postponement that Reform UK's challenge targeted.
