The polls have opened in the City of York Council election.
Votes are being cast for 47 seats in 21 wards to decide the composition of the council for the next four years.
For the first time, voters must bring photo ID with them to be allowed to cast their vote.
Accepted forms of ID include:
- Passport
- Driving licence
- Older Person’s Bus Pass
- Disabled Person’s Bus Pass
- Identity card bearing the Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram.
The full list of accepted ID can be found here.
You can find a list of all the candidates in the York election here.
And here are a list of all York’s polling stations.
To command an overall majority on City of York Council, a party must take 24 seats. Before today, the Liberal Democrats were the largest party, with 21 seats.
They have ruled the council in coalition with the Greens who won three seats.
Labour had 17 seats, Conservatives two, and the remaining four were independent.
We won’t know who has won this year’s election until later tomorrow (Friday, 5 May). The count begins at York Racecourse at 9am.
The Press Association is forecasting that York will declare the result at 8pm, making it the last council to declare in the country.
There is no election in North Yorkshire because voters in the county voted last year for the creation of the new North Yorkshire Council. But there is an election to East Riding of Yorkshire Council.
Nationally, the council elections are likely to be the final set of polls before the next general election, with the results expected to give an indication of whether Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer could be on course for Downing Street.
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