Medway Council elections: your complete voter’s guide

From the Labour administration to Reform UK, from Independent Group veterans to the newer local-first parties — every option facing Medway voters when the next ballot lands, and the question hanging over the date itself.

Editorial transparency note: KLN’s editor is also the leader of GB Freedom Party, one of the parties profiled in this guide. We have applied the same factual, sourced approach to every party listed below as we would to any other piece of political reporting. Readers should weigh that disclosure when reading the relevant sections.

The next Medway vote — and the question of when

The most recent whole-council elections in Medway were held on 4 May 2023, returning Labour to power for the first time in 24 years. Under the standard four-year cycle, the next scheduled whole-council election in Medway would be May 2027.

But that date is no longer a given.

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill currently in Parliament — whose progress KLN has been tracking in its Local Government Reorganisation series — would, if it receives Royal Assent in its current form, give the Government the power to dissolve Medway Council and merge it into a new, larger Kent unitary authority. Whether that actually happens depends on a political and legal fight that is still very much live: the Lords have insisted on substantive amendments, councils have begun pre-action correspondence challenging the timetable, and ministers themselves have been issuing what some commentators have read as contradictory letters about whether participation is voluntary or already settled.

In plain terms: Medway voters will go to the polls — but exactly when, and exactly for what, depends on what Westminster decides over the next twelve to eighteen months. May 2027 is the working assumption. A by-election, a postponement, or an entirely new ballot under a successor authority all remain possible.

That uncertainty is the central question hanging over every party covered in this guide. None of them has the luxury of treating the next Medway election as a date in the diary. All of them are choosing, now, what they would offer if the vote arrived tomorrow — or in eighteen months — or under different rules entirely.

This piece walks through every option voters can realistically expect to find on a Medway ballot when that day comes.

How Medway is run today

Medway is a unitary authority — meaning a single tier of local government responsible for everything from social care and education to bin collection and planning. There are 59 councillors elected across 24 wards, serving four-year terms.

Following the May 2023 election and a number of subsequent mid-term changes, the chamber as of April 2026 is composed as follows:

Labour holds a working majority, restored earlier this year after the readmission of two previously suspended members. Conservative are the formal opposition. Reform UK won its first two Medway seats together at the Rochester East and Warren Wood double by-election of February 2025 — David Finch and John Vye elected at the same time — and reached three when Robbie Lammas crossed the floor from the Conservatives in October 2025.

The headline issues that have dominated the current chamber are familiar to most Medway residents: the Local Plan and the question of 28,000 new homes the Government has demanded the area accommodate; the future of the Hoo Peninsula; the spread of HMO conversions in town centres and residential streets; the redevelopment of Chatham Docks; year-on-year rises in council tax; and, most recently, the Local Government Reorganisation question described above.

Those issues form the backdrop against which every party will fight the next election.

Your party options when the next vote comes

What follows is a neutral guide to each of the parties Medway voters can realistically expect to find on the ballot. Each section sets out, briefly: who they are, where they stand, what they have been doing in Medway in particular, and where to find their material in full.

Labour & Co-operative — the incumbent administration

Labour took control of Medway Council in May 2023 after 24 consecutive years of Conservative administration, on a turnout of around 31%. They currently lead the authority with a small working majority and hold all the cabinet portfolios.

In office, the Labour group has emphasised housing delivery, council tax bill increases pegged to the maximum permissible without a referendum, support for the LGR process as proposed by Whitehall, and a commitment to the Local Plan as currently drafted (including the 28,000-homes target). Critics — including many of the parties profiled below — argue that on each of those they have either continued the previous administration’s direction or accelerated it.

Their record will be the central question of the next election: voters will decide whether four years of Labour control has materially changed life in Medway, and whether to grant a renewed mandate.

Find their policy positions and councillor list at labour.org.uk.

Conservative — the formal opposition

Now sitting as the official opposition with 19 seats after losing power in 2023, the Conservative group’s record on Medway’s headline issues is harder to read than the official-opposition label suggests. While in administration the Conservatives presided over the same Local Plan trajectory, the same housing-target framework and the same supportive position on Local Government Reorganisation that Labour are now taking forward; in opposition, they have not, on the public record, materially diverged from the Labour direction on any of those questions in chamber votes. Voters looking for what the Conservatives have actually voted differently on since 2023 will find the differences cosmetic rather than substantive. Their group lost one councillor — Robbie Lammas — to Reform UK in October 2025.

