The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and restored the Supplementary Vote for English combined-authority mayors and police and crime commissioners, applying to any contest whose notice of election is published on or after 18 June12. Under that system a voter marks a first and a second choice. If nobody clears half the vote, every candidate but the leading two drops out and their usable second preferences transfer.
The Act reverses the Elections Act 2022, which had moved both offices to First past the post, where the leading candidate wins whatever the share. The 2022 change was argued on the ground that transferable ballots confused voters and produced spoilt papers. The Electoral Reform Society pressed the opposite case, that First past the post hands mayoralties to candidates well short of 40% in a fragmented field3. Both changes travelled inside a wider bill.
The argument was close to academic in 2022, when Labour and the Conservatives still took roughly three quarters of the vote between them. A five-party field turns it into arithmetic. A candidate on 47% wins outright under First past the post and must, under the restored rules, show they are also the second choice of Green and Liberal Democrat voters. Parties that poll in the low twenties and attract few second preferences lose ground that the old count would have hidden.
The change lands on more offices than the headline suggests. Police and Crime Commissioner elections carry it too, on turnouts routinely under 20% and with almost no press attention. The Act sits alongside the same devolution programme that will abolish 96 English councils by 2028, and the first full cycle fought under the restored rules arrives when England elects those new unitary councils.
