Reform has big plans for local government. After winning ten councils and more than 600 councillors in last week’s elections, a buoyant Nigel Farage laid out his party’s plans to take an axe to “wasteful” spending. Speaking at a count in Durham on his bombastic victory lap, Farage told assembled voters, councillors and journalists that Reform plans to “reduce the scale of local government back to what it ought to be – providing social care, providing SEN needs for kids, mending potholes”. This new programme for local government also includes plans to cut council tax.
Farage has never been a councillor, nor have a large swathe of the 600 Reform candidates who were elected last Thursday. After getting their feet under the desk at their new local authorities, they are likely to find that providing social care, running SEND provision and mending potholes (oh, and don’t forget housing), is pretty much all local authorities can afford to do under current circumstances.
More than a decade of austerity saw councils core spending power cut by 27 per cent, and in the years between 2010-11 and 2022-23 English local authorities made an estimated £24.5bn in cuts. Meanwhile, demand for services has boomed, with the UK’s ageing population fuelling pressure on social care and the dwindling availability of social housing leading more councils to house people in temporary accommodation (at a much greater cost). Plans to set up a “Doge in every county” – modelled on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency – may well flounder when Reform’s new legion of councillors find there simply isn’t anything left to cut.
The party’s main targets for the chop are councils’ net zero programmes and DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) initiatives (out with the rainbow lanyards!). This is the sort of spending which Reform deems “wasteful”. But it should be noted that last year, the majority of the £127bn spent by councils was on education (33 per cent), adult social care (19 per cent) and policing (11 per cent), all of which are statutory services.
This new generation of Reform councillors may also find their plans to cut council tax tricky to implement. The annual settlement given by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to England’s 317 local authorities often assumes that councils will raise council tax by the maximum they are allowed without holding a referendum (4.99 per cent for unitary authorities and county councils and 2.99 per cent for districts) in order to receive the full spate of funding on offer. And with budgets perennially tight, local authorities often find there’s no other option. The data backs this up: according to research by the Local Government Chronicle, 80 per cent of councils implemented a maximum council tax hike in 2025.
This haphazard approach to council spending could prove a headache for the government. Earlier this year, Rachel Reeves was forced to bail out 30 councils, offering them exceptional financial support to the tune of £1.5bn. With the sector already on its knees, the arrival of a new renegade regime at ten of its councils could pile on the misery.
What is perhaps most interesting, however, is how this low-tax, low-spend approach to local government chimes with some of Reform’s other attempts at hashing out policy. When the future of British Steel’s final blast furnaces in Scunthorpe were anxiously being secured by the government, Farage and his deputy, Richard Tice, provided some of the loudest clamours to nationalise. Reform has also called for the water industry to be renationalised to put an end to foreign ownership of UK water. The party also pledged to reinstate the winter fuel payment. Similarly, when I met Andrea Jenkyns in Scunthorpe in January, the now-elected candidate for Greater Lincolnshire Mayor told me she would both nationalise British Steel and “cut the red tape” – two pledges that aren’t necessarily easy bedfellows. These developments, particularly Reform’s backing of nationalisation, are at odds with their move-fast-and-break-things approach to local government. One wonders how the party’s policies will develop over the course of the next four years.
One thing is clear: the 600 Reform councillors elected on Thursday will likely find that they have an uphill battle. Having been elected on a programme of cuts to tax and spending, they may eventually find there is no money left.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Don’t blame the OBR for Britain’s economic woes]
Content from our partners
Related
