The Green Party has taken control of Norwich City Council after winning five Labour seats in Thursday’s local election and finishing with 21 of the 39 seats on the authority. Labour fell to 12 seats, while the Liberal Democrats took three, Reform UK won two and one Independent councillor was elected.
The result ends Labour’s grip on a council it had led for most of the time since Norwich City Council was established in 1974. Labour had been running the authority as a minority administration since a spate of resignations in 2023, but the latest vote has now pushed it out of control entirely.
Lucy Galvin, speaking after the count, said the party had “made history in Norwich” and that voters had backed “hope” and “a future” as well as councillors who “work with people, not against them.” She said Norwich had always been unusual in having Green councillors and called the result “deep-rooted,” adding that she was first elected in 2011 and had seen the party build support over many years. The Greens first won seats in Norwich in 2002, and the city has now become one of their clearest local breakthroughs in England.
For Labour, the scale of the loss was plain. Mike Stonard said the party had lost control of the council and called the result disappointing. He said projects including Anglia Square and the council’s £20m Pride in Place funding had landed well on the doorstep during campaigning, but added that there was “a national political tide around Reform and the Green Party” and that sometimes a party could not swim against it when pressure was that strong.
The Norwich result matters beyond the city because the Green Party had previously held a majority on only one council in England, Mid Suffolk. Now it also controls Norwich, Hastings and the London borough of Waltham Forest after the latest round of elections, marking one of the party’s strongest local election performances to date. For a city where Labour had been the dominant force for decades, the change is sharp and immediate: the next council decisions will now be shaped by a Green majority rather than a Labour-led minority administration.
That shift leaves Norwich under new political management for the first time in years, and it gives the Greens a platform they have not previously had on this scale. The question now is not whether they can win protest votes, but whether they can turn a historic breakthrough into steady control of a council that has just changed hands.
