The UK Independence Party and Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts party have beefed up their presence in Watford ahead of the local elections.

UKIP is set to contest all 12 wards in the town for the first time on May 22 ballot, official nomination papers have shown.

The TUSAC party is also standing in six seats across Watford. The party has stood in the town in last year's county council elections but fielded no candidates in the last borough elections.

Meanwhile the Green Party is showing a diminished presence in the town as it has only mustered six candidates. In 2012, the last round of Watford Council elections, it stood in all 12 wards.

The party has also failed to put up a candidate in the Watford mayoral elections, which will be held on the same day, for the first time since the office was founded in 2002.

The three main parties are standing candidates in all of the 12 wards.

There will be 13 seats up for grabs next month, with the resignation of Green councillor, Steve Rackett, triggering an extra by-election in Callowland.

Other notable contests will see Councillor Malcolm Meerabux fight for re-election to the borough council as an Independent. He won his Park seat in 2010 as a Conservative, but was expelled from the local party in 2012.

The former leader of the Conservatives on the council, Leggatts councillor Steve Johnson, who defected to the Liberal Democrats last year, is set for fight for the seat in Tudor for his new party.

The full list of candidates standing ward by ward: