Local elections take place on Thursday (May 2) to decide who will represent local wards on Southampton City Council, and which party – if any – wins control of the city. So who’s standing, and how did we vote last time?

Local elections (not to be confused with the forthcoming European Elections currently scheduled for May 23 after Brexit was delayed) are held to choose councillors for each Southampton ward.

Those elected as councillors take up seats in the council chamber for a four-year term, and make decisions on local issues.

What does the council do?

Southampton City Council is responsible for a large number of services in the city, including the maintenance of 1,140 hectares of parks and open spaces, providing 16,300 council homes and recycling or composting 27,000 tonnes of waste each year.

Wards, which cover fairly large areas of the city, each have three councillors, and every year for three consecutive years one councillor in each ward will have completed their term of office and their seat is put up for election.

Usually the party with the greatest number of seats will also control the council.

What happened last time?

The last local elections were in May 2018, and saw Labour retaining their slim majority on the council – although the then leader Simon Letts lost his Bitterne seat, as did Jeremy Moulton, the Conservatives’ then leader, in Freemantle.

Bitterne Park ward elected Rob Harwood for the Conservatives, who beat Labour’s Ashley Minto by 389 votes.

Minto polled 1525, the Greens' Jenny Barnes 297, and James Read for the Lib Dems 266. There was a 38.2% turnout, and it meant the ward continued to be represented by three Conservative councillors.

Who’s standing this time?

Bitterne Park

This time Cllr David Fuller’s seat is up for grabs.

There are four candidates hoping to win it: Lindsi Bluemel for the Green Party; Fuller himself, listed on the nomination statement as “Local Conservative”; Juliet Lloyd for the Liberal Democrats; and Simon Oldham for Labour.

Portswood (inc St Denys)

If you live over the water, your choices in Portswood ward will be: Katherine Barbour for the Greens; James Burgess for Local Conservatives; Nick Chaffey for Socialist Alternative – Putting People First; Gordon Cooper for the Labour Party; and James Read for the Lib Dems.

You can see a list of candidates standing in all city wards on the council’s website here.

To find your polling station, which will be open from 7am – 10pm, you can use the council’s web tool from this link.

Update 1/5/19: chart corrected with only one, correct turnout percentage