King Charles III will be crowned on Saturday 6 May 2023. One wonders whether any regard was paid to the implications that the date might have for next year’s ordinary day for local elections on 4 May. Perhaps it would have been better to have opted for the Saturday at the end of the Whitsun half-term, 3 June, which would have been one day after the 70^th anniversary of the late Queen’s Coronation in 1953.

Of itself, the Coronation does not affect the electoral timetable. Weekends do not count. The current planned bank holiday on Monday 1 May - to use the technical terminology, a ‘dies non’ - will have been factored into the timetable for when notice of the election must be given.