Councils controlled by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party have claimed to have saved taxpayers hundreds of millions by cutting government waste.
After taking control of ten council governments in the local elections six months ago, Reform UK established teams modelled on U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash wasteful spending and save the taxpayer money.
On Sunday, the party said that it has so far cut £331 million ($435m) across its ten councils.
Reform UK Deputy Leader and head of the party’s DOGE team, Richard Tice, told the Daily Mail: “Since May, Reform UK councillors have been getting on with the job of cleaning up the mess of past Tory administrations.
“This is only the start of our plans at local government level, later today I will outline our plan for the coming Monday. Reform will fix broken Britain.”
Much of the savings came from cuts to green agenda programmes, such as saving a projected £7.5 million over the next five years in Kent by cancelling the planned transition of government-owned cars to electric vehicles.
Reform said that it will also save tens of millions by simply “undeclaring” a climate emergency in Kent and Durham and thereby ending certain green commitments. Additionally, the party said that it has taken £2 million in planned net zero spending in Leicestershire and repurposed the money towards flood protection projects.
Other savings were achieved by restructuring local debt, resulting in £5.5 million in Kent and £7 million in Lincolnshire. Reform also says that it saved Lincolnshire taxpayers £30 million by renegotiating the council’s IT contract.
Common sense cuts were also made in Lancashire, where the Reform council claims to have saved £3 million by using minibuses rather than taxis to take special needs children to school.
How Reform fared in governing local councils has been seen as a key indicator of the party’s readiness to take the next step and form a national government.
Since the start of the year, the Farage-led party has held a commanding lead in the polls and is projected to secure a commanding victory at the next general election.
If elected as the next governing party in Westminster, Reform has said that it will seek to massively reduce government spending through rolling back the open borders agenda imposed on the country against the will of the voters by both establishment parties.
Farage has said that a Reform government would scrap the Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) status for migrants and replace it with a recurring work visa, meaning that migrants would no longer automatically become eligible for welfare benefits after five years. He has also said that his party would look to restrict benefits to British citizens only. Such measures, the party claims, would save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades.
The populist party has also said that it intends to roll back the green agenda and scrap Net Zero programmes and commitments. In addition to the cost savings, Reform would lift restrictions on traditionally viable forms of energy, such as the gas and oil in the North Sea, to lower the cost of energy for consumers and businesses in a bid to make Britain economically competitive.
Farage said earlier this month that “Reform will not only think differently, Reform will do differently. We will sweep away these outdated conventions, we will become the most pro-business, pro-entrepreneurism government that has been seen in this country in modern times.”
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