Reform UK's broken promises on council tax, cuts and debt

Reform UK's election leaflets and other material posted through our doors and plastered all over social media in the run-up to the local elections last May included promises to cut taxes alongside implied pledges to reduce borrowing, cut charges for services and put an end to the cuts.

Last month Reform UK reneged on each of those pledges when Durham County Council met to set the budget on Wednesday 18 February. Promises it seems are indeed like pie crusts - easily broken.

By way of background, in the months before the council sets its budget and council tax levels each February a series of reports and projections are considered by cabinet members, who at the moment are all members of Reform UK. Those reports are then scrutinised by members of the Corporate Overview & Scrutiny Management Board (COSMB).

At each of those meetings of the Management Board I’ve raised concerns about the tone and the downbeat nature of the cabinet’s Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) and Budget reports. When reading through the narrative it seemed almost as though the council was facing some kind of financial catastrophe from this year's local government finance settlement - and there also appeared to be an alarming sense of naivety from cabinet members when they’ve expressed concern that the council still faced a deficit over the four-year term of the MTFP - despite a record increase in funding from the government.

It is a fact known to everyone involved in local government that no council has ever had its deficit written off as part of an annual local government finance settlement. It is also well known that a council’s Core Spending Power has always been predicated on the assumption that council tax will be raised by the maximum amount permissible to fill any funding gaps (for context, those gaps were more like gaping canyons in recent years because of Tory government cuts that tore apart the fabric of so many local authorities). With that in mind there’s no reason at all why this Reform cabinet should have seen themselves as an exception to the rules that the rest of us have had to follow for many years.

Difficult and unpopular decisions have always been at the heart of budget setting, and Reform members should have known that before they stood for election in May last year. Perhaps they’re realising now the sheer folly of making promises on taxing and spending seven months before they knew what was in next year’s finance settlement!

In reality the settlement the council was awarded by central government this year is an uplift in funding of over £60m over the next four years and that figure is based on the cabinet’s own assumptions as set out in their own budget papers presented to full council. Earlier figures putting the increased sum of funding closer to £170m were based on uplifts since the current government came to office in 2024.

This year's settlement was supplemented by an extra £4m from a carry-over of the Extended Producer Responsibility Grant, an additional £1m from the Triennial Review of the Pension Fund and several other grant uplifts set out in the Reform budget papers. The council was also told in the week leading up to the budget meeting that it had also been handed an additional £3.7m through an uplift in the Recovery Grant to help plug a gap in its CSP.

The benefits of this additional grant in tempering the cabinet’s initial intention to raise council tax by 3.1% shouldn’t be overlooked or underestimated. Reform had planned to put up council tax by an amount actually above the rate of inflation (which was 3% at the time of the budget meeting), so the government's late uplift in funding saved them from that particular embarrassment.

In addition, it should be acknowledged as a significant benefit that the government has also agreed to underwrite 90% of the council’s Dedicated Schools Grant deficit.

If that deficit were to fall onto the council’s balance sheet when the statutory override ends in 2028 the council would have found itself in Section 114 territory - in effect meaning it would be bankrupt by another name, with the possibility that external operatives could be brought in to run the council in place of elected members.

This government lifeline funding alone has removed a potentially existential threat to this council and dozens more like it up and down the country.

In comparison to the previous 14 years of punishing Tory austerity that have systematically stripped £300m out of this council and our communities, this Reform cabinet found itself with a relative embarrassment of riches, alongside a three-year funding settlement, that gave them considerable flexibility, with a number of newfound options when balancing the budget and deciding on council tax demands, service cuts and borrowing levels.

In recognising the significant increase in funding for the council this year the cabinet was handed the freedom to make better choices on behalf of the residents of County Durham who were promised - and understandably expected - a period of respite from the recent generation of senseless, ideologically driven cuts to their public services.

However, the cabinet hasn't taken the right approach. By increasing council tax, ramping up the amount of cuts and introducing an additional debt burden of £150m in borrowing on top of last year’s total they've left themselves open to accusations of misleading the public. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that this was a level of debt Reform explicitly criticised on their leaflets less than a year ago, so pushing it even higher hardly looks like a consistent approach to financial management.

Reform’s promise to cut taxes had already been breached last year when the council dragged many vulnerable families into the council tax regime for the first time by removing the safety net we’d always provided through the Local Council Tax Reduction Scheme.

To make matters worse they have now increased council tax for the rest of us, despite promises made just a few months ago to keep taxes down.

And there’s a salient point to be made here: it is not possible to increase taxes down! And the people of County Durham won’t fall for semantics when the cold, hard numbers are staring them in the face when they pick up their council tax bills from the doormat in a few weeks' time.

In passing this budget the Reform administration has broken another three of its implied election pledges - first by increasing the council’s debt burden, second by increasing fees and charges and finally by making additional cuts to services when other options are available.

In addition, Reform has also taken away in one lump sum all local authority funding from our local town and parish councils - meaning that members of those councils, through no fault of their own, have had to either slash their own services, increase their council tax precept or both.

This is the old Tory tactic of passing the buck down the line. We thought that kind of practice had died out with the Tory party - but it appears to be alive and well in today’s Reform-run councils. We’ll leave others to work out for themselves why that is the case.

For all the reasons set out here the Labour members at the county council couldn't in all conscience support Reform's budget, and we urged all other members across the authority to join us - including Reform’s backbenchers, many of whom up to this point had been putting the blame (and rightly so) on their own cabinet members for any unpopular decisions.

The budget meeting was the perfect opportunity for Reform's backbenchers to demonstrate whether their loyalty lay with their leadership and cabinet or with the people of County Durham who put them where they are today. Unfortunately they made the wrong decision by supporting a budget that breaks several of their own election pledges.

The people who elect us to serve them deserve better than council tax increases, higher fees and charges, further cuts to services, increased borrowing and breaches of promises made to the electors less than a year ago - especially when this council has been handed a lifeline in the form of a significant increase in funding for the first time in a generation, and when the cabinet has the comparative luxury of a three-year funding settlement that gave them a range of alternative options and allowed them valuable flexibility for the first time in setting the budget.

This isn’t what the people wanted. It isn’t what they expected. And it certainly isn’t what they voted for last May. Reform have failed deliver on their promises and in so doing have betrayed the trust placed in them by the people at last year's election. Time will tell if they'll pay the price the next time around.