In April 2019 Daniel Wainwright reported on the lack of diversity in councils with almost 1,000 2019 local election candidates named either David or Dave, compared with 151 called Sue, the most popular female name, while councils were criticised for being "too slow" to encourage women and people from BAME communities to stand.

• Democracy Club: Open candidate information for UK elections
• Local Government Association: National census of local authority councillors 2018 (PDF)

• Simon Woolley, director of operations, Operation Black Vote
• Amara Betts-Patel, councillor, Lancaster City Council
• David Clifft, councillor, South Staffordshire Council
• Rachael Farrington, Voting Counts
• Andrew Bazeley, Fawcett Society
• Spokesman, Local Government Association

• Video: Local elections explained
• Bar chart: Top 30 names out of more than 25,000 candidates
• Column chart: Ethnicity of councillors and the population
• Widget: Is there a council election in my area on 2 May 2019?
• Stacked bar chart: Age of councillors in England
• Line chart: Gender of councillors in England, male vs female, 2004-2018

• You can find all election-related stories from the data unit tagged 'elections' on GitHub