Six days to go until the 7 May local and devolved elections! Elections are being held everywhere in Scotland and Wales and across large swathes of England, including all-out elections in Greater London and Birmingham.

Find out if you’ve an election and see who’s on your ballot paper at WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk!

The local election candidates

25,046 candidates have been nominated to stand in the English Local elections. With help from our amazing volunteers, we collated the full list within 48 hours of publication - thanks so much to everyone who took part. You can find out how many candidates are standing for each party on our blog.

At 4.9 candidates per seat, this is the second election held under the five-party system which has developed in England over the last two years. It’s also the tenth election Democracy Club has covered, which gives us a lovely dataset to look back on. We’ve also taken some time to collect the manifestos of as many parties as we can find, available to browse now.

Voters in some areas of England will also have town or parish council elections. 376 of these are up for election this year, with the usual low number of candidates and, consequently, only 24% will see a poll on 7 May. We’ve collected all the candidate lists and produced a handy summary.

Election leaflets!

Our database of election leaflets has seen more than 1,600 added since the start of the year. It’s inspired a Guardian news article, and will serve as a resource for researchers and historians for years to come. If you have received any leaflets in the post recently, please take a snap and upload them to the site before recycling!

Other developments

As the Representation of the People Bill makes its way through parliament, we’ve provided written evidence to the parliamentary committee. We've argued for a reform of election notices, and have also suggested the creation of an online candidate nomination portal, along the lines of the register to vote service. Read our submission.

Electors in four local authority areas will be able to vote early or at a different location on 7 May, as part of flexible voting pilots. We’re covering these pilots on our postcode lookup, and have published a blog laying out what’s happening.

LGBCE news

Are you interested in the work of the Local Government Boundary Commission for England? The LGBCE is looking for volunteers for online user research sessions to help shape the future of their website. Sessions will take no more than an hour and are most likely to take place in the first two weeks of May. To get involved, email reviews@lgbce.org.uk with your name, any dates you can't make in May, and confirmation that you're happy to be contacted by the research team running the sessions.

All the best,

The Democracy Club Team