Council Leaders Say Reform's Cost Cutting Plans Are Detached From Reality
4 min read
Council leaders have pushed back against Reform UK's plans to cut spending if it wins control of local authorities at next week's elections.
Councillors representing other parties have told PoliticsHome that they are already making the sort of Elon Musk-style efficiency savings that Nigel Farage and other Reform figures have promised because their local authorities are under severe financial pressure.
Reform, which continues to poll ahead of Labour and the Tories in some opinion polls, is expected to make significant gains at local and mayoral elections on 1 May.
Reform candidates in areas where the party is expected to perform strongly next week, like Kent and Durham, recently told PoliticsHome that they would carry out audits and dismantle diversity programmes to cut council spending.
Terry Stacy, head of office and senior adviser at the Local Government Association (LGA), accused Reform of "living with their heads in the clouds" when it comes to council finances.
"For the last 18 years, councils have been making major cuts in their funding with no let-up in demand", he told PoliticsHome.
In recent years, there have been repeated warnings that local authorities across the country face increasingly difficult financial situations, fuelled in part by rising demand for statutory services like adult social care, children's services and home-to-school transport.
Conservative Councillor and Leader of Lincolnshire County Council Martin Hill said Reform's plans "don't make any economic sense at all", adding that his council has been making savings every year in Lincolnshire since 2010-11, with many other councils doing the same.
"Councils have been under financial pressure for some years and have been at the frontline of finding savings for the government nationally," he told PoliticsHome.
Hill said his local authority is "already doing DOGE and has been some years, finding over £400m since 2011". DOGE is a reference to the Department of Government Efficiency — X owner Musk's attempt to make the US government more efficient.
"Reform will have to find even more savings, but they're not saying how they're going to do it.
"They will cut waste without specifying what waste is," he said.
John Cope, Chairman of the Conservative Councillors’ Association, said Farage is "right to join us in highlighting wasteful Labour and Liberal Democrat councils up and down the country.”
However, the Tory councillor criticised the Reform leader's approach, accusing him of not having "brought forward any credible solutions, just PR gimmicks”.
Joe Harris, Chairman of the Liberal Democrats' Councillors' Association, told PoliticsHome that "most councils have been dealing with relentless austerity for the past 15 years, which has forced them to become more efficient".
While Harris acknowledged there are always areas in which councils could operate more effectively, he said that the "constant pressure of simply keeping essential services running" leaves little capacity to explore alternative or more innovative approaches.
"This proposal from Farage feels very much like a gimmick.
"I suspect that if we were to see a sudden rise in Reform-run local authorities, the practical realities would hit them rather quickly," he said.
The Lib Dem leader of Durham County Council, Amanda Hopgood, agreed with Hill that councils have already been doing "DOGE" for some years, telling PoliticsHome that Reform is "in for a big shock if they win a lot of councils".
The LGA's Stacy also criticised Reform's attacks on council diversity programmes, saying that programmes like English lessons for refugees would come under that budget.
"Community cohesion is a really important thing for local authorities and communities, even more in the present climate," he said.
Thomas Mallon, a Reform county councillor for Kent County Council who is running for re-election in May, last week told PoliticsHome that the party would be "cutting DEI for a start" if they win control of the councils on 1 May.
There remain questions over how exactly Farage's party will run councils if they are successful in the local elections. PoliticsHome revealed this month that Reform had not yet finalised the rules for how its councillors will run local authorities after the person originally tasked with completing the rule book resigned from the party.
