2023 Manchester City Council election

The 2023 Manchester City Council elections took place on 4 May 2023 alongside other local elections across the United Kingdom. One third of councillors (32) on Manchester City Council were elected, along with a mid-term vacancy in the Ardwick ward.

Labour retained its majority on the council.

History
The Local Government Act 1972 created a two-tier system of metropolitan counties and districts covering Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands, and West Yorkshire starting in 1974. Manchester was a district of the Greater Manchester metropolitan county. The Local Government Act 1985 abolished the metropolitan counties, with metropolitan districts taking on most of their powers as metropolitan boroughs. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority was created in 2011 and began electing the mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017, which was given strategic powers covering a region coterminous with the former Greater Manchester metropolitan county.

Since its formation, Manchester City Council has continuously been under Labour control. In the most recent council election in 2022, Labour won 30 of the 32 seats up for election with 65.4% of the vote, with the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party each winning one seat with 12.7% and 11.4% of the vote across the borough respectively. The Conservatives received 8.8% of the vote but did not win any seats.

The seats up for re-election in 2023 were those who were elected in 2019.

Changes since the last election
Since the 2022 Manchester City Council election councillor Ekua Bayunu, who was elected as a Labour Party candidate in Hulme in 2021, quit the Labour party and joined the Green party.

Council term
Bernard Priest (Lab, Ardwick) resigned as a councillor shortly before the election period began; this leads to a combined election where the candidate with the most votes is elected to a full four-year term, and the candidate with the second most votes fills the remainder of the vacated term 2021–24 term.

The following councillors did not stand for re-election:

Electoral process
The council elects its councillors in thirds, with a third being up for election every year for three years, with no election in the fourth year. Councillors are elected via first-past-the-post voting, with each ward represented by three councillors, with one elected in each election year to serve a four-year term.

All registered electors (British, Irish, Commonwealth and European Union citizens) living in Manchester aged 18 or over will be entitled to vote in the election. People who live at two addresses in different councils, such as university students with different term-time and holiday addresses, are entitled to be registered for and vote in elections in both local authorities. Voting in-person at polling stations will take place from 07:00 to 22:00 on election day, and voters will be able to apply for postal votes or proxy votes in advance of the election.

Council composition
After the 2022 election, the composition of the council was:

Immediately prior to the election, the composition of the council was:

Following the election result, the composition of the council became:

Results
Summary change in vote share compared to the 2022 election. Change in number of seats compared to the most recent sitting councillor for each ward before the election. The result for the Ardwick ward has been normalised to account for the 2nd vacancy being filled in this election.

For the per-ward results, asterisks denote incumbent Councillors seeking re-election. Unless otherwise noted, the councillors seeking re-election were elected in 2019; changes in vote share are therefore compared to 2019.

Didsbury West
Previous councillor Greg Stanton was elected for the Liberal Democrats in 2019 but defected to Labour; for the purpose of comparison to the 2019 figures this ward is a Lib Dem hold.

Brooklands by-election
On 26 July 2023 Julia Baker Smith resigned her seat in Brooklands following rumours that she was living in on the Isle of Wight, 200 miles away from her ward. A by-election was held on 7 September 2023.

Resignations and defections
In October 2023 Amna Abdullatif (Ardwick) resigned from the Labour party in the wake of the Labour leadership's stance on the Israeli invasion of Gaza, sitting as an independent councillor.