Reform swept into local government last May. A heady night gave the insurgent populist right party control of ten councils and a plurality in several more. Nigel Farage’s acolytes promised to cut down on wasteful “DEI” spending, keep council tax down and establish a UK version of Elon Musk’s notorious Doge.
However, the reality of government is somewhat different. As I’ve written before, local government finance in the UK is fundamentally broken. Decades of underinvestment and degrading of services alongside rising demand for social care have pushed several councils over the edge into bankruptcy, although often helped over the edge by at least one significant bad decision by the council in question.
The challenge facing Reform councils is that the only way they can fend off financial oblivion is to raise their council tax by the maximum allowed, while continuing to engage in the type of cost-cutting that has become standard across local government. But that breaks a key promise made by local Reform politicians, who said before the local elections that they wanted to cut council tax. Just over two months after those elections, those pledges were being back-pedalled by party chairman Zia Yusuf. At least eight Reform councils have since confirmed they will raise council tax. None have confirmed they will be able to cut it.
Their struggles in local government point to a bigger issue: what difference does electing a Reform politician make? When I spoke to opposition councillors across several Reform councils, many highlighted how these are now largely “officer-run” with little having fundamentally changed from their previous administrations. Even if Reform councils stick to the tax plans of their predecessors, some of the councils they run are less robust than others.
Nottinghamshire is predicted to have a £3m overspend in 25/26, rising to £16m by 28/29 (a figure that assumes savings and maximum council tax). But it had a £36m general fund balance in March 2025 and £327m in reserves on 31 March 2024. Warwickshire is predicted to overspend by £1.6m, but had £229m reserves on 31 March 2024.
The likeliest candidate of Reform councils to hit the financial cliff first would seem to be Worcestershire County, a minority-Reform administration which was previously Conservative-run. The council has a relatively low level of reserves, spiking Send costs and a county hall building that’s condemned due to RAAC. The council has also taken on emergency financial support in government loans to help balance the books, totalling £33m this year, bringing its total debt to £600m. Last year it overspent by £6.2m. While there hasn’t been a figure produced yet for 2025, the deficit associated with Send costs is projected to have increased from £98m last year to £184m this year.
In addition to a new county hall, the city of Worcester needs a new secondary school, which would be another big capital project – in the intervening period, secondary kids are being bussed around other schools, with all the associated transport costs that brings.
One experienced opposition councillor I spoke to said they believed Worcestershire would have to ask central government to allow it to raise council tax above the maximum 4.99 per cent currently allowed, a measure six other councils took in the last round of council budgets. Raising council tax beyond 4.99 per cent wouldn’t just break Reform’s pledge; it would eviscerate it. The Worcestershire public budget consultation has asked residents if they would support a tax increase above 5 per cent. It’s unlikely that the response from the public will be positive. The question is whether Reform’s central party will intervene if the council still attempts to raise tax beyond the threshold.
That said, these challenges are largely outside of the control of the current administration. Months before Reform took over Worcestershire, councillors warned that the authority faced bankruptcy without financial support from central government. The same opposition councillor highlighted that previous administrations had held down the council tax, eroding the tax base and weaking its ability to cope with the rise in costs.
Worcestershire is due to be merged with its district councils, a move that is touted as being able to deliver savings by reducing duplication and realising economies of scale and scope. However, the evidence for this is poor. You only need to look at Shropshire (now Lib Dem, historically Tory), which was subject to a similar merger in 2009 and is now facing bankruptcy, having staggered on in the intervening period. Alternatively, central government could intervene in Worcestershire, as it has recently done in Woking to write off £500m in debt to enable local government reorganisation in Surrey.
So, you could say that Reform inherited a council that was already in poor shape and where the costs for social care are largely out of their hands. As one former senior council officer I asked said, “While Reform councillors in the news may come across as ignorant blowhards, the fact that they have zero influence makes it an amusing sideshow.” The same officer had a poor opinion of the calibre of most current councillors, irrespective of party.
The serious point is that these financial weaknesses were well-known prior to the local elections and yet Reform went into them promising lower council tax and better services. While they’ve not staked their claim to competence in the way Labour did ahead of the 2024 election, Reform councillors know they need to keep the bins collected, schools functional and social care on its feet. A high-profile bankruptcy would not be a good look – and it looks like they’re willing to break their promises on council taxes to avoid it.
[Further reading: Council spending and the Jay delusion]
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