19 Plymouth seats up for grabs in May elections

Plymouth won't postpone them

Nineteen seats will be up for grabs in May’s Plymouth City Council elections.

The city council decided just before Christmas to continue as normal with elections in 2026 following an invitation to local authorities to postpone them due to the pressures of local government reorganisation.

Plymouth holds elections by thirds which means a third of seats are contested each year for three years, followed by a year when there are no elections.

Ten of the seats being contested this year are currently held by Labour which would still be the largest party even if it lost all of these. 

There are 57 seats on the council and Labour currently hold 39, the Conservatives and Independents both hold seven, Greens have two, Liberal Democrats have one and there is one completely independent member.

At this stage, we don’t know who will be fighting for all the seats in the May elections, but what we do know is that Conservative councillor for Plymstock Radford Rebecca Smith has announced her intention to stand down due to her workload as an MP for South West Devon. 

In the last two elections, Miss Smith has won the seat with a majority of over 1,000 and alderman John Mahony, who has 22 years of previous experience as a Plymouth City Councillor, will stand in her place.

In Compton, trans councillor Dylan Tippetts won the seat for Labour in 2022 but defected to the Liberal Democrats last year after he was angry over prime minister Keir Starmer’s decision that single sex toilets should be based on biological sex. Cllr Tippetts took the seat from the Conservatives in 2022.

The Honicknowle seat being contested is held by Cllr Zoe Reilly who also left the Labour party to go completely independent after the prime minister made a speech about bringing down net migration last year. Labour won the seat in 2018 as well as in 2022.

The Independent group recently announced that its Moor View councillor Maddi Bridgeman would fight the Plympton St Mary seat in 2026 currently held by the Conservatives, a party she was once part of but left in 2023. 

One of the two seats held by the Greens is also up for grabs in the forthcoming elections. Cllr Ian Poyser won it from the Tories in 2022 with a majority of more than 500 votes.

Other seats being contested which have had a mixed political history in recent years include Plymstock Dunstone. After the death of Conservative Vivian Pengelly in 2023, a city councillor of more than 30 years, Stefan Krizanac won the by-election for Labour.

The Tories will be hoping to keep the Southway seat won by party group leader Andy Lugger in 2022 but previously held by Labour and in Budshead where the Conservatives won the election in 2022 and 2018.

The Eggbuckland seat could be safe for the Tories who have held on to it for a number of years and Labour could keep its stronghold in Ham, Peverell, St Budeaux, St Peter and the Waterfront, Stoke and Sutton and Mount Gould, Efford and Lipson, Drake and Devonport but it’s all up for grabs.

Deputy leader of Plymouth City Council Jemima Laing (Lab, Stoke) said following the government’s offer to postpone the May elections that she recognised it may be the right approach for some councils facing capacity challenges due to the local government organisation but this was not the case for Plymouth.

 “We are already well advanced in our preparations for the May 2026 local elections and plans are firmly in place. Therefore, the elections will proceed as scheduled,” she said.

All county and district councils are being abolished in  the biggest reorganisation of local government in England in 50 years with plans for new authorities to be in place from May 2028.

Plymouth City Council is proposing to expand its boundaries into 13 parishes of the South Hams to meet the government’s size requirements for new unitary councils.

Exeter is one of more than 20 councils across the country requesting the cancellation of elections. It was decided after a heated debate in the council chamber on Tuesday.

Here are the full list of seats being contested in Plymouth in May and councillors who currently hold those seats:

Budshead (Lee Finn, Conservative)

Compton (Dylan Tippetts, Liberal Democrat)

Devonport (Bill Stevens, Labour)

Drake (Charlotte Holloway, Labour)

Efford and Lipson (Neil Hendy, Labour)

Eggbuckland (Chip Tofan, Conservative)

Ham (Tina Tuohy, Labour)

Honicknowle (Zoe Reilly, independent)

Moor View (Maddi Bridgeman, Independent group)

Peverell (Jeremy Goslin, Labour)

Plympton Chaddlewood (Ian Poyser, Green)

Plympton St Mary (Ian Darcy, Conservative)

Plymstock Dunstone (Stefan Krizanac, Labour)

Plymstock Radford (Rebecca Smith, Conservative)

Southway (Andy Lugger, Conservative)

St Budeaux (Sally Haydon, Labour)

St Peter and the Waterfront (Alison Raynsford, Labour)

Stoke (Tom Briars-Delve, Labour)

Sutton and Mount Gould (Mary Aspinall, Labour)