Political Parties announce their parliamentary candidates ahead of the upcoming local elections in the Darlington Constituency. 

Across the past few months, all major political parties have announced their candidate to stand for the 2023 local elections which will be held on Thursday 4th May within the constituency. 

The list of parliamentary candidates includes Simon Thornley for the Liberal Democrats; the current MP for Darlington, and the Conservative Party’s Peter Gibson; along with Labour’s new candidate, Lola McEvoy. 

Throughout the constituency all parties have begun their political campaign to gain seats in Darlington’s local council. 

This comes after the Conservative Party have held twenty-two council seats since 2019’s vote along with the Labour Party’s twenty seats which currently makes up 74% of the fifty seats available in the council. 

However, this only makes up a small amount of the seats available across England as there are more than five thousand seats available during these local elections. 

Historically turnouts for local elections have been lower than the turnouts for general elections as a lot of voters do not realise the importance of electing local councillors. 

Due to the nature of the local elections, they are held in constituencies across the country every four years to elect all the local councillors; this means that the elections have a high importance as to how the communities within the constituency will be served and assisted by their council. 

The new parliamentary candidates share different perspectives on how the local area of Darlington should be assisted in their day to day lives from the creation of well-paid jobs and improving cycling infrastructure to redesigning the railway heritage of the town. 

However local citizens are still asking what will the local councillors change about the Darlington constituency as the door to door visits continue.

All of these questions come after the troubles the country has faced challenges from the pandemic, the cost of living crisis and Brexit which have put pressure on the government and local councils to improve infastructure and give extra aid to memebers of the comunity.

Upon the date of the local elections, who will you vote for?