Which party has run my council, year by year, so a local chart can be shaded the way a national one is? (Not published)

Why

National charts here are shaded by government because the terms of every UK government since 1997 are a matter of record in the registry, with dates. There is no equivalent for councils. No government department publishes a series of local authority political control: the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes council finance and performance but not who runs each council, the Electoral Commission publishes party registration and campaign finance rather than results, and results themselves are declared locally by each returning officer, in whatever form that council chooses. The compilation that others rely on is the Local Elections Handbook series by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, an academic work, and the House of Commons Library research briefings that draw on it; the widely used web sources (Open Council Data, PollCheck and the like) are private projects. None of these is a first-party statistical publication. Because readers kept asking, area pages now show who runs each council from Open Council Data UK (CC0), matched to GSS codes by name in registry/council_control.yaml — the one dataset on this site that is not read from an official publication, labelled "not an official statistic" everywhere it appears. The gap itself remains: no official body publishes this, council control is still not used to shade any chart the way national government bands are, and a first-party series would replace the compilation outright.

What is known

Every council's own published political composition and election results, on its own website, in its own format
Local election results and council control compiled in House of Commons Library research briefings, drawing on the Rallings and Thrasher Local Elections Handbook

What is not known

Any first-party series of which party controlled which council, with the dates control changed
A single definition of control applied consistently (majority, minority administration, coalition, no overall control)
Control for the years between elections, when it changes by by-election, defection or a coalition breaking

Who holds the data

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
The Electoral Commission
Each local authority as its own returning authority

Would a Freedom of Information request help?

Unlikely. Each council already publishes its own composition; the missing thing is a single series across all of them, which no authority holds and none can be asked for.

Privacy and disclosure restrictions

None. Councillors' party affiliations are public.

Official sources checked

Last reviewed 2026-09-03. Availability changes; if a publication now answers this question, challenge the classification below.