The Government has asked Exeter City Council whether it wants to cancel May 2026 local elections because of proposed local government reorganisation. At the time of writing, the Leader of Exeter City Council has not made a statement one way or another. The petition aims to expose what is going on and put pressure on Councillors to go ahead with the local elections.

https://committees.exeter.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?id=63

The Council have to reply to the Goverment by January 13th with their view.

Why is this important and urgent?

If elections are cancelled, residents will not get another vote on who runs Exeter City Council until at least May 2027, and current councillors’ terms would be extended without a fresh mandate. Residents will have gone two years without having the opportunity to exercise their democratic right to vote on who runs Exeter City Council.

The independent Electoral Commission is unhappy about this situation, saying:

Scheduled elections should as a rule go ahead as planned, and only be postponed in exceptional circumstance”, and that “capacity” is not a legitimate reason to delay elections.

They have also warned about the risks to democratic legitimacy: “ Extending existing mandates risks affecting the legitimacy of local decision making and damaging public confidence. There is a clear conflict of interest in asking existing Councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters.”

Please share widely to maximise the number of signatures

NB Signatures can only come from people living or working in Exeter.

Here is what the City Council website says about e-petitions which are formally recognised within the Council's constitution.

“If the petition contains at least 750 signatures, the relevant Portfolio Holder or relevant senior officer will address a meeting of the council’s relevant committee which is open to the public. Committee members will ask the questions at this meeting, but you will be able to suggest questions to the chair of this committee or a committee member by contacting us up to three working days before the meeting.

If the petition contains more than 2,000 signatures it will be debated by the full Council, unless it’s a petition asking for a Portfolio Holder or senior council officer to give evidence at a meeting open to the public. This means that the issue raised in the petition will be discussed at a council meeting which all Councillor’s can attend. The petition organiser will be given five minutes to present the petition at the council meeting and the petition will then be discussed by councillors for a maximum of 15 minutes. We will decide how to respond to the petition at this meeting. We may decide to take the action the petition requests, not to take the action requested for reasons put forward in the debate, or to commission further investigation into the matter, for example by a relevant scrutiny committee. The petition organiser will receive confirmation of this decision. This confirmation will also be published on our website."