Northamptonshire fields record number of candidates
BBCA record number of candidates are standing at this year's local council elections in Northamptonshire.
Nearly 2,500 nomination papers were submitted across the county for unitary, town, parish and community council elections, taking place on 1 May.
The Conservatives, Labour and Reform UK are all fielding candidates across all the seats on the two unitary authorities.
These are only the second elections for the unitary councils after a reorganisation of local government four years ago.
All 220 parish, town and community councils in Northamptonshire also have elections on 1 May, with about 2,000 seats up for grabs.
In West Northamptonshire, the council has processed 1377 nomination papers.
355 of those are for candidates standing in the 76 seats across 35 wards that make up West Northamptonshire Council and the rest are standing for parish and town councils.
Anna Earnshaw, chief executive and returning officer for West Northamptonshire Council, said: "We are one of the biggest areas for election in the country in terms of actual number of seats, nominations we get and number of town and parish councils as well.
"We had drop in points all the way around West Northants Council's area so that candidates could go close to them."
Charlotte Vowden/BBCIn North Northamptonshire, 1070 nomination papers were submitted.
A third of them - 318 - are for candidates standing in the 68 seats across the 31 wards that make up North Northamptonshire Council, and the rest are standing for parish and town councils.
Adele Wylie, chief executive and returning officer of North Northamptonshire Council, said: "This is the first time that the unitary authority will have had all of those areas together and handled that amount of nominations in what is a really small period of time.
"It's only over a few weeks that we get all of those in and processed."
Both councils published notices of election a few weeks before the last possible day to do it set out by the Electoral Commission in order to give them more time to process the nomination papers.
In the future, Ms Wylie said, the authority would "love to work with government to find some efficiencies for processing" the number of candidates, "as long as it is still really safe process and people feel able to trust in the process."
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