2004–2024: 20 years of local elections in Ilkley for Bradford Council

A potted history of how elections have gone down in the town – with some local and national context for good measure 🗳️

All elections are historic, shaped as they are by the unique set of local, national and international circumstances in which they occur. The 2026 local elections in Bradford and across the UK will be no different.

And what of this year? Will it, like 2025, which saw the political map of the country redrawn with, in particular, formerly dependable Conservative and Labour-leaning councils like Kent County Council and Doncaster Council being swept aside by Reform UK, reflect the growing consensus – at least for now – that there are no longer any safe seats?

Or will it, for instance, be increasingly shaped by the ongoing war in Iran and the impact it has, away from the violence and tragedy across the Middle East, on people’s finances in the UK throughout the month and beyond (hard as it is to make sense of the confused, conflicting and bizarre statements that come primarily from Donald Trump)?

There is no easy answer. As the MP by-election win for the Greens in Gorton and Denton proved, which pushed Labour into an abysmal third place, as well as the council by-election win for Labour in Murton in Durham, which saw the party reclaim the seat back from Reform UK, all bets are off.

As we edge closer and closer to this year’s local elections in Bradford, we thought we’d take a closer look at how the overwhelmingly white (95.6%), Christian (53%), household-owning (78.2%), least deprived (ranked 29 out of 30 in the deprivation index, with one being the most deprived and 30 the least) and older population of Ilkley (it has the highest percentage of people aged between 64 and over) has voted since 2004 with some local and national context thrown in for good measure.

What does it, if anything, tell us about how people will vote this time around in May 2026? We’d love to know what you think.

2024

🟢 Ros Brown, Green Party: 38% (elected)

🔵 Joanne Sugden, Conservative: 35%

⚪️ Anne Gillian Hawkesworth, Independent: 15%

🔴 Michael Andrew Baldwin, Labour: 11%

🟡 John Briggs, Liberal Democrats: 1%

The 2024 local elections resulted in a huge upset with the Green Party’s Ros Brown ending Anne Hawkesworth’s impressive 34-year run as an Ilkley councillor, which had seen her first serve as a Conservative and later as an independent.

“I am obviously very disappointed,” Hawkesworth said the day after she lost her seat to Brown. “However, I have been fortunate and honoured to represent my wonderful Ilkley for 34 years. I shall have to find another route to keep Ilkley special.”

This was a massive victory for Brown who had been gaining more and more support (aka votes) with every election she contested since at least 2018. It was also a historic moment for the town – she is the first Green Party councillor ever to be elected in Ilkley. Looking back on her first six months she said:

“I hope to see more Greens elected to serve our community over the coming years because I believe that we offer a fairer, greener style of politics that puts people and planet before profit – something that is often sorely missing from local government.”

The poor results for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats reflected, in large part, the prevailing political status quo in Ilkley. The town has largely had a diehard, pro-Conservative base of voters who have, over many, many years, remained staunchly committed to the party through thick and thin – both locally and nationally.

(Whether they stick around in 2026, with Reform UK looking more and more like an alternative, more right-wing version of whatever the Conservatives had become when Rishi Sunak led them to a catastrophic defeat – they have been hoovering up former Tories like Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick – is going to be one of the big stories of this election.)

In fact, it appears that Labour – nor any other political party – has ever managed to win a seat in Ilkley since as far back as 1974, when the Bradford Metropolitan District Council was established (though actual elections took place in 1973 following the massive overhaul of local government that was introduced by Edward Heath’s Conservative government via the Local Government Act of 1972).

Brown’s election in 2024, therefore, represented more than just a big win for the Greens. It also marked a momentous break with the town’s exclusively Conservative past. Just how significant this was is hard to gauge for three reasons.

One, Brown is well known in the community, meaning her win could potentially be seen as a vote more for the individual than the party she represents.

Two, it can also (or alternatively) be seen as part of a wider trend in politics, with growing support for the Green Party across the district indicative of increasing support for the Greens more generally across the UK.

The election of Zach Polanski, a member of the London Assembly and, whether you agree with his worldview or not, a gifted public speaker, as its new national leader in September, has obviously had a massive impact on the party.

Or three, a small but in the end influential number of people in Ilkley were simply fed up with the Conservatives after 14 years of national government, which was then reflected, in part, locally as it always inevitably is (they ended up losing more than 450 councillors alongside the 251 MPs that year). They may have given her the edge over Joanne Sugden. How Brown does in May will potentially make things a little clearer.

2023

🔵 David Nunns, Conservative: 42% (elected)

🟢 Ros Brown, Green Party: 39%

🔴 Michael Andrew Baldwin, Labour: 15%

🟡 Caroline Rosemary Jones, Liberal Democrats: 3%

Although she had to once again settle for the runner-up spot with the Conservative candidate David Nunns taking first place – he campaigned on protecting the green belt, fixing the town’s roads and saying no to speed bumps, as well as reopening the Ilkley Police Station helpdesk (which closed in 2017) – it was now clear that Brown had become a clear threat to the Tories in Ilkley (Hawkesworth may well have been an independent councillor but her politics always been on the centre right).

The numbers say as much. For instance, she received 39% of the vote in 2023, which was another personal best. The year before she got 33% (2% less than the winner), while in 2021, she ended up in third place on 26% (3% less than the winner). You can contrast that with 2019 when she got 25% of the vote, which was some distance from that year’s winner winner (25% versus 36%).

The Conservative success in Ilkley bucked the party's national trend in the 2023 local elections. It got hammered by the electorate, losing more than 1,000 councillors and 48 councils. Labour was the main beneficiary of this drubbing and became the largest party of local government for the first time in 21 years.

In Bradford, Labour comfortably held onto the council, with its majority strengthened (it ended up with 56 of the 90 councillors). The Conservatives ended up with 16 councillors overall, the Greens eight and the Liberal Democrats five.

The 2023 local elections were the first to require ID to be presented at polling stations. After the elections, the former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said that the controversial change had backfired on his party.

“Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding that their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections,” he told attendees at a Conservative conference …