The national picture for the party is unsettled, and that is shaping the Medway outlook too: with the parliamentary party polling poorly and Reform UK eating into the right-of-centre vote in Kent and elsewhere, several Medway Conservative backbenchers are asking publicly and privately what their group will look like in 2027. The Lammas defection is widely read as an early signal.

The Conservative group’s members and policy detail are available via the Medway Conservative website.

Independent and the Independent Group

Five sitting councillors currently sit either as independents or as members of an Independent Group: George Crozer, Michael Pearce and Ron Sands (the “Hoo bloc”, returned for Hoo St Werburgh and High Halstow); and Elizabeth Turpin and John Williams in Strood Rural. A sixth, Chris Spalding, sits as an ungrouped independent following a Conduct Committee finding earlier in the term.

The Hoo bloc are best understood as long-standing local campaigners — Crozer was a founder of Friends of North Kent Marshes and has served continuously on High Halstow Parish Council since 1995. They sit together because their priorities (the protection of the Hoo Peninsula, marshes and rural character) are more important to them than national party affiliation. Both Turpin and Williams are former Conservatives who left the party — Turpin in 2024, Williams earlier — over similar overdevelopment concerns.

For voters who place a high value on locally-rooted, issue-driven representation that is not whipped by a national party, the independents and Independent Group are the cleanest fit. Their challenge is the same as it always is for independents: organising at scale across multiple wards is difficult without a party structure.

Reform UK — the right-of-centre insurgent

Reform UK currently holds three seats in Medway: David Finch and John Vye elected together at the Rochester East and Warren Wood double by-election of February 2025, and Robbie Lammas added through his October 2025 defection from the Conservatives.

Reform’s pitch in Medway is national in tone — small state, low tax, strict immigration control, opposition to “net zero” energy policy, and a robust posture against the political establishment of both main parties. The Medway group has campaigned vocally against HMO over-concentration and against the 28,000-homes housing target.

For voters trying to weigh the campaign rhetoric against the actual record in office, the most useful test case sits next door. Reform UK won control of Kent County Council in May 2025 and are now twelve months into administration there. Their record so far includes formally rescinding KCC’s previous climate emergency declaration and declaring an immigration emergency — both symbolic moves with limited concrete effect, since local-authority powers over Home Office dispersal and national energy policy are narrow. On the substantive issues that matter most to Medway residents, however, the picture is harder to distinguish from the parties they replaced: KCC under Reform has continued to support broadly the same Local Government Reorganisation direction (the unitary reorg that Medway voters are also being asked to accept), and has put through council tax increases at the upper end of what is permitted without a referendum. Voters in Medway should weigh that record alongside the rhetoric.

A three-seat group also cannot, in any case, pass a motion alone in a 31-Labour council, so Medway’s Reform group has so far been more visible as a tabling-and-scrutinising force than as a delivering one. Reform’s national parent has been through a turbulent twelve months — internal splits, the formation of the breakaway Restore Britain, and continuing questions about candidate vetting — that have made some councillors visibly cautious. How that resolves nationally will shape how voters read the Medway group at the next ballot.

Their material is at reformparty.uk.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats hold no seats on Medway Council and have not done for many years. Their national policy platform — proportional representation, planning reform, environmental protection, EU re-engagement — applies here as elsewhere, but the party’s organisational presence in Medway is limited and the prospect of winning a seat in 2027 is not a serious one on current arithmetic.

For Medway-specific candidate information, check libdems.org.uk closer to the election.

Green Party

The Greens hold no Medway seats and have not historically returned a councillor to Medway Council. Their published platform centres on environmental protection, opposition to overdevelopment of green-belt land, social housing, and active travel investment, but on the historical Medway vote share the practical prospect of returning a Green councillor in 2027 is slim. A Green vote in Medway is best understood as registering support for that platform rather than a vote that, on its own, is likely to translate into a seat.

Their material is at greenparty.org.uk.

