A group of Green Party activists

The Green Party of England and Wales has been experiencing unprecedented electoral success in the last three years. Since the party’s breakthrough set of local elections in 2019, the Greens have been gaining Councillors at a rate of knots. With a flurry of by-election gains in between the annual election cycle, the Greens now have 550 Councillors across England and Wales.

Young Greens election officer Daron Coaker has highlighted the scale of this growth. He tweeted a breakdown of the growth in the Greens’ representation in local government since the 1980s.

It took the Greens 13 years from when the party was founded as the PEOPLE Party in 1973 to gain their first Council seat. From there, it would be another five years until there were 10 Green Councillors. 16 years later – by 2007 – the Greens had over 100.

Then the rapid growth kicked in. In 2019, the Greens had over 300 seats in local councils. By 2021, this had surpassed 400. And this year the Greens crossed the 500 threshold.

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Image credit: Bristol Green Party – Creative Commons