County Council elections on the horizon – polling date in early May
Elections to Oxfordshire County Council are now just under five weeks away and there are a series of key dates in the lead up to the Thursday, May 4 poll.
The final full council meeting of the county councillors elected in May 2013 took place on Tuesday, March 21.
All 63 county council seats will be up for election and residents all over Oxfordshire will begin to receive polling cards during the last week of March.
On Wednesday, April 5 the list of candidates for each county council seat will be published. A number of existing county councillors have already indicated they are standing down but the definitive list will not be clear until April 5.
Registering to vote
The last day for people to register to vote is Thursday April 13. Although this is a county council election, Oxfordshire’s district councils are the authorities responsible for administering the electoral register and people should contact them if they are not already registered to vote.
The last date to apply for a postal and postal proxy vote is Tuesday 18 April and the last date to apply for a new proxy vote is Tuesday 25 April 2017.
Polling day
Polling Day on Thursday, May 4 runs from 7.00am to 10 pm. The election count takes place on Friday, May 5 in Abingdon.
The 2013 election result
The current composition of the county council following the 2013 election and by-elections since is as follows:
Conservatives: 31 seats
Labour: 15 seats
Liberal Democrats: 11 seats
Independents: 4 seats
Greens: 2 seats
The 2013 election was the first in which 63 seats were contested. In elections previous to this there had been 74 county council seats. The reduction occurred following a boundary review.
A total of 32 seats are required for one political party to gain an overall majority at the county council.