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#LocalElections2026: 28 council ward results to be declared

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Welcome to Inside Croydon’s unmatched coverage of the 2026 local election count in Croydon, and across south London.

We have reporters at the count at the Fairfield Halls today, the second day of election counts, this time to determine 70 councillors in 28 wards.

Bookmark this page and keep returning and refreshing the page for our live coverage, with updates on events throughout.

Each new post will be timestamped, with the most recent postings being right here at the top of the page.

We welcome your election-day pictures and news, your comments and your observations, which you can send to us (confidentially if you prefer) by email at inside.croydon@btinternet.com

2.15pm: Suspended Green Mark Adderley elected in Crystal Palace

And they did: Mark Adderley has been elected as a Croydon councillor, while suspended by the Green Party

A bad day for “Friend of Israel” Steve Reed (see Lambeth coverage at 12.40pm) just got a whole lot worse, after Mark Adderley, a Green candidate in Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, just got elected to Croydon Council.

Thing is Adderley, a film and TV producer who is married to actor Nadia Sawahlia, was suspended by the Greens after Reed made public complaints about alleged antisemitism. Adderley roundly rejects such claims.

His suspension from the Green Party, subject to an investigation, came after he had been registered as a local election candidate, so he still appeared on the ballot paper on Thursday.

And more than one thousand people in Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, in Labour minister Reed’s own parliamentary constituency, voted for Adderley.

Inside Croydon has confirmed with Green Party officials that Adderley was asked to stay away from the count.

Labour lost two seats  in this ward, where Claire Bonham, Croydon’s only Liberal Democrat councillor in 2022, retained her seat.

2pm: Pelling’s latest election

A footnote to the Shirley North result is the 404 votes for former Croydon MP Andrew Pelling, these days standing for the Liberal Democrats, very much as a tokenistic “paper candidate”.

Pelling has been involved in 15 council elections since 1982, when he was elected for the Conservatives.

He was last elected in 2018, when a Labour councillor in Waddon ward, where he was suspended by the Newman Numpties because he dared to speak out about the appalling state of the reckless council’s finances.

1.50pm: Reform fail to take any seats in Shirley South

1.45pm: Tories hold all three seats in Shirley North

This was meant to be one of Reform Ltd’s target seats in Croydon. But they finished hundreds of votes shy of the Conservative incumbents Sue Bennett, Mark Johnson and Richard Chatterjee.

1.40pm: Liberal Democrats to form first East Surrey Council

In neighbouring East Surrey, the new unitary body which is replacing some of the old county and district councils to the south of Croydon, the Liberal Democrats have won a stonking 30-seat majority, 40 seats to the Tories 10, with the Greens on a respectable eight.

East Surrey ought to be perfect territory for Farage’s Reform, yet they managed just five seats.

This is also very bad news for Croydon Tories, such as Mario Creatura, who lives in Banstead. Creatura’s house move – he was hoping to get selected for a safe Surrey Conservative seat – meant he was disqualified for standing for election in Coulsdon Town at this year’s election.

Big shout-out to former Croydon activist, Sasha Khan, the man who took Sutton Council to the High Court over the toxic Beddington incinerator. After four years as a district councillor, Khan is now a county councillor.

 

1.15pm: Greens sweep Fairfield, as Clark loses seat

Gone: Chris Clark

First big casualty of these elections comes in Fairfield, where Labour shadow cabinet member Chris “Thirsty” Clark,loses his seat to the Greens.

Clark, a union official, was one of the Newman Numpties who somehow still got selected by Labour this year.

Clark failed to even get 1,000 votes, and was beaten into fifth place in this three-seat ward by his own party colleague, Davina Brown.

The Greens have had Ria Patel and Esther Sutton on the council for Fairfield ward since 2022, and they are now joined by Paul Ainscough, himself a former Labour activist and councillor.

1pm: No change in Addiscombe East as Bains holds on

The Addiscombe East Tory-Labour split ward remains the same, with Conservative cabinet member (and failed parliamentary candidate) Jeet Bains surviving for another term. Labour’s Maddie Henson – Mrs Anonyvoter for those who follow such matters – is also re-elected.

Tory defectors to Reform had been thought could undermine Bains’ vote to allow Labour to win the second seat.

In fact, Bains got the most votes in the ward – 1,199 – with the second Labour candidate, Chris Galpin third on 1,114 to Henson’s 1,148. The second Tory candidate, Richard Hoque, got 974.

But that Reform vote has not materialised. Might this be a pattern through the day?

 

12.45pm: Tories hold both seats in Selsdon and Addington Village

12.40pm: Greens look set to take control of Steve Reed’s Lambeth

It couldn’t happen to a nicer Zionist.

Funded by Israel supporters: Steve Reed OBE

Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North if he can be bothered, which is not often) is about to see his old council fall into the control of the Greens, including Martin Abrams, the Jewish councillor who was suspended by Labour for the heinous crime of voting against the genocide in Gaza.

