Reform’s first seven months running 12 councils reveal a gap between rhetoric and results

Listening to Reform’s rhetoric ahead of May’s local elections, you might have thought that councils were swimming in spare cash. The party promised to slash “wasteful” spending, make local government more efficient, and freeze council tax. Nigel Farage said councils needed Reform’s Trump-inspired Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), drawing attention to money councils had spent on electric cars for council staff, underused cycle lanes and translation services. While these examples seem like easy targets for ridicule (even though translation services and cycle lanes are needed), it does not change the fact that councils face huge costs for statutory services. 

Here are some examples of what has happened over the past seven months at the 12 councils Reform runs.

1. Councillor exodus

Reform has lost over 40 councillors to expulsions, suspensions and resignations since May, triggering around 10 council by-elections, at a cost of around £27,000 each. Not only that, but several Reform council leaders, deputy leaders and cabinet members have only lasted brief periods in post. For example, Reform leader on Warwickshire County Council, Rob Howard, left his position just five weeks after the May elections due to “health challenges”. Leicestershire County councillor Joseph Boam only lasted in his positions as the council’s deputy leader and adult social care cabinet member for three months.

2. Councillor conduct

The numbers of councillors Reform is shedding cannot be explained without mentioning councillor behaviour. Just two weeks after the local elections, former Reform councillor in Staffordshire, Wayne Titley, resigned after it was revealed that he said the Navy should shoot at small boats with a “volley of gunfire aimed at sinking them”. 

Robert Bloom, a Reform councillor in Northamptonshire resigned after a neighbour reported that he had repeatedly said the n-word to her family. Bloom has since been charged with racially or religiously aggravated harassment. 

Most recently, the Reform council leader on Staffordshire County Council, Ian Cooper, had his membership revoked and quit his role, after it emerged that he was a top contributor in a white supremacist Facebook group. In another post on X, he replied to a video of David Lammy calling for Britain to pay slavery reparations to Caribbean nations back in 2018, saying “No foreign national or first generation migrant should be able to sit in parliament”. 

3. Cutting local services

Reform UK centred its local election campaign on cutting “wasteful” spending and making savings. Last month, Farage’s party claimed it had saved £331 million across the councils it runs since May. It then ignored requests to provide evidence for this figure. In reality, Reform-led councils are grappling with major budget shortfalls, raising council tax despite promises to freeze it, and cutting local services.

Take Worcestershire County Council, for example, where Reform is facing a £73 million budget shortfall next year and is considering raising council tax by 10% (usually councils would raise council tax by a maximum of 5%). 

At Lancashire County Council, Reform has been consulting on potentially closing five council-run care homes and five day centres which provide support to older people. The authority says closing the 10 facilities would save £4 million a year. The Reform-run council has now delayed a decision on closing the 10 elderly care facilities, saying it needs to assess the strength of public opposition to the plans.

In Kent, Reform has approved plans to stop commissioning ‘Community Navigation services’, which help people over 55 find and access services in their local communities. They also greenlit plans to reduce funding and redesign mental wellbeing services for older people. Labour MP for Dartford, Jim Dickson, has criticised the move, arguing that these are vital services for vulnerable people in Kent. 

These cuts are being made while Nottinghamshire County Council, another Reform-led authority, has spent £75,000 on a scheme to put up 164 Union Jack flags across the county.

4. Doge failures

In June, Nigel Farage launched Reform UK’s new cost-cutting unit with great fanfare, claiming it would begin work within days to uncover millions of pounds in savings. Reform’s Doge, a UK imitation of the US government project formerly led by Elon Musk, was headed up by Zia Yusuf, until Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice took over the mantle in October. 

The team has visited just three Reform-run councils – Kent, Worcestershire and West Northamptonshire. It also hasn’t been able to scrutinise finances at any council due to legal barriers preventing unelected Reform officials in the Doge team from accessing sensitive data. Other than recently announcing that Tory defector Ben Bradley would support Tice as ‘head of local government action at Doge’, news about Reform’s Doge efforts has gone remarkably quiet. 

5. War on net zero and DEI

A central pillar of Reform’s local election campaign was its focus on cutting “net stupid zero” initiatives, which are key to limiting global warming. Another policy they took aim at was scrapping diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.  The day after the local elections, Nigel Farage made a speech to Durham County Council stating that anyone working on climate change or diversity initiatives should be “seeking alternative careers”.

Just last year, Durham won a climate change award for cutting its carbon footprint by 50,000 tonnes over 15 years under Labour and Lib Dem leadership after it switched its council buildings to renewable energy. In July, Reform scrapped the council’s net zero by 2030 pledge. Reform deputy leader of the council, Darren Grimes, dismissed the policy, saying “We are done with expensive virtue-signalling tripe”. Liberal Democrat Mark Wilkes pointed out that net zero initiatives saved the council £13 million in the past year.

Elsewhere, Reform-run North Northamptonshire Council pushed its net zero target back from 2030 to 2050. Green group leader Emily Fedorowycz warned the delay would cause “damage [that] cannot be undone”.

Reform made a big song and dance about cutting diversity and equality roles at councils. But a Guardian investigation found that across the 10 Reform-run English councils there were a combined 4.56 full-time equivalent (FTE) diversity and equality-related jobs. Even assuming an average full time salary of £50,000, scrapping these four and a bit roles would only save £228,000 a year, a tiny fraction – less than 0.003% – of the councils’ combined budgets.

Another headline-grabbing populist policy that falls apart when confronted with reality.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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