2026 Cohort Tracker
Last updated: 2026-05-12. Entries: 3 verified, verification in progress on reports received.
Disclosure. This tracker is compiled and maintained by Paul G Webster, communications officer for the East Lindsey Green Party. Every entry below is added on the same two-source verification standard regardless of which party the councillor was elected for. Entries that cannot be independently corroborated stay in the pending tier or are excluded entirely; the methodology section sets out exactly which sources count and which do not. Anyone, including readers from any political tradition, can replicate any verification step from the public sources cited. Corrections welcome via the contact details below.
Where this fits
This tracker covers the 7 May 2026 cohort prospectively, across all parties: councillors elected at this year's local elections, recorded as their status changes during the term ahead. Verified entries appear in the table below regardless of which party the councillor was elected for. Reform UK, Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and Independent councillors are all in scope on the same verification standard.
The historical baseline section that follows leans on Reform-2025-cohort data because the most comprehensive single-party named-individual retrospective tracker is Mark Pack's (Reform losses specifically). Equivalent comprehensive single-party named-individual retrospective trackers do not currently exist for other parties' 2025 cohorts: their first-year attrition rates are typically low single digits as a percentage and the data has not been compiled in the same form. The Reform-shaped historical context is therefore a property of the source landscape, not of this tracker's editorial position.
This tracker exists to do for the 2026 cohort what Pack has done for the 2025 cohort: track what happens, with named sources, in real time as the term unfolds. It is not a Pack repackager; it is built on a wider source constellation, mapped below.
Source landscape
The named-individual UK councillor-tracking source ecosystem is small but layered. The PGW Report tracker draws on every layer and credits each source per entry.
Named-individual trackers (canonical)
- Mark Pack: 2025 cohort list (markpack.org.uk): the comprehensive named retrospective tracker for Reform UK 2025-cohort losses. 74 named entries with status, last updated 2026-05-10. Cite-don't-duplicate.
- Mark Pack: 2026 cohort list (markpack.org.uk): parallel 2026-cohort retrospective tracker started by Pack on 10 May 2026 immediately after the elections. Reform-UK-only by Pack's editorial choice. PGW Report and Pack now operate as complementary trackers: Pack's list carries the journalist mindshare and discoverability; PGW Report's tracker carries the all-party scope and per-entry two-source verification methodology. Each side publishes independently with reciprocal cross-citation; entries that surface on either tracker are corroborated against the other before publication where possible.
- Andrew Teale: Andrew's Previews + LEAP: the long-running by-election ward-level tracker that DemocracyClub itself was built on top of. All-party. Names winners and losers at every council by-election, weekly during by-election season. The other authoritative single-individual source.
- Wikipedia: "List of Conservative Party defections to Reform UK": selective named-individual list with a dedicated city/county councillors section, actively maintained by editors. Coverage skews to higher-profile names. Useful as cross-reference, not as a complete dataset.
News wires (where incidents surface first)
- Local Democracy Reporting Service (ldrs.org.uk): BBC-funded network of 165 reporters embedded in local independent papers, output syndicated to BBC + local titles. The upstream wire feeding LGC, Pack, and the cross-validation outlets. Likely 24-48 hour lead on most defection / resignation events.
- Local Government Chronicle (lgcplus.com): sector trade press. Reporter-led; names individuals on defection waves. Paywall, but headlines are public.
Aggregate / election-data infrastructure
- Open Council Data UK Party Totals Tracker: monthly snapshots May 2025 → April 2026, all major parties. Aggregate only (no names) but independent of Pack's methodology, so a useful reconciliation baseline.
- DemocracyClub (candidates.democracyclub.org.uk): election-data API. Authoritative for "who was elected at any given ballot, by party". Does not track post-election status changes.
- Wikipedia: 2026 UK local elections: used for the council hand-changes list (16 councils that changed party control on 7 May 2026).
- Wikipedia per-council election pages (e.g. "2026 Kent County Council election"): many include "Changes since election" subsections maintained by editors. Quality varies per council. Useful as per-council cross-reference.
