Who can show up?

Decisions are made by those who show up. In few places does that phrase apply more than in town halls across the country. Which houses are built or which nightclubs are licensed depend on the whims of the dozen-odd councillors appointed to that committee who turn up that evening.

Given the current political climate, May 2026 will likely see a huge redrawing of the political map, with local elections across much of urban England, including all 32 London boroughs, plus the yet-to-be-created unitary authorities in the south and east.

With new councillors, come new committees and committee chairs.

For council officers, this brings a logistical headache.

Ahead of the 2026 annual meetings, they must dust off their calculators to work out which parties get which seats on which committees.

The broad principle is straightforward enough. Section 15 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 requires that certain local authority committees and bodies to which local authorities make appointments must reflect the overall balance of power on the full council.

But allocating the seats and identifying which committees the political balance rules apply to is somewhat complex. Five golden rules can be derived from the legislation.

The 5 Golden Rules of Political Balance

1. All seats on a body cannot go to the same political group: Local Government and Housing Act 1989 s.15(5)(a).

So even if one political group has all but one seat on the council, the sole opposition councillor is entitled to a seat on every committee to which political balance applies.

2. If one political group has a majority on full council, that political group must have a majority on the committee: Local Government and Housing Act 1989 s.15(5)(b).

Where a slim majority coalition is formed between 2 political groups, the coalition may not have a majority on each committee.

A possible workaround is to create a single political group formed of councillors from both parties, which would guarantee the coalition a majority on each committee.

3. Add up all the seats to be allocated across all ‘ordinary committees’. Those seats should be allocated in proportion to the number of seats each political group has on full council. However, Rules 1 & 2 take priority: Local Government and Housing Act 1989 s 15(5)(c).

What is an ‘ordinary committee’ is somewhat unclear.

The statutory definition is a committee appointed under the Local Government Act 1972 s 102(1)(a): that is, one that “discharge[s]… any of [the local authority’s] functions”.

However, in most local authorities, their functions are discharged largely by “executive arrangements”, usually a leader or elected mayor and their cabinet. The cabinet committees and/or officers may also have delegated powers. The Local Government Act 2000, s 9GC confirms that political balance does not apply to these executive arrangements.

So, unless the local authority uses the ‘committee system’ of governance, the number of ‘ordinary committees’ it has will be relatively few.

Moreover, it is unclear whether the local authority’s licensing committee is one of them. While it discharges a council function, it also has a separate statutory basis, found in the Licensing Act 2003, s 6.

Where the local authority has a leader or elected mayor, then many of the local authority’s committees will be overview and scrutiny committees or advisory committees, without any executive powers.

These are not ordinary committees, so their seats do not count towards the total in Rule 3.

However, these committees must still be politically balanced, applying Rules 1, 2 and 4.

4. Within each body or committee, seats should be allocated in proportion to the number of seats each political group has on full council: Local Government and Housing Act 1989 s 15(5)(d). However, Rules 1-3 take priority.

Rule 4 applies not just to ordinary and advisory committees and overview and scrutiny committees, but to a variety of appointments. The list is extensive but includes all appointments to ordinary sub-committees, joint committees with other local authorities, and where 3 or more appointments are made to waste disposal or national park authorities: Local Government and Housing Act 1989 sch 1 paras 1-2.

Again, however, if the committee or body is discharging functions that the local authority’s constitution has delegated to its executive, then usually the leader, mayor or cabinet makes the appointments, and political balance will not apply.

5. Rules 1-4 can be broken if a contrary proposal is put to all members of the appointing body (e.g. full council) and no-one votes against. Notice of the proposal must be given to councillors, typically by circulating a meeting agenda with the proposal on it: Local Government and Housing Act 1989 s 17 & SI 1990/1553 reg 20.

Once every committee seat has been assigned to a group, or to unaffiliated councillors, each group leader must decide who gets their group’s seats.

Full council only nominally approves the appointments, as the  Local Government and Housing Act 1989 s 16 requires them to appoint (and, perhaps more importantly, sack) councillors from committees in line with that group leader’s wishes.

Only a signed statement from a majority of that group’s councillors can overrule the group leader: SI 1999/1553, reg 13.

When must council officers review political balance?

Pretty much all the time!

Typically, committee compositions are reviewed at or as soon as practicable after the local authority’s annual meeting. However, a review must also take place if the number of political groups on the council changes.

A councillor can also request a review if they defect to another group or are elected in a by-election: Local Government and Housing Act 1989 s 15(1)(b) & (2)(b), SI 1990/1553, reg 17.

A balanced committee does not always mean a balanced vote

That a committee must be politically balanced does not guarantee that the councillors voting on a given decision of that committee will be politically balanced.

In R (Spitalfields Historic Building Trust) v Tower Hamlets LBC [2025] PTSR 700 (SC), the claimants challenged a rule in the local authority’s constitution that, where a planning application is deferred to a future meeting, only members of the planning committee who attended the first meeting could vote at the second meeting.

The Supreme Court held that the rule was valid and that the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 had no bearing on the case.

The judgment illustrates the potential for conflict between two statutory schemes.

On the one hand, s 15 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 acknowledges that decisions of a local authority’s committees ought to reflect the relative strength of the mandate each party has from the electorate.

On the other hand, a councillor is usually barred from voting on an issue where they have a disclosable pecuniary interest in that issue: Localism Act 2011, s 31(4). This ensures that councillors as individuals do not use their positions improperly to affect outcomes.

The statutory framework suggests that, ordinarily, Parliament intended that preventing abuses of power should take priority over ensuring accurate political balance.

However, interestingly, a local authority can dispense with the prohibition in s 31(4) where the political balance would become “so upset” that it would “alter the likely outcome of any vote relating to the business”: Localism Act 2011 s 33(2)(b).

Of course, the use of any such dispensation would be leapt upon by opposition councillors.

So in May 2026, we can perhaps expect a sea change in committee memberships in town halls across the country. The elections will decide the strength of each party, not only on full council, but on each committee.

Officers will run the numbers, and then local party leaders will decide who can show up to vote on each committee.

Then the real work begins.

Andrew Burrell and Francis Hoar are barristers at Field Court Chambers.

This article is adapted from a seminar the authors prepared for the London Boroughs’ Legal Alliance in July 2025.