Broadstairs - Governance

Governance

Broadstairs is within the Thanet local government district. The town contains the five electoral wards of Bradstowe, St Peters, Beacon Road, Viking and Kingsgate. These wards have eleven of the fifty six seats on the Thanet District Council. As of the 2007 local elections, all eleven of those seats were held by the Conservative Party. Broadstairs and St Peters Town Council has 15 members, who are elected every four years, led by the mayor.

The Member of Parliament (MP) for South Thanet is Laura Sandys of the Conservative Party. She has been the constituency's MP since the United Kingdom 2010 general election, when she took the seat from the Labour Party's Stephen Ladyman. He was preceded by Conservative Jonathan Aitken. At the 2005 general election, Labour won South Thanet by 664 votes, with 40.4% of the vote. Conservatives won 38.8% of the vote, Liberal Democrats 13.2%, United Kingdom Independence Party 5.0%, Green Party 2.2% and an independent 0.5%.

Broadstairs and St. Peter's have been twinned with Wattignies in northern France since the early 1980s.