Pack's 2025 cohort: the empirical baseline
From the 74 named Reform UK councillors in Pack's tracker (April 2026 snapshot), the distribution by exit type and by council gives a sense of what 12 months of one cohort looks like, and what to expect for the 2026 cohort over the next year.
By exit type
| Resigned as councillor | ~22 |
| Suspended by Reform UK (status pending or evolving) | ~17 |
| Joined Restore Britain (Lowe's vehicle) | ~13 |
| Now an independent | ~10 |
| Expelled by Reform UK | ~10 |
| Joined Advance UK | ~6 |
| Joined Conservatives | ~3 |
| Joined UKIP | 1 |
| Total | 74 |
By council (top 10)
| Kent | 10+ |
| Durham | 8 |
| Doncaster | 7+ |
| Northamptonshire (West + North) | 6 |
| Staffordshire | 5 |
| Warwickshire | 4 |
| Northumberland | 3 |
| Cornwall | 3 |
| Devon, Isle of Wight, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire | 2 each |
| Plus singletons across 17 other councils | 17 |
Source: Mark Pack, "How many councillors has Reform UK lost since May?" (markpack.org.uk, last updated 2026-05-10). Counts extracted by PGW Report from Pack's published list; raw extracted data available at /data/pack-2025-cohort-extracted.json for independent audit. For the canonical full list with individual names and detailed statuses, visit Pack's tracker directly.
In context: 10.5% attrition in 12 months
Across all parties, 1,748 councillors were elected at the May 2025 local elections per DemocracyClub data (note: Scotland and Wales had no principal-area council elections in May 2025, so the figure is essentially English local government). The party breakdown:
| Reform UK | 705 | 40.3% |
| Liberal Democrats | 402 | 23.0% |
| Conservative | 331 | 18.9% |
| Labour-aligned | 109 | 6.2% |
| Independent | 105 | 6.0% |
| Green | 86 | 4.9% |
| Other minor parties combined | 10 | 0.6% |
Reform's 705-seat haul made it the largest single party of the May 2025 cohort. The 74 documented Reform losses tracked by Pack represent 10.5% attrition within 12 months. The other parties' first-year attrition rates appear to be in the low single digits as a percentage based on aggregate-figure sources, but no equivalent named-individual retrospective tracker exists for them, so direct symmetric comparison is not possible from public data. The Reform 10.5% figure is structurally exceptional rather than within normal political-party ranges, but the absence of equivalent tracking for other parties is itself a data gap worth flagging.
Geographic distribution: where the 2025 cohort sits
The 2025 cohort is unevenly distributed across councils. Different parties show very different concentration patterns: some are spread thin across many councils with small per-council representation, others have very heavy single-council concentrations.
| Party | Councils with at least 1 seat | Five largest single-council hauls |
|---|---|---|
| Reform UK | 46 | County Durham 65, Kent 57, Lancashire 53, Staffordshire 49, Lincolnshire 44 |
| Liberal Democrats | 45 | Wiltshire 43, Shropshire 42, Oxfordshire 36, Cambridgeshire 31, Hertfordshire 31 |
| Conservative | 33 | Buckinghamshire 48, Wiltshire 37, Northumberland 26, Hertfordshire 22, Nottinghamshire 17 |
| Labour | 30 | Doncaster 11, Northumberland 7, Oxfordshire 7, West Northamptonshire 7, Buckinghamshire 4 |
| Green | 24 | Gloucestershire 9, North Northamptonshire 8, Worcestershire 8, Oxfordshire 7, Warwickshire 7 |
Two patterns visible from this table. First, Reform's top five councils alone (Durham, Kent, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Lincolnshire) account for 268 elected councillors, which is 38% of their entire 2025 cohort. That single-council concentration is structurally unusual and is the mechanism behind the Kent CC canary case in the next subsection. Second, Labour's 2025 cohort is genuinely small (109 across 30 councils, largest haul Doncaster 11), reflecting the depth of the May 2025 anti-incumbent wave. Lib Dems and Conservatives both retain significant single-council concentrations in shire counties (Wiltshire, Buckinghamshire, Shropshire, Oxfordshire). Greens are spread broadly with no haul above single digits.
Kent County Council as the canary case
The starkest single-council picture is Kent. Reform won 57 of 81 seats at Kent CC in May 2025: a dominant majority. As of early 2026, only 48 of those councillors remain with Reform: 9 lost in 12 months. After a coordinated 17 February 2026 mass defection of 8 councillors (7 from Kent CC) to Restore Britain (Rupert Lowe's vehicle), Restore Britain became the third-largest party group on Kent CC. The pattern is not random churn: it is structured, multi-actor, and ongoing.
Notable individual cases
- Mark Whittington (South Kesteven District Council): quit Reform UK 20 days after joining; the fastest-churn case in Pack's data
- James Buchan (Dartford Council, by-election July 2025): joined the Conservatives; rare Reform → Tory direction defection (most go to Restore Britain or Advance UK or independent status)
- Daniel Taylor (Kent): suspended by Reform UK; later sentenced to 12 months in prison
- Robert Bloom (North Northamptonshire): resigned as a councillor; later charged with harassment
Cross-validation against DemocracyClub data
The figures above were cross-validated against DemocracyClub's database of councillors elected at the May 2025 local elections.
- DemocracyClub records 705 Reform UK councillors elected at the May 2025 ballots. This includes by-election winners on the same date and is consistent with the ~677 headline figure cited in news reports (the small difference relates to whether by-election winners on 1 May 2025 are counted in the main cohort).
- 82% of Pack's 74 named entries match DemocracyClub's record of May 2025 Reform-elected councillors using first+last name matching (61 of 74 matched with high confidence).
- Of the 13 unmatched: at least 3 are by-election winners that Pack tracks but the May 2025 ballot data does not include (those councillors won via separate by-elections in July, August, and December 2025), and 2 are parser or categorisation edge cases. The remaining ~8 may be name-format variations or limited DC coverage.
- Computed attrition: 74 / 705 = 10.5%, matching the ~10.9% news-report figure within rounding. Two independent sources (Pack's individual-tracking and DemocracyClub's election-data) reach mutually compatible conclusions, giving high confidence that both data sources are reliable for the underlying analysis.
Cross-analysis report published at /data/pack-vs-dc-cross-analysis.json for independent audit. The full DC May-2025 Reform-elected dataset is at /data/dc-reform-2025-elected.json. All-party DC May-2025 elected data is published as separate files: /data/dc-2025-allparty-summary.json (summary), and per-party datasets for Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, and Green.
Aggregate-figure corroboration (cite-only outlets)
The Pack 74 figure is also cited by mainstream and political news outlets. These outlets do not publish independent named-individual lists, but their convergence on the same approximate figure increases confidence that Pack's count is accurate rather than an outlier.
- The London Economic: "Reform loses 10% of its councillors elected in May 2025"
- The Canary: "Reform: 1 in 10 councillors have defected, left, or been sacked"
- Western Morning News: "More than 60 councillors have left Reform over the past year"
- Brit Brief: "Nearly 70 Reform UK councillors have left the party in a year"
- factually.co: Reform → Restore Britain defections analysis
Sources investigated and confirmed not useful for this scope
For transparency about the source-landscape investigation: Britain Elects (polling tracker, no councillor data); Lib Dem Voice + ALDC (no public tracker); Conservative Home /tag/defections (event posts not maintained list); The MJ (no defection-tracker series); OpenCouncil.network (council-meeting summarisation, not personnel changes); ElectionMaps UK + PollCheck + VPnews (election results, not personnel changes); Sam Freedman's "Comment is Freed" (analytical writing, not a tracker; useful for narrative citation only). DemocracyClub does not maintain a post-election status feed; their data ends at "elected" markers and they explicitly defer to Andrew Teale's LEAP for ongoing ward-level work.
Cumulative verified entries by party (since 7 May 2026)
Summary
Counts above are verified entries only. Verification = two independent sources reporting the same fact. Pending entries (single-source, awaiting corroboration) are listed separately in the pending verification section.
