Reform's Cost-Cutting Unit Struggles With The Reality Of Local Pressures
7 min read
After more than 100 days in office, those in charge of Reform-led councils are facing a political reality check in the form of soaring social care demands and the need to raise council taxes. Matilda Martin and Zoe Crowther examine how the party’s bold campaign promises are standing up in the face of financial pressures
In May this year, Reform UK outperformed the country’s – and even its own – expectations, winning an outright majority in 10 councils and two regional mayoralties. With two more councils later added to its belt through forming minority administrations, the party now runs day-to-day spending on services for around nine million people under a multi-billion pound budget.
One of Reform’s flagship ideas was the creation of its own ‘Doge’ (Department of Government Efficiency), tasked with exposing waste and freeing up money to lower council tax. Modelled on a Donald Trump initiative in the US, the project has been billed by Reform HQ as a radical shake-up of local spending.
But four months in, the scheme faces difficulties. Councils are already grappling with rising demands for social care and homelessness support, areas that dominate local budgets and leave limited scope for quick savings. Even if waste is found, many fear it will be absorbed by wider funding shortfalls rather than returned to residents through tax cuts.
Progress has been patchy. Doge has so far reached just three councils – West Northamptonshire, Worcestershire and Kent – and all are still finalising agreements over what data can be shared, amid GDPR and legal questions. Reform sources remain upbeat, arguing that once some of these deals are reached they will “pave the way” for others. But the scale of the challenge is undeniable.
Reform’s pledge to slash council “waste” has swiftly collided with the realities of local government finance. An analysis of 2023-24 accounts showed that in councils now run by the party, up to 78 per cent of service budgets went on social care and homelessness. With spending so concentrated, experts say the scope for savings is narrow and likely absorbed by funding gaps.
Some leaders are pressing ahead regardless. Staffordshire’s Ian Cooper tells The House that there are friends and supporters finding “interesting stuff”: “A lot of it’s in the public domain. You’ve just got to know where to look.” He says that by the time Reform’s national Doge team arrives, Staffordshire “might not need them”.
In Kent, where Doge was first piloted, council leader Linden Kemkaran has created her own “Dolge” – Department of Local Government Efficiency – while awaiting a data-sharing deal. “We are getting on with the job quite adequately on our own,” she insists. Asked if she sensed frustration from Reform over delays, she concedes: “There’s certainly an impatience to get on with the job.”
Kemkaran is part of a WhatsApp group with fellow Reform council leaders who are “sharing tidbits of information and just helping each other navigate our way around as newly elected leaders”. That support is needed: many new councillors face a “steep learning curve”, with Derbyshire council’s Doge cabinet member John Lawson admitting he is still “just getting used to how councils work and even just the terminology”.
Linden Kemkaran, Reform UK Leader of Kent County Council (Alamy)
Yet Reform claims it has already made around £110m in savings, much from scrapping local net-zero schemes. Durham county council was the first Reform-led authority to renounce a “climate emergency”, claiming £25m in savings by cancelling a county hall heat pump, reducing investment in solar panels, and halting an upgrade to electric vehicles.
Farage has pointed to £1m in IT savings at West Northamptonshire council – although the council says this is “hard to validate”. Reform also says it has saved £6,000 a day at Derbyshire council, but that figure has been disputed by councillors from other parties.
Jonathan Werran, chief executive of think tank Localis, tells The House that Doge will be a “testing ground where they can prove whether their ability to govern competently at the local level could translate to the national”. Cutting green projects, he says, “could work if it’s a viable policy choice”, but he warns that cutting areas like flood defence risk “very real consequences”.
At the same time, Werran sees scope for Reform to think “creatively and freely”, for instance by reforming neighbourhood services or mandating that employers could pay less into local government pension schemes, due to them currently holding a £100bn surplus. “That might take some, not all, of the pressure off.”
At the beginning of September, Reform called for a shake-up of the Local Government Pension Scheme, claiming reforms would save taxpayers around £10bn.
Reform itself admits it is not yet ready to discuss wider progress made on cost-cutting efforts, with HQ and councils saying they will have more to say in the autumn, once budgets are drawn up. However, this period may also prove testing for the party as council tax rises loom, despite the party’s election campaign last year promising tax cuts funded by spending reductions.
Zia Yusuf, head of Doge, recently said that cutting council tax was “not going to happen”, suggesting it might “increase slower than other councils”. But with the spending review expecting five per cent annual rises – the maximum permitted – even that looks ambitious.
Some councils opt for smaller increases, or none at all, but Lawson of Derbyshire council says the Spring Statement “put local authorities in a bit of a straitjacket” and believes those that refuse the rise could face penalties. Cooper hopes to reduce the five per cent rise in Staffordshire, but admits: “Whether we can deliver that based on inflation… we’ll just have to wait and see. But we certainly don’t believe that council tax should go up infinitely year-on-year – quite the reverse.”
Kent’s budget consultation, concluding this month, includes council tax rises as an option. Council leader Kemkaran insists there is no pressure from Reform HQ. “No one is telling me what I should or shouldn’t do with my council tax here. I would love to say I’ve found a magic way of not putting it up. I can’t say that at the moment.”
Localis chief executive Werran warns there is “no alternative for any council that needs to balance its books but to put council tax up to the fullest extent”, explaining: “There isn’t an ability to untie themselves Houdini-like and with one leap, make themselves free of the constraints of the funding system. The demand on the services makes it impossible.”
Over the summer recess, Labour was hit by a crisis after Tory-run Epping Forest district council was granted a High Court injunction to stop asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel. The Home Office and the hotel’s owners later successfully appealed against the decision. Even so, more than a dozen local authorities are still reportedly planning legal action to shut so-called asylum hotels.
Labour might be pushing for more devolution, but council stability often depends on decisions from the top of government. The government’s sudden end to the adult social care visa in July sent shockwaves through Kent county council, prompting Kemkaran to write to the Home Secretary about its potential impact on local services.
“My cabinet member for adult social care came to me almost in tears and said, ‘I can’t believe it, they’ve suddenly done a U-turn, and they’re turning off the social care visa route’,” Kemkaran tells The House. She warns that other announcements that “blindside” councils could frustrate Reform’s efficiency efforts.
The Kent leader is particularly concerned about local government reorganisation. “I’m now trying to run a council where there might not be a future beyond two years’ time,” she says. “How can I do long-term planning? How can I make any decisions, really, with long-term financial implications when we simply don’t know what LGR [local government reform] is going to mean for us?” It is a frustration shared by many in local government, regardless of their political stripes.
As Reform continues its attempts to slash waste and lower taxes, the next test will be whether those efficiencies can make any dent in the funding holes appearing in county halls up and down the country. Whether Reform can turn ambitious promises into workable council policy will shape not just local budgets, but its credibility for national office.