Abrams also claimed he was bullied by the Labour group at Brixton Town Hall and subjected to antisemetic abuse. Oddly, Labour’s self-appointed Witchhunter General Reed said nothing about that misconduct.

By lunchtime today, the scoreboard at The Oval cricket ground, where Lambeth is holding its count, looks like this:

Greens 22
Labour 13
LibDems 7

There are 21 seats still to declare.

12.30pm: Getting crowded in Fairfield Halls as more attend the count

It has been confirmed that the provisional result for New Addington South is subject to a recount, called for by the Conservatives, whose leading candidate, Lara Fish, was initially 22 votes behind the second Reform candidate, Adam Kellett.

Friday was one election count with eight mayoral candidates and a host of hangers on.

Today is 28 elections counts and more than 200 candidates, and things are getting a little crowded at the Fairfield Halls.

Crowded house: the Concert Hall at the Fairfield Halls is not ideal for an election count, according to one volunteer at the count

It’s the first time in 20 years that Croydon Council has used the council-owned arts venue for the count, which in many ways makes perfect sense: toilets, kitchens, and the Ashcroft Theatre stage for the declarations. But in other respects, not so much.

“It’s very crowded in all parts,” one of the scrutineers, party volunteers there to check that everything is in order.

“Not ideal for candidates and agents to check the counting.”

News from the Thornton Heath count.

This is a ward held by Labour, but for 2026 one of their councillors retired, another was replaced by members in a rare ward selection meeting and the third, Karen Jewett, Croydon’s hardest-working councillor (© Inside Croydon 2026) was blocked from standing by nameless, faceless Labour Party officials in the NEC and at London region.

Early indicators from this ward count are that the Greens are running second here, behind Labour, but our source at the count says, “Lots of split votes in the three-member ward.”

One of the Labour candidates in Thornton Heath this year is Ben Taylor, who has worked as the agent for all of his party’s 70 council candidates, even though Taylor has no experience of actually ever winning an election. Coulsdon resident

Taylor was his party’s parliamentary candidate in Croydon South for the 2024 General Election, but in 2022 when standing for the council, he delivered Labour’s worst result in local elections in the history of Croydon Council.

Midday: Labour 2, Conservative 1, Reform 2

Here’s the council’s official scoreboard, before the New Addington South results have been confirmed.

11.30am: Reform wins first council seats in Croydon

Reform gains: a provisional result suggest Reform has won two council seats in New Addington South

Holding up a sheet with “Provisional result”, a member of council staff reveals that Scott Holman, the Reform candidate who really wanted to be elected in Essex (see 3.40pm update and others in yesterday’s rolling election coverage), got more than 1,000 of his neighbours in New Addington South to vote for him, becoming Farage’s party’s first elected councillor in Croydon. Holman will have to get used to having his photo taken now.

Holman’s running mate in the two-seat ward referred to in council jargon as NAS is former Tory councillor Adam Kellett.

Kellett had 22 votes more than the leading Tory candidate, sitting councillor Lara Fish. We expect a recount might be on its way. It could be a very long day…

Unless the Tories can find another 23 votes from somewhere, which might be a bit fishy, Fish and the generally obnoxious, as well as lazy, Tony Pearson will lose their council allowances. Pearson is probably regretting not jumping into the arms of the Faragists himself now.

Kellett already knows what the work of a councillor entails. Will Holman prove up to the task? Or will he, like so many Reform councillors elected in the past year, prove to be a flake?

11.20am: Park Hill and Whitgift

Conservative hold, on reduced vote share. Green vote up by 9%, to 19.6%. Will be a feature through the day of big vote increase, but not enough to make gains in terms of council seats.

11.15am: New Addington North

Labour gain one council seat from the Conservatives, as Reform split the right-wing vote, and Adele Benson, officially Croydon’s laziest councillor (zero pieces of casework in 2025-2026 as revealed by Inside Croydon) loses her £12,000 per year council allowances.

11am: Now where were we?

Here’s the result of the mayoral election froim yesterday evening.

Jason Perry Cons 35,871 (-7.8%)
Rowenna Davis Labour 34,758 (-4.8%)
Peter Underwood Green 19,404 (+3.9%)
Ben Flook Reform 14,467 (New)
Richard Howard LibDem 7,815 (-5.0%)
Michael Pusey TTIP 2,597
Jose Joseph Ind 1,568
Ben Goldstone TUSC 461

* Figures in brackets relate to vote share comparison from previous local elections in 2022, based on that year’s ward votes

Read more: ‘The vote on the left split more than the vote on the right’

With our reporters in the Ashcroft Theatre for the count, Inside Croydon delivered the result as it happened, and almost 20 minutes sooner than the BBC. The non-local news site run from Canary Wharf by Retch published its election report four hours after the declaration.

We thank all our readers, and our loyal paying subscribers, for their continuing support, and we will continue to work to ensure that your voices are not ignored by Croydon’s failed Mayor.

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