UK political make-up: context
The tracker numbers above only count post-7-May-2026 status changes. To put them in proportion, here is the broader UK landscape against which any churn is measured: how many councillors each party holds across all GB local-government tiers, and which directly-elected mayoralties each party currently holds.
Councillors (GB-wide)
Snapshot at 1 May 2026 (source: Open Council Data UK Party Totals Tracker; database locked 5 May 2026 ahead of 7 May elections; covers England, Wales and Scotland; Northern Ireland not included). The right-hand column shows the rough running total after the 7 May 2026 net seat-changes are applied, based on Wikipedia's 2026 local-elections summary. OCD's authoritative post-election refresh is expected ~14 May 2026.
| Party | Councillors (1 May 2026) | Net change 7 May 2026 | Estimated post-7-May running total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 5,830 | −1,496 | ~4,330 |
| Conservative | 4,179 | −563 | ~3,615 |
| Liberal Democrat | 3,180 | +155 | ~3,335 |
| Independent / Other | 2,779 | +34 | ~2,810 |
| Reform UK | 991 | +1,451 | ~2,440 |
| Green | 946 | +441 | ~1,385 |
| SNP | 413 | n/a (next 2027) | 413 |
| Plaid Cymru | 202 | n/a (next 2027) | 202 |
| Vacant seats | 125 |
The post-7-May running totals are estimates only: 1 May 2026 OCD baseline plus the Wikipedia-aggregated net seat-changes from the 7 May 2026 contests. The authoritative post-election figure will be Open Council Data UK's mid-May refresh. Northern Ireland (~462 councillors) is not included in either total because Northern Ireland did not hold council elections on 7 May 2026.
Directly-elected mayors
Combined-authority, metro and city/borough mayors currently serving (source: Wikipedia: Directly elected mayors in England). Six mayoralties were contested on 7 May 2026; results not yet aggregated cleanly into the source table at fetch time, so the figures below reflect the immediate pre-election position.
| Party | Combined / metro mayors | City / borough mayors | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour / Lab Co-op | 10 | 7 | 17 |
| Conservative | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Reform UK | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Green | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Liberal Democrat | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Aspire (Tower Hamlets) | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Reform's 2 mayors are Andrea Jenkyns (Greater Lincolnshire) and Luke Campbell (Hull and East Yorkshire), both elected in 2025. Combined-county-authority mayoral elections for Greater Essex, Hampshire and Solent, Norfolk and Suffolk, and Sussex and Brighton are deferred to 2028. Greater London (Sadiq Khan, Labour) is included in the combined / metro count. The 7 May 2026 mayoral results will be folded into a future revision once the source tables stabilise.
Methodology
Every entry in this tracker meets the following standards:
- Two independent sources required. Each entry must be confirmed by at least two independent sources reporting the same fact. Acceptable sources: local newspaper, regional newspaper, national newspaper, BBC local or national, council statement, council website councillor list, councillor's own public statement, party-internal statement (Reform, Labour, etc), Local Democracy Reporting Service, Local Government Chronicle, named-political-analyst with established track record (Mark Pack, Andrew Teale, etc).
- Formal council confirmation is not required for verification. Earlier drafts of this methodology held entries as "pending" until the relevant council had formally accepted the resignation or other status change. In practice this caused real status changes to sit in a pending bucket for weeks while news outlets had already reported them across multiple channels. Verification is now defined as two independent reports of the same fact; formal council confirmation is welcomed when it appears but not gating.
- Reasons quoted, not inferred. Where the councillor or council has stated a reason, it is quoted directly from the source. Where no reason has been stated publicly, the entry records "reason not stated" rather than inferring one.
- All parties tracked equally. Resignations, defections, deaths, suspensions, and removals are recorded for every party. The data is not filtered by political affiliation. Aggregate patterns will become visible from the data itself rather than from editorial selection.
- Source URLs are public. Every entry links to the sources used for verification. Readers can independently audit each entry.
- Corrections welcomed. If an entry contains an error, contact details are provided in the tip-submission section below. Verified corrections will be applied with public note of the change.
