The election was originally scheduled for 18 March 2021, but was delayed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[2]
It had been proposed that, due to the pandemic, the elections be combined with the 2021 United Kingdom local elections in the rest of England on 6 May. The City's Policy and Resources Committee recommended against this, and suggested July 2021 as an alternative date should the elections need to be postponed.[3][4]
Electoral system
Most residents of the twenty-five wards of the City of London live in the Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Portsoken and Queenhithe. Residents have one vote each, and businesses have a number of votes that scales with the number of employees. Businesses can appoint one employee as a voter for every five staff up to ten voters, with an additional voter per fifty staff beyond that.[5]
Councillors are elected by multi-member first-past-the-post.
The election resulted in Temple and Farringdon Together and the Labour Party winning the same number of seats as they had done in the previous election, with Temple and Farringdon Together on ten seats and Labour on five. The new Castle Baynard Independents won seven seats, with the remaining seats being won by independent candidates. The Women's Equality Party stood candidates but none were successful.[7] One of the victorious independent candidates was Emily Benn, whose grandfather was the Labour MP Tony Benn.[8]
The incumbent councillors James de Sausmarez and Kevin Everett stood jointly; the other candidates, Christopher Boden and James Bromiley-Davis likewise stood as a pair.
Candidates for the Castle Baynard Independents Party are marked CB Independents. Change in vote share for CB Independents candidates reflect their previous vote share when running as independents.
The election that took place in Portsoken Ward recorded the highest turnout in the entire 2022 Common Council Elections with 57.6% of the electorate casting their vote. The average turnout across the City of London was 36.5%. Two incumbent councillors, Munsur Ali and Jason Paul Pritchard, who were elected as Labour candidates in 2017, stood jointly.[19] John Fletcher and Henry Jones stood jointly.[20] Changes in voteshare are by party for the Labour candidates and by candidate for independent candidates who previously stood as independents.