The Rules

The rules and regulations governing the Awards are below.

Making a nomination

• Each council can nominate more than one councillor per category. Councils do not have to nominate to all five categories.
• You cannot nominate the same councillor for more than one category.
• Anyone in a council can submit a nomination but you cannot self-nominate.
• Nominations must be submitted via the official nomination form, which is linked to from the Cllr Awards page.
• Nominations received after 11.59pm on the day entries close will not be accepted.

Who can be nominated?

• Nominees to the Leader of the Year, Community Champion, Innovator of the Year and Young Councillor of the Year categories must be serving councillors at principal local authorities in England, Wales or Scotland. We do not accept nominations for parish, town or community councillors.
• Councillors who are on the LGIU executive board cannot be nominated for a Cllr Award.
• Nominations will not be accepted for councillors who are part of the Cllr Awards judging panels; in the event of a nominated councillor joining a judging panel, their nomination will be withdrawn.
• In the event that a shortlisted councillor subsequently steps down from the council, we reserve the right to remove that councillor from the shortlist. If a councillor whom the judges have selected as a winner steps down from the council before the winners are announced, we reserve the right to reverse the judges’ original decision and select a different winner.
• For the Lifetime Legend category, in addition to serving councillors, we also accept posthumous nominations and nominations for councillors who have recently stepped down from the council. In these cases, the nominee must have been a serving councillor at some point during the 12 months prior to 1 November 2026.

Judging, prizes and publicity

• Shortlists and winners will be decided by the Cllr Awards’ independent judging panels. Decisions will be based on the information supplied in the nomination, but judges reserve the right to request additional information from the nominator.
• LGIU will publish the names of shortlisted and winning councillors and their councils on our website. We will publicise their Cllr Awards success, which may include information supplied in the nomination, across various platforms, including the LGIU website, LGIU’s email newsletters, LinkedIn, and in press releases to national, regional and trade press. We use Cllr Awards to promote and celebrate the role of councillors, and will also use this year’s shortlisted councillors and winners to promote the Awards process next year.
• No cash alternatives to the shortlist and winners’ prizes are available.
• LGIU treats all personal information received as part of this Cllr Awards nominations process in accordance with our privacy policy.