Newer local-first parties

A number of newer political parties have registered with the Electoral Commission and are organising in Kent and Medway, intending to stand candidates at the next Medway election. The two most visible at the time of writing are GB Freedom Party and Restore Britain.

GB Freedom Party is a Kent-focused, member-led party registered with the Electoral Commission (PP18062) and led by Daniel Dabin, the editor of this publication (see editorial transparency note above). It positions itself as, common-sense, locally-rooted political home. Its current published Medway-facing policy positions include: a cap on HMO licences per street and ward; opposition to the 28,000-homes target without supporting infrastructure; opposition to forced council mergers, with a stated commitment to keep Medway as a unitary authority; a council tax freeze; protection of frontline local services and infrastructure (potholes, community centres, bin collections) over consultancy spend and middle-management layers; and opposition to any further immigration into Medway, with binding local impact assessments demanded if Government nevertheless imposes dispersal placements. Its national policy platform — including a published Energy and Storage policy that opposes the current direction of net-zero investment — is set out at gbfreedomparty.co.uk/our-program. The party has not previously contested a Medway election; 2027 (or its successor date) would be its first ballot.

Restore Britain is the breakaway formed when, according to reports, seven Reform UK councillors at Kent County Council were expelled or resigned from Reform earlier this year. It is more strident in tone than Reform on cultural and migration questions and is understood to be recruiting in Medway with the intention of fielding candidates at the next election, though it has not yet organised a Medway council group.

Other registered parties — including the Workers Party of Britain, the SDP, and various single-issue formations — may also stand candidates locally. The Electoral Commission’s Register of Political Parties is the definitive list.

The LGR question, in plain terms

The biggest single factor that will shape the next Medway election is one almost entirely outside Medway’s control: whether Westminster pushes through Local Government Reorganisation in time to override the May 2027 cycle.

If the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill receives Royal Assent in its current form in 2026, ministers will have the power to issue a Statutory Commencement Order dissolving Medway Council (and the twelve Kent district councils) and replacing them with one or more new unitary authorities covering the whole of Kent. Elections to those new authorities would then happen on a Government-set timetable — not necessarily May 2027.

If the Bill stalls in the Lords, gets significantly amended, or is withdrawn, Medway’s May 2027 elections proceed under the existing arrangements.

KLN has been reporting on this in detail — including the recent contradictory ministerial correspondence on whether participation is voluntary or already settled, the Pre-Action Protocol letter from a coalition of Kent claimants, and the Devon National Audit Office submission running on a parallel track. We will keep covering it as the position evolves.

For voters, the practical implication is this: every party named in this guide is, in effect, fighting two elections at once — the May 2027 ballot as currently scheduled, and an unknown ballot under a yet-to-be-defined successor authority. How each party handles that uncertainty — and whether they have a credible plan for both scenarios — is itself a meaningful test of their fitness.

What to do as a voter

Three practical steps that apply regardless of which party you are leaning toward:

1. Check you are registered to vote — at gov.uk/register-to-vote. Photo ID is now required at the polling station; if you do not have an accepted form, apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate.
2. Confirm your ward and polling station — Medway Council’s electoral services pages at medway.gov.uk/elections are the authoritative source. Ward boundaries have not been redrawn for the next cycle, so your ward will be the same as in 2023.
3. Watch for the candidate list — the formal list of candidates is published roughly three to four weeks before the polling day. Each registered candidate must publish an election address by law; KLN will run a complete cross-party round-up of candidate addresses by ward in the run-up to whatever election date is finally set.

If you would like to read more about the Local Government Reorganisation question that will shape the date itself, KLN’s Local Government Reorganisation series is being kept up to date as the story develops.

Sources

• Medway Council — Elections and voting
• GOV.UK — Register to vote
• Electoral Commission — Register of Political Parties
• Kent Local News — Local Government Reorganisation series
• Labour Party
• Medway Conservatives
• Reform UK
• Liberal Democrats
• Green Party of England and Wales
• GB Freedom Party — Our Program

This guide will be updated as parties confirm their candidate lists and as the Local Government Reorganisation timetable becomes clearer. If you spot a factual error or omission, please email the editor at [email protected].