{"id":963531,"date":"2026-05-16T09:35:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/963531\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T09:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:35:15","slug":"leeds-new-city-council-to-be-confirmed-at-annual-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/963531\/","title":{"rendered":"Leeds: New city council to be confirmed at annual meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><strong>By Don Mort<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/lnp\/ldrs\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">local democracy reporter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Political control of the city council is set to be confirmed after Labour lost its overall majority in the local elections.<\/p>\n<p>The city\u2019s 99 councillors are due to meet at the Civic Hall on Wednesday (May 20) for the authority\u2019s annual meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Labour remains the city\u2019s biggest political group, despite gains for Reform UK and the Greens, and is expected to form a minority administration.<\/p>\n<p>The arrangement can be made when a council falls under \u201cno overall control\u201d, with no party holding more than 50 per cent of the seats.<\/p>\n<p>Led by Kippax and Methley councillor James Lewis, Labour would form the new executive board, the council\u2019s main decision-making body.<\/p>\n<p>But without an overall majority, the party may need to work with other political groups to seek consensus on major issues voted on at full council meetings.<\/p>\n<p>Labour had 48 councillors following the May 7 vote, down from 56 before the election.<\/p>\n<p>Labour\u2019s share has since fallen to 47 after Jess Lennox, Crossgates and Whinmoor councillor, left to sit as an independent.<\/p>\n<p>Coun Lennox previously served as Labour\u2019s executive member for housing.<\/p>\n<p>First elected in 2018, she is now listed as an independent member on the council\u2019s website.<\/p>\n<p>Councils under no overall control are sometimes run by coalitions formed between different political\u00a0groups.<\/p>\n<p>But that would require agreement between parties strongly opposed to each other.<\/p>\n<p>In Leeds, the Conservatives are now the second biggest group with 14 councillors, followed by the Greens with 11 and Reform with ten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Don Mort, local democracy reporter Political control of the city council is set to be confirmed after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,214244,393,4884,1860,11743,212529,16,15],"class_list":["post-963531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-leeds","tag-britain","tag-don-mort","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-leeds","tag-leeds-city-council","tag-leeds-local-elections-2026","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116583578362462201","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}