Local elections profile: Bexley

Ahead of the local elections on Thursday 7 May, we have produced short guides to London's 32 boroughs.

Where is it? The London Borough of Bexley is in south-east London and borders Kent, Greenwich, Bromley and the River Thames.

What's it like? A quiet outer borough with high rates of home ownership and a predominantly suburban, residential character. The Thamesmead estate is high density urban housing notable for its Brutalist architecture.

Neighbourhoods: Bexleyheath, Sidcup, Welling, Erith, Crayford, Bexley Village, Abbey Wood, Blackfen, Belvedere, Barnehurst, Slade Green and Thamesmead.

Places of interest: Crossness Pumping Station, Lesnes Abbey Woods, Red House, Danson Park, Bexley Village and Old Bexley, Hall Place and Gardens - and more than 100 parks and woodlands.

Pub quiz fact: London's longest publicly-accessible pier is in Erith. Shaped like a boomerang, it is around 360m (1,180ft) long and popular with anglers and walkers.

Population (2024 estimate): 256,434

Demographics: According to the 2021 census, 71.9% of people in Bexley identified as white, 12.2% as black, 9.9% as Asian and 3.5% as mixed race.

Average property price: According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the provisional average house price in Bexley in December 2025 was£404,000.

Average monthly rent: The ONS says the average monthly private rent in Bexley was £1,411 in January 2026.

Council tax: Band D council tax in the borough for 2026/27 is £2,366.

Transport: There are no Tube stations in Bexley, but it does have 12 Southeastern rail stations, primarily operating on the Bexleyheath, Dartford Loop, and North Kent lines.

TfL maintains one Elizabeth line station (Abbey Wood) and around 610 bus stops. There are also 21 railway stations within the borough.

More information about Bexley can be found here.

Local history: Bexley was mostly fields until its population rapidly expanded in the 19th century. Even today the area has many disconnected settlements, interspersed with areas of open ground and parks.

Erith dates to the Saxon era as a landing place on the Thames and became a significant industrial hub in the 19th and 20th centuries, with notable manufacturing from Vickers and a Royal Dockyard.

The Crossness Pumping Station, described as a "a masterpiece of engineering" and "a Victorian cathedral of ironwork", was opened in 1865 as part of the ambitious redevelopment of the London sewerage system.

It was decommissioned in 1956 and fell into disrepair but was later renovated and is now open to the public as one of the borough's more unlikely tourist attractions.

What is the electoral history? In the 1960s Bexley, Erith and other councils in Kent were merged and transferred into Greater London. Bexley has mostly been under Conservative control with a few periods of Labour dominance and no overall control. The Tories have run the council continuously since 2006.

What happened in 2022? The turnout was 32.8% and there was a 5.2% swing from Conservative to Labour.

Conservatives: 33 seats (-1)

Labour: 12 seats (+1)

Since the election, three Conservatives have become independents and Labour retained a seat in a by-election.

Professor Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, said Bexley is Reform UK's biggest chance in London.

If you look across the boundary into Kent last year where there were local elections, Reform won almost everything.

It looks as if Bexley could well be Reform's big win in the capital.

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