At Durham County Council's Annual General Meeting held in county hall yesterday (Wednesday 20 May 2026) the Reform UK administration in control of the council asked members to agree to appoint two political assistants for a minimum three years at a total cost to the County Durham taxpayer of £256,000 (£85,300 over 3 years).
The papers for the meeting set out the basis for the administration's
plan to pay for political advisors to work for and on behalf of the two biggest
political parties on the council, currently Reform UK and the Lib Dems. The
assistants will be nominated, selected and appointed by the political parties
themselves and will work to the orders of the leader of that political group.
In other words, you are going to pay through the nose for someone to do the
jobs of the councillors you voted into office at the local elections last year
- councillors who are already receiving an allowance for their role as local
representatives!
Political Assistants will be employed to serve the political party that
handed them the job. And you the taxpayer gets to stump up £85,300 every year
for the next three year term of this Reform UK administration - that's a
whopping £256,000 in total.
That's bad enough in itself, especially after we were told just a couple
of months ago that there was no money to spare to help some of the most
vulnerable families across the county struggling with rising council tax
bills. But to make matters worse there's nothing in the council's
constitution to provide for these posts and there's nothing in the budget to
pay for them.
Instead, senior managers at the council will now be told to go away and
find £256,00 down the back of a couch somewhere - normally code for further
service cuts to pay for something that Reform UK kept under wraps when they
were on the doorsteps asking for your vote during the election campaign last
May. Make no mistake, someone's been working hard behind the scenes to change
everything around for the sole benefit of Reform UK members on Durham County
Council.
In effect the proposal amounts to the creation of two-tier council
representation at DCC for the first time ever, with Reform UK dipping into the
pockets and purses of the taxpaying public to give themselves a significant
advantage over the smaller parties. Someone more cynical than me might be
tempted to call that political interference.
To be clear, over the years there have been thousands of local
councillors elected to public office to work on behalf of their communities,
and for decades they've managed to do all that without having to hire someone
at public expense to give them a helping hand. Although the allowance that
councillors receive isn’t a salary it’s been just about sufficient to enable
members to carry out their public duties without external assistance. That is
until now.
There's something happening in local government lately that's never
happened before. Unelected officials are being selected and appointed by political
parties to work for those same political parties and no one else –
all at the taxpayers’ expense. That is unprecedented here in County
Durham.
As a County Durham taxpayer, if you're ok with Reform UK raiding the
public purse to pay for their own Political Assistant, you've got nothing to
fear and nothing to lose. If on the other hand you're concerned that you're paying
through the nose to employ someone to promote and expand the influence of a
specific political party at taxpayers’ expense you need to watch out for how
your local councillor voted on Wednesday morning.
It goes without saying that on behalf of the County Durham Labour Group
I spoke against this ill-considered measure at yesterday's council meeting, and I
was supported by almost every member of the other political groups. Only Reform
UK members voted in favour - although it should be noted that over a dozen of
their members stayed away yesterday rather than obey their party whip.
I've published below a transcript of the notes I used in objecting to
Reform UK's proposal. My comments are based on the papers tabled at
yesterday's council meeting: Political Assistants final Council
report.pdf
When this matter was first tabled at the Constitution Working Group a
few weeks ago I raised my objections – mainly on principle because I could see
straight away that using taxpayers’ money to fund party political posts is
impossible to justify.
At the time I warned other members of the CWG that this wouldn’t sit
well with members of the public – and now that we’ve seen the actual costs of
the proposal I’m even more convinced that voicing my concerns then was the
right thing to do.
Just a few months ago we were told there was no money to maintain a
safety net to protect vulnerable families struggling with council tax demands -
yet now we’re being asked to support a proposal that’s going to cost the
taxpayers of County Durham £85k a year – that’s over a quarter of a million
pounds over the next 3 years.
To make matters worse, there’s nothing in the constitution to provide
for these posts and there’s nothing in the budget to pay for them. So in effect
we’re asking officers to go away and find £85,000 down the back of the couch to
fund something that was never mentioned during the elections last year – and
something that no one even knew about until a few days ago.
I know there are quite a few members from all the parties struggling with this one, so my advice is to put yourself in the place of the people who sent you here. And ask yourself if they’d be comfortable stumping up for a party-appointed post that answers to the party alone, and has no positive effect whatsoever in directly improving public services.
If local government is to work properly on behalf of the people - in
financial terms - we need to look at this from a different angle. In essence,
taxpayers create a shared resource through council tax. That pool of money
is meant to provide services collectively that individuals otherwise couldn’t
afford to pay for – whether it’s for social care services, highways, education
or whatever - that money is there to serve our residents and communities.
But what we have here is a political party dipping into that pool of taxpayers’ money to pay for a party-political post that serves only the party - on the party’s own terms and with no direct benefit to the people paying for it. That cannot be right. And if you look at it from that perspective it’s impossible to justify.
If you’re happy for taxpayers to stump up to fund jobs for party political benefit - and you’re then prepared to face the consequences - by all means vote for this proposal. But be warned. Things like this have a habit of coming back to haunt you.
We won’t support this proposal - simply because it’s impossible to justify - and I urge members to think about exactly what you’re asking the taxpayers of County Durham to do this morning. Take a look at this from the perspective of those taxpayers, apply some common sense - and join with us in opposing what our residents will see as a blatant misuse of public money for party political purposes.
