What Worthing voters are being asked to decide on 7 May 2026
Voters in Worthing are due to take part in two sets of local elections on Thursday 7 May 2026, with ballots for both Worthing Borough Council and West Sussex County Council. The borough poll will decide who represents 13 wards across the town, while the county council poll will decide who represents nine county divisions covering the Worthing area. Both elections are expected to use the first past the post system, meaning voters place a single mark next to their chosen candidate in each contest and the candidate with the most votes wins.
For Worthing Borough Council, one councillor is due to be elected in each of the following wards on 7 May 2026: Broadwater, Castle, Central, Durrington, Gaisford, Goring, Heene, Marine, Northbrook, Offington, Salvington, Selden and Tarring. For West Sussex County Council, one councillor is due to be elected in each of the Worthing area divisions of Broadwater, Cissbury, Durrington and Salvington, Goring, Northbrook, Tarring, Worthing East, Worthing Pier and Worthing West. In practical terms, that means many voters in Worthing will receive two ballot papers on the same day, one for borough representation and one for county representation.
The two councils have different responsibilities. Worthing Borough Council deals with services at borough level, including areas such as housing, rubbish collection, local planning and council tax collection. West Sussex County Council is responsible for wider county services including education, social care, highways, transport and other strategic functions. The elections therefore matter for both day to day neighbourhood issues and larger county wide decisions that affect residents across Worthing and the rest of West Sussex.
At the same time, local elections are often read more widely as a test of the national political mood. Research by Ipsos ahead of the 2025 English local elections found voters were just as likely to say their choice would be influenced by how their local council had run things as by how the UK Government had run the country, with both factors cited by 38 per cent of respondents. Analysts also routinely produce national vote share estimates from local election results to assess the broader political picture, although the elections themselves do not determine who forms the UK Government.
The path to this year’s elections has been more complicated than usual. The county council elections had already been moved from May 2025 to May 2026. More recently, the government proposed postponing a number of local elections in England scheduled for 7 May 2026, including those affecting Worthing Borough Council and West Sussex County Council, as part of wider local government reorganisation plans. That proposal was challenged in court, and after further legal and political developments the decision was reversed. As a result, the May 2026 elections in Worthing are now due to go ahead after first being postponed and then reinstated.
At the time of writing, the full official list of candidates standing in each ward and division has not yet been published by the returning officer. That means it is not yet possible to give a definitive ward by ward list of who is standing or which parties will appear in every local contest. Once the formal statements of persons nominated are released, that position will become clear.
What is already clear is the structure of the vote itself. Worthing residents are being asked to choose who will represent them at borough and county level for the next term of office, across a set of wards and divisions that cover the town.
After months of uncertainty over whether the elections would happen at all, polling day is now set for 7 May 2026, when voters in Worthing will be asked to decide who should speak for their communities in both the town hall and county hall.