United Kingdom local elections, 1985

← 1984

2 May 1985 (England & Wales)
15 May 1985 (Northern Ireland)

1986 →

All 39 non-metropolitan counties, 1 sui generis authority,
all 26 Northern Irish districts and all 8 Welsh counties

	Majority party	Minority party	Third party

Leader	Margaret Thatcher	Neil Kinnock	David Steel (Liberal) David Owen (SDP)
Party	Conservative	Labour	SDP–Liberal Alliance
Leader since	11 February 1975	2 October 1983	7 July 1976 (Steel) 21 June 1983 (Owen)
Percentage	32%	39%	26%
Councillors	10,191	8,746	2,633
Councillors +/-	202	124	302

Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results.

Local elections were held in the United Kingdom in 1985. The projected share of the vote was Labour 39%, Conservative 32%, Liberal-SDP Alliance 26%. Labour had the largest share of the vote in local council elections for the first time since 1981.

Both Conservatives and Labour lost some seats to the Liberal-SDP Alliance, who were rebuilding under the leadership of David Owen and enjoying strong showings (including a brief lead) in the opinion polls.

The overall results were as follows;

Conservative losses: 202
Number of Conservative councillors: 10,191

Labour losses: 124
Number of Labour councillors: 8,746

Liberal-SDP Alliance gains: 302
Number of Liberal-SDP Alliance councillors: 2,633

‡ New electoral division boundaries

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