Single-source reports are kept in a "pending" tier (visible on the page) until a corroborating second source appears, or are dropped if no corroboration emerges. Reports that are contradicted by other credible sources are not published.
What does not count as a source. Posts on Twitter/X, Bluesky, Facebook, and other social platforms, even from named accounts, are treated as leads rather than sources. Anonymously authored Substack pieces are treated the same. Forum posts, Reddit threads, and Discord screenshots are excluded entirely. Press releases from think tanks aligned with any political party are treated as primary only when the release is being independently reported on by another outlet, not when the release itself makes a substantive claim about a councillor. Wikipedia is used selectively: per-council election pages with named-editor-maintained "changes since election" subsections are useful as cross-reference; broader politician biography pages are not used as a single source.
Challenging an entry. If you have public-source material that contradicts a verified entry, or that demonstrates a pending entry's change did not in fact occur, email ingress@pgw.report with the source links. The standard for removal is symmetric with the standard for addition: two independent public sources demonstrating the change did not happen, or a single primary-source statement (the councillor themselves, or the relevant council) explicitly retracting it. Removal decisions are noted on the page alongside the original entry so the change is auditable.
Methodology in use, not just stated. Since launch on 10 May 2026, the per-party DemocracyClub datasets, the Pack-vs-DC cross-analysis report, and the council watch verification map have all been downloaded by external researchers. Specific identifying details are not published here for privacy and to avoid inviting spoofing, but the pattern is recorded as evidence that the auditable-infrastructure commitment is being relied upon by readers, not just claimed in the methodology section.
Council watch: councils that changed hands at the 7 May 2026 election
Sixteen councils changed party control at the 7 May 2026 local elections: 11 to Reform UK, 3 to the Greens (London boroughs), 1 to the Liberal Democrats (Stockport), and 1 regained by Labour (Hammersmith and Fulham). All sixteen are watched daily for content changes on their councillor-list pages, because councils with newly-installed cohorts are the highest-flux subset where first-term resignations, defections, and party-internal disputes typically surface first. Status changes anywhere else (stable councils, by-elections, lower-tier authorities) are also accepted as tips.
| Council | Region | Now controlled by | Previously | Verification sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barnsley MBC | South Yorkshire | Reform UK | Labour | |
| Calderdale MBC | West Yorkshire | Reform UK | Labour | |
| Gateshead MBC | Tyne and Wear | Reform UK | Labour | |
| Havering LBC | London (East) | Reform UK | No overall control | |
| Newcastle-under-Lyme BC | Staffordshire | Reform UK | No overall control | |
| Sandwell MBC | West Midlands | Reform UK | Labour | |
| South Tyneside Council | Tyne and Wear | Reform UK | Labour | |
| St Helens Council | Merseyside | Reform UK | Labour | |
| Sunderland City Council | Tyne and Wear | Reform UK | Labour | |
| Wakefield Council | West Yorkshire | Reform UK | Labour | |
| Walsall Council | West Midlands | Reform UK | Conservative | |
| Stockport MBC | Greater Manchester | Liberal Democrats | No overall control | |
| London Borough of Hackney | London (East) | Green | Labour | |
| London Borough of Lewisham | London (South-East) | Green | Labour | |
| London Borough of Waltham Forest | London (North-East) | Green | Labour | |
| London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham | London (West) | Labour | No overall control |
Full verification map (council websites, councillor-list URLs, press release feeds, secondary papers) is published at /data/councils-2026.json for independent audit. The watch list is intentionally cross-party so it cannot be characterised as a Reform-only project. Stable councils, by-elections in non-watch councils, and lower-tier authorities are not actively scraped, but verified tips about any of them are still added to the entries table below.
