The National Association of Local Councils (NALC) have teamed up with De Montfort University’s Local Governance Research Centre (LGRC) to conduct a new national data collection about the local (parish and town) council elections held on 4 May 2023. This research will allow us to learn much more about how to support the running of local elections and how to ensure that local councils are able to hold elections locally without having to rely as much on co-option. 

To support this, we are asking a representative of each local council which held elections on 4 May this year to complete a short survey to tell us about their experiences of the election. We are seeking one response per council, on behalf of the council, from either the clerk or the mayor/chair of the council.

This survey seeks to understand:

•        How local councils were supported to run the election

•        Which support helps most

•        How councils encourage potential candidates to stand for election

•        How successful different approaches are

•        The processes used to co-opt additional councillors when the council has insufficient elected councillors.

The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete. While we fully understand that there are many demands on your time, it is crucial to get the views of local councils like yours.

The deadline for completion of both the local council and county association survey questions is 17:00 on Friday 6 October 2023.

To access the survey, please click the following link:

https://de-montfort.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/nalc-lgrc-election-survey-2023 .