Reform UK councils to raise taxes despite campaign pledges: ‘They’ve collided with reality’

Last year, Reform UK swept to power in several English local councils, promising to “cut the fat”.

Turns out, there was no fat to cut – a reality that the right-wing party is reckoning with this week.

Reform will increase council tax in five councils it controls – despite previously pledging to “cut waste and reduce your taxes”.

Kent County Council has proposed an increase of 3.99%. Derbyshire, North Northamptonshire, West Northamptonshire and Leicestershire have also all proposed 5% council tax rises, the biggest hike permitted by law. Local authorities are due to approve council tax proposals in late February or early March.

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Linden Kemkaran, the leader of Kent County Council, cited “pressures on vital services” to justify the increase, while opposition parties accused her of a “betrayal”.

Whichever side you’re on, the tax hike is “not surprising,” says Tony Travers, a visiting professor in the London School of Economics’ department of government.

“Many councils are spending less in real terms today than they were in 2010, for a larger population. Any new party taking office was always going to bump into that reality,” he told Big Issue.

“There’s no Reform way of filling a pothole and no Conservative way of filling a pothole – someone has to put tarmac in the ground, and it costs broadly the same whoever is in power.”

Pre-election, Reform promised to trim wasteful spending on things like “diversity and inclusion” initiatives.

But expenditure on these symbolic issues has always been negligible – in Kent, for example, more than £787 million (48% of the budget) will go on adult social care. There is no established figure for how much is spent on DEI. (Though a Pride flag, which Kent County Council stopped flying last year, will set you back a fiver on eBay.)

“Efforts to cut spending on diversity and equality and flags and all of that stuff were always doomed because so little was spent on it in the first place,” Travers said.

For more than a decade, costs for social care for adults and children have increased steadily. Yet during the 2010s, English councils’ overall core funding per person fell by an average 26% in real terms. In the most deprived tenth of councils, the drop was 35%.

Local authorities responded by prioritising statutory services like social care. Funding for everything else – leisure centres, libraries, youth programmes, and arts initiatives – has declined precipitously.

Zoë Billingham, director of IPPR North, welcomed the decision to increase tax. Fifteen years of austerity have hollowed out capacity, she said, and more revenue is desperately needed.

“Unless they totally wanted to strip services away from some of the most vulnerable people in the country – and low and modest earners too – this was always the reality,” she said.

“[Council funding] was the bit of austerity and the shrinking of the state that wasn’t talked about enough, even by progressives.”

The Reform narrative of waste, excess and easy savings unravelled as soon as the party took office.

“It’s easy to be full of this idea that the state has got all this slack in it until you get behind the scenes and see how threadbare it is,” she added.

This pattern is familiar for insurgent parties entering government for the first time, says Nick Turnbull, a lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Manchester.

“As soon as any new or small party gets into government, they face scrutiny and discover there are no easy solutions, especially when council finances are as bad as they are,” he told Big Issue.

It is not always a case of ignorance. Several Reform councillors previously served under Labour or Conservative administrations and would have been aware of the state of council finances when they stood for election.

But electioneering often involves overblown promises, he added, and voters will not necessarily punish Farage’s party for the U-turn.

“I’m not so sure it’s as bad for them as it looks,” Turnbull said. “If they can justify the tax rises, voters may accept it in the same way they accept it from other parties once rhetoric meets reality.”

Travers agrees that Reform’s core support is unlikely to shift dramatically.

“The reasons people choose to vote Reform UK are probably not going to be radically changed by council tax going up nearly as much in Reform councils as it has everywhere else,” he said.

But come 2029, voters should be wary of claims of ‘radical efficiency drives’.

“The area where it would be most likely Reform politicians would say they could make savings at the next election, and that would be in the benefits system. I don’t think they’re going to be doing that with the state pension. So that’s one great chunk ring-fenced.”

“So then you’re in benefits for families and working age people. Well, Labour and the Conservatives are both also committed to exactly the same thing. Reform will claim they are more able to succeed. But that’s when this evidence of what is happening at a local level – and their failures there – becomes more powerful.”

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