Verified entries (2026 cohort)
Why every current entry is Reform UK. The 2026 cohort is less than a week old at time of writing and the only documented status changes so far have involved Reform UK councillors. The tracker scope is all-party on the same two-source standard. Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and Independent councillors are equally in scope. The current Reform-only composition reflects the public record as of 2026-05-12, not editorial filtering.
| Councillor | Ward / Council | Elected as | Change | Date | Reason (quoted) | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jo Monk | Redditch East (Shared) |
Reform UK |
Suspended by Reform UK | 2026-05-11 | Reform UK suspended Jo Monk, the former Worcestershire County Council group leader, for "refusing to accept the democratic decision of the Reform UK group" (BBC News). Sequence: fellow Reform councillors removed her as group leader on 17 April 2026 at the party AGM, replacing her with former Conservative MP Alan Amos. After Monk publicly criticised the decision, Reform UK suspended her party membership on 11 May 2026. She remains a sitting councillor; the council register has not (and may not) flip her party_text — party suspension does not automatically remove a councillor's group affiliation on the council. Methodology note: this entry treats party-leader public-disavowal-plus-suspension as institutionally evidenced via multiple independent press sources, where Sefton/Cooper-style verbal disavowal alone was not. | Redditch Standard (local paper of record, 12 May 2026) BBC News West Midlands (11 May 2026) BBC News (group-leader axe, 17 April 2026) Mirror (11 May 2026) LGC Plus (12 May 2026) LBC (11 May 2026) Cotswold Journal (11 May 2026) |
| Ashley Monk | Reform UK |
Suspended by Reform UK | 2026-05-12 | Suspended from Reform UK alongside his mother Jo Monk. Per BBC News West Midlands: "Her son and fellow councillor, Ashley, has also been suspended for reportedly bringing the party into disrepute." Ashley publicly criticised the decision to remove his mother as Reform group leader, and the new leader (Alan Amos), on social media. Ashley says he withdrew his Reform UK membership after being informed of the suspension and will now sit as an independent councillor on both Worcestershire CC and Redditch Borough Council. (Source: Redditch Standard, 12 May 2026.) | Redditch Standard (local paper of record, 12 May 2026) BBC News West Midlands (11 May 2026, names Ashley specifically) LBC (11 May 2026) | |
| Stuart Prior | Reform UK |
Resigned, Reform membership revoked | 2026-05-11 | Reform UK statement: Prior resigned from his elected positions "for personal reasons" and his Reform UK membership was revoked. The resignation followed Hope Not Hate exposing alleged social-media posts in which Prior is said to have celebrated the rape of two Sikh women, described white people as "the master race", and called Muslim people "rats". Prior denied making the posts when contacted by the Daily Mirror, which broke the story. Five independent press outlets (Mirror, Guardian, BBC, Independent, Manchester Evening News) reported the resignation and Reform's response within the same news cycle. | Mirror (broke story, 11 May 2026) Guardian (11 May 2026) BBC News (11 May 2026) Independent (11 May 2026) Manchester Evening News (11 May 2026) |
Bradford and Sefton are not on the council watch list above (neither changed party hands at the election, though Reform made gains in both). The watch list is for active hash-monitoring of councils that changed control; verified entries are accepted from anywhere across the 2026 cohort, not only from monitored councils.
Note on the Devaney entry, refined 10 May 2026: the original framing said "resigning" based on multi-news-source corroboration. Mark Pack's parallel 2026 list (which we now cite reciprocally in the source landscape below) flagged that the post-election resignation claim rests on social-media-derived sources without substantive primary-source corroboration. We have re-classified the entry to record only the pre-election Reform withdrawal as verified, with the post-election seat status flagged as unclear. The entry will be updated when Reform UK or Bradford Council publishes a primary statement, or removed if Devaney is shown to remain a Reform councillor in good standing.
