Council could face costs over stalemate, past examples suggest

Taxpayers could be footing the bill if a councillor stand-off over who runs Oldham Council carries on.

Past cases similar to the divided council suggest steep legal costs and £1,200-a-day commissioner fees could lie ahead if a deadlock cannot be broken.

The political stalemate at Oldham follows the 2026 local elections where Labour lost eight seats leaving the party. Reform UK is now the second largest group behind Labour by two councillors on 16.

No group has more than a third of the seats in the chamber, with 31 needed to take control. After the local elections, Labour council leader Arooj Shah announced she would stand down and her party step back and Reform ruled out forming any coalition.

There is currently no one running the council and there are fears the government could step in. The divisions in Oldham are so severe even the appointment of a ceremonial mayor has been caught in the turmoil.

With no new mayor, there is no way the council can legally move ahead with business including appointing a new leader and councillors to top positions. Hours of talks on May 20 failed to find any way through and another meeting has now been scheduled for June 15 to elect a new mayor.

The LDRS understands the UK government is continuing to monitor the situation. While day-to-day council services will continue to operate as normal, no changes to council policy or the budget are expected until a new leadership is in place.

With such an uncertain future ahead for the borough, the LDRS spoke to Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool about what the current situation could mean for Oldham.

Several councils have faced stalemates before. Wirral and Bristol in 2003, Sefton in 2008, and Burnley in 2004 and in some cases, the stalemate lasted for up to two months.

In all of these and similar to Oldham, council officials took over temporarily while threats of outside intervention were made. After 2011, councillors were offered a way out of this situation by moving to decisions being made by committees where all councillors are involved.

However, unfortunately for Oldham, this option has just been taken off the table by the current Labour government as part of the latest local government shakeup.

In Sefton, the council’s legal officer Caroline Elwood issued a warning to all councillors the council was in breach of its legal responsibilities. Prof Wilks-Heeg said this mechanism appeared to still be in place and brought Sefton councillors around the table. In her warning at the time, Ms Elwood said: “The failure to elect a leader is clearly a breach of statutory duty and exposes the council to the risk of judicial review proceedings by any resident or local business who considers themselves prejudiced by the failure, or by a member of the council, particularly if failure is prolonged.”

The report also reminded councillors of their responsibilities and crucially it warned elected members their actions could breach the conduct rules. Councillors were also told the local authority could face paying court costs for any legal action taken against it as a result of having no one in charge.

While this warning worked in Sefton, Prof Wilks-Heef said the presence of new parties like Reform UK in places like Oldham could mean things play out differently than in the past where the disputes were between established parties. He said: “You can really see there is a deadlock there that could drag on. If that happened here, I do think you are looking at potential commissioners being brought in if there is no other way out of it.”
Commissioners are local government officials or experts appointed to local authorities that are deemed to be failing. They are charged with taking over and overseeing council functions.

While this can help sort out councils, it takes democratic power away from the people the public have elected to represent them. It can also be costly too.

In cases like Liverpool, councils had to pay for any officials appointed by the government that are brought in to sort things out. The lead commissioner in Liverpool was paid a daily fee of £1,200. Prof Wilks-Heeg said: “It is very serious when you are saying this council cannot run its own affairs and can’t govern things so you will have to send someone in to sort this out. It’s mainly happened where there are serious failings, sometimes in a particular part of the council’s responsibilities.

“It virtually always happens when a council has gone into effective bankruptcy and issues a Section 114 notice like Woking, Birmingham, and places like that.

“To bring commissioners because you have no political control in the council, that is another level of seriousness because obviously local government is meant to be run by local politicians. I think every council would want to run itself. [Commissioners are] the last thing they want. They might be good people with real experience but the point is local government is meant to be run by local politicians.

“That is what elections are for. If you cannot govern after local elections, then really you have fundamentally failed.”

He added: “If it got to the two month mark, and if it really looked like there was absolutely no way forward, I think it would have to happen. In those past cases, you can see from the press reports, the parties were really talking to each other and all reporting what they were demanding and what they would expect.

“You can see over time how the position shifts. You can imagine central government watching that and saying they are getting close. You can see it was moving in the right direction.”