The2022 Cardiff Council election took place on 5 May 2022[1] to elect 79 members toCardiff Council. On the same day, elections were held to the other 21 local authorities and to community councils in Wales as part of the2022 Welsh local elections.
The 2022 election had been postponed from 2021, and was contested under new ward boundaries, which also increased the number of seats from 75 to 79.[2] The next election will take place in 2027, following an increase in the council term from four years to five years.
At the election,Labour maintained its overall control of the council, increasing its number of seats from 40 at the last election to 55. TheConservatives andLiberal Democrats lost ten seats and one seat respectively, to a total of 11 and 10, while Common Ground, an electoral pact betweenPlaid Cymru andWales Green Party, won two seats.Propel won one seat.
Council elections in Wales were originally scheduled for May 2021, but were delayed to avoid a conflict with the2021 Senedd election.[3]
The length of council term was also increased from four years to five years to avoid future clashes, meaning that, after 2022, the next council election is expected in 2027.[3]
The number of councillors increased from 75 to 79 at the 2022 election, with a number of ward changes.[4]
In October 2021, Cardiff Council accepted a number of ward change proposals for the next election made by theLocal Democracy and Boundary Commission for Wales, with only slight modification.[2] The changes gave a better parity of representation. Twenty-one wards remained unchanged.[4] Of the other wards:[2][5]
Creigiau/St Fagans merged with thePentyrch ward and was renamed "Pentyrch and St Fagans", with a total increase in councillors from two to three.
Grangetown increased from three to four councillors.
Lisvane was renamed "Lisvane and Thornhill", with the addition ofThornhill from the neighbouringLlanishen ward, and increased from one to three councillors.
Llanishen decreased from four to two councillors following the transfer of Thornhill to Lisvane.
TheLabour group have been in control of Cardiff Council since 2012.
In 2019, three by-elections (Ely, February 2019;Cyncoed, July 2019; andWhitchurch & Tongwynlais, October 2019) were called following the deaths of the sitting councillors.[6][7][8] Plaid Cymru gained the Ely seat from Labour,[6] while the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives held their seats in the other by-elections.[9][10]
In March 2018, CllrNeil McEvoy was expelled from Plaid Cymru after allegedly disruptive behaviour at the party's 2017 spring conference.[11] Following the controversy, in October 2019, the three remaining Plaid Cymru councillors resigned their whips, and formed an independent group with McEvoy.[12] McEvoy and Cllrs Keith Parry and Lisa Ford would later join McEvoy's new partyPropel, while Cllr Andrea Gibson, who won the Ely by-election, was elected for Common Ground in Pentyrch and St Fagans at the 2022 election.
In November 2019, the Conservatives gained a seat inLlanishen following a by-election triggered by the resignation of the sitting Labour councillor.[13][14] In November 2021, Labour won a by-election inHeath following the resignation of an independent councillor.[15]
The Welsh Cladiators, a residents group campaigning against fire defective buildings, hoped to stand in the Butetown ward, but ultimately did not.[16]
In September 2021,Plaid Cymru and theGreen Party announced an electoral pact which would see them fielding a joint slate of candidates in Cardiff. Neither party had sitting councillors: Plaid Cymru's councillors elected in 2017 had been either expelled or had quit the party.[1] In the election, the two parties fielded a common slate of candidates, known as theCommon Ground Alliance.[17] Of the 70 Common Ground Alliance candidates, 46 were from Plaid Cymru with the remaining 24 from the Green Party.[18] The alliance's campaign was formally launched on 24 April 2022.[19]
In the election, Common Ground won 17% of votes across the city, coming third behind Labour and the Conservatives.[20] They won two seats, both in the Pentyrch and St Fagans ward,[21][22] while the Liberal Democrats returned 10 councillors on a smaller share of the vote.[20]
The Alliance's elected councillors are Andrea Gibson and Rhys Owain Livesy.[22]
A total of 358 candidates stood for the 79 seats on the council, an average of 4.5 candidates per seat. Eleven parties or alliances stood candidates, plus two independent candidates.
Both the Labour and the Conservatives stood the full 79 candidates. The Common Ground Alliance and the Liberal Democrats stood in all 28 wards, while Propel stood in 21 wards (75%) and the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition stood in 15 wards (54%).
^Votes in this table are the total for the top candidate for each party in each ward. Votes % is calculated as the votes for the party divided by the total votes in this table (110,003). Vote change is compared with the same calculations for 2017.
^abCommon Ground Alliance figures compared with combined previous Plaid Cymru and Green Party performance.
Sitting councillors, McEvoy, Ford and Parry, were elected for Plaid Cymru at the 2017 election. McEvoy was expelled, Ford and Parry later resigned and sat as Independents.[27] McEvoy later founded a new party, Propel.
In this election Labour gained two seats from Plaid Cymru, and McEvoy retained his seat representing a gain for Propel from Plaid Cymru.
Sitting councillor, Julie Sangani, had been elected at a by-election in November 2021, following the retirement of long standing Independent councillor Fenella Bowden.[28]
Boundary changes resulted in the community of Thornhill being moved out of the ward at this election (merging with Lisvane to form the new Lisvane and Thornhill ward). Prior to the election all seats were held by Conservative councillors.
Common Ground candidate Andrea Gibson was elected as a Plaid Cymru councillor for Ely in a by-election in February 2019.[29] Gibson left Plaid Cymru in October 2019[27] and later sat as anindependent.[30]
This ward was formed by a merger of Pentyrch and Creigiau/St Fagans, which both elected one Conservative councillor each in 2017. In this election, Pentyrch and St Fagans elected three councillors (a net increase of one).
Labour leaderHuw Thomas put the party's success down to the party's track record and a "positive campaign".[31] The party had reached an historic third term in power, going forward Thomas promised to make Cardiff "stronger, greener, and fairer".[31]
Adrian Robson leader of the Cardiff Conservatives blamed the election results on the national picture,[32] Conservative party leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson had become under fire for parties hosted during lockdown (See:Partygate)
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Council elections in the preserved county ofSouth Glamorgan
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