But now that the aftershocks of what Nigel Farage has called the “Reform-quake” are subsiding, the reality of the hard yards of local government are starting to emerge.
They are difficulties that immediately raise questions over how easily Reform council leaders will be able to deliver on their party’s headline promise of DOGE-like efficiency savings.
The political stakes for Reform are high in these councils – because this is the electorate’s chance to see what happens after they win and get hold of the levers of power.
Here, issue by issue, is what Reform will have to deal with at a local level to get there.
In Kent, for example, only six out of the 57 newly elected Reform councillors have any previous political experience. There are a handful in other councils who have, however, served as Conservatives or with other parties before defecting to Reform. But they are the exception.
This means that they were vetted first to stand for election and then again to serve in cabinets, in a sign of how seriously Reform central wants to use their new powers.
One local government insider – from a rival party – said: “They talk a lot about freedom of speech but they will struggle to even sneeze unless Nigel Farage says they can.”
“Farage has previously questioned the high pay of council chief executives, but he may be thanking them at the end of this and realising they are good value for money,” the source said.
Councils with budgets on the edge
Reform has not been short of bold statements on its way to power. And one of the party’s new councillors has declared that wants to see his authority starting to make a profit.
“The council is on the verge of bankruptcy and they reckon within six months Derbyshire County Council will be bankrupt,” he said in a video on Facebook in the wake of his party’s victory. “So it is egg on our face, we have inherited an empire of dirt.
In fact Reform will have to deal with much bigger financial problems in some of the authorities it now runs.
A third, Worcestershire – where Reform is the largest party but no one has overall control – is one of 30 English councils that had to receive a government bailout earlier this year.
Two more Reform-controlled authorities – North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire – were created after Northamptonshire council was abolished in 2021 after effectively going bankrupt. While their two administrations have worked to bring budgets under control, the purse strings are still tight.
A source in a council now run by Reform said that demand for spending on social care and children’s services there had “skyrocketed” over the past few years, adding: “We increased capacity quite a bit, but needed to go further. It is not an issue where they can save their way out of a problem.”
But he added: “The challenges across social care in particular have been long-running, and unless Reform UK have spent the last five to 10 years with their fingers in their ears, it’s hard to believe they weren’t aware of these sector-wide challenges.”
Reform’s MPs and councillors have already pledged to implement a programme of council cuts on what they say is unnecessary expenditure – including things like diversity and inclusion roles (known as DEI), net zero spending and staff pay.
But a source in one of the local authorities now run by Reform warned: “The stuff they say they want to cut is miniscule, vanishingly small.
Several other councils won by Reform say they do not have staff members whose only role is diversity and inclusion. The level of net zero expenditure may also not quite match the party’s preconceptions.
The council has also saved money under the badge of “net zero” by switching street lighting to LED bulbs.
In Derbyshire, the county council’s £120,000 a year Community Leadership Scheme, where councillors can choose local projects on which to spend small pots of money on, has reportedly been put on hold following Reform’s victory.
But Reform Derbyshire spokesperson Stephen Reed has told the BBC the party was committed to “reviewing everything” as part of an anti-waste audit. Community leaders are demanding a rethink.
And a former Conservative special adviser said: “It is hard to govern, it’s bloody hard. Crafty chief execs in local authorities will put every trap in front of them and they’ll fall in every hole.
“Local authorities are even more canny than Whitehall departments when it comes to spending and making sure they get their settlements, they are really canny.”
“If you look at Croydon, you look at Birmingham, you look at a lot of these councils across the country, it’s not as if they’ve been run in a Rolls Royce fashion anyway,” they said. “If you poll most people, they think the councils are run terribly anyway.”
Migration and asylum
But in some councils now run by the party, the local picture is more difficult.
Local sources in Kent questioned whether Reform would want to risk being in contempt of court by refusing to abide by the ruling if they were also planning legal challenges on the wider hotels issue.
“It is clear that there is a great deal of work to be done,” she told ITV. “Hearing how angry people are. How much despair they feel.”
England’s potholes epidemic
As part of a new £1.6bn road maintenance package from central government, £500m is earmarked for pitted roads – which the Department of Transport says will fill seven million potholes every year. But questions have been asked about whether this will be enough.
The council is also still paying for the impact of Storm Babet, which hit the UK in October 2023, including the cost of landslips and repairing retaining walls in the rural and hilly county.
The party was contacted for comment
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