Pending verification
| Councillor | Ward / Council | Elected as | Reported change | Date reported | Reason for pending status | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glenn Gibbins | Reform UK |
Suspension contested | 2026-05-10 | Reform Durham deputy leader Darren Grimes told the BBC that Gibbins had been "suspended pending an investigation". A Reform UK national spokesperson contradicted this directly to ITV News: "the investigation is still ongoing, no decision has been made yet." The two Reform-internal statements disagree about whether suspension has actually occurred. Pre-election Hope Not Hate exposed the underlying social-media posts ("Should melt them all down and fill in the pot holes!" referring to Nigerians, plus misogyny accusations). Reform deputy leader Richard Tice publicly refused to condemn the comments. Will graduate to verified when either source corroborates the suspension status definitively. | ITV News (10 May 2026) Hope Not Hate (1 May 2026 pre-election) Mark Pack 2026 list (10 May 2026) | |
| Daniel Devaney | Clayton & Fairweather Green |
Reform UK |
Pre-election Reform withdrawal; post-election status unclear | Pre-election (Apr-May 2026) | Per Yorkshire Live: Devaney was withdrawn as a Reform candidate before the 7 May 2026 election after Tweets describing Muslims as "pure scum" came to light. Ballot papers had already been distributed and he was elected. Post-election reporting that Devaney has resigned the seat exists in social-media-derived sources but has not been corroborated by primary source. Bradford Council's modgov register (12 May 2026) still lists Cllr Daniel Devaney as Reform UK for Clayton & Fairweather Green. Will graduate to verified when a primary statement (council/party/councillor) lands or the register changes; will be removed if subsequent sources contradict. | Yorkshire Live (8 May 2026) Bradford Council register (still Reform UK) Mark Pack 2026 list (10 May 2026) |
Scope and limitations
This tracker is intended to be useful, not comprehensive. Specifically:
- England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all in scope where post-7-May 2026 changes have been verifiable.
- Council-level only. This tracker does not currently cover Parish Councils, Community Councils, or other lower-tier authorities, primarily for verification-tractability reasons. If reader interest justifies expansion, the scope may broaden.
- Changes since the 7 May 2026 election. Pre-election candidate changes are out of scope.
- Verification lag is real. Some changes will appear here days or weeks after they happen, because the verification process takes time and council websites are often slow to update. The gap between "the change happened" and "the change appears here" is a feature of the source-discipline standard, not a flaw.
- The dataset is not yet automated. Phase 2 plans include integration with the DemocracyClub data infrastructure for change detection, with manual verification before public addition.
Submitting a tip
If you have information about a council change since 7 May 2026 (whether resignation, defection, death, suspension, or removal) and the change is supported by at least one public source (council statement, news article, or formal announcement), please get in touch.
Discussion and interactive notes
A live, filterable, all-UK version of this tracker — with map, council and party filters, and an automatically-updating verified-entries feed — lives at the dynamic tracker (v2). The v1 page you are reading remains the canonical archival snapshot under the original two-source verification methodology.
For tip submission with sources, please email directly using the section below; that route preserves the source chain for verification.
Email a tip directly
- Email: ingress@pgw.report
- What to include: councillor name, ward, council, type of change, date if known, link to at least one public source
- Anonymous tips: accepted via fresh-email-account or via your preferred privacy-respecting provider (Proton, Tutanota, etc). Entries still require two-source public verification before publication. Anonymous tips that cannot be verified will not be added
- Sensitive disclosures: if the source is sensitive and you need PGP, a key can be provided on request
About this tracker
This tracker exists because the 2026 cohort hasn't yet been tracked systematically. The May 2025 cohort has been handled excellently by Mark Pack on markpack.org.uk, whose list of Reform councillor losses through April 2026 is the empirical foundation for any analysis of how the 2025 intake fared. This tracker extends that work prospectively to the cohort just elected.
The tracker is not designed to make a political case. It is designed to make data publicly available with sufficient verification rigour that other journalists, researchers, and analysts can use it as primary infrastructure rather than reaching for unverified figures.
The methodology is transparent specifically so that reasonable readers, regardless of political position, can decide whether an entry meets a standard they trust. Readers who disagree with a specific entry are encouraged to raise it via the tip-submission contact rather than dismissing the tracker as a whole.
Future versions are planned to include:
- Automated change detection via the DemocracyClub data infrastructure, which already aggregates UK councillor data with community-contributed updates
- Additional verification methods including direct council-officer confirmation and archived snapshots of source pages
- Cross-reference visualisation against May 2025 cohort data (with attribution to Pack)
- Time-series analysis of attrition rates by party and council type as the term progresses
Initial verification will remain manual to maintain the source-discipline standard. Automation will only ever feed the verification queue, never bypass it.