How Reform's Doge units will tackle council waste

Telegraph

02-05-2025

Nigel Farage has pledged to establish a mini-version of Elon Musk's cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in every council under Reform UK control.
The party's leader announced to slash spending as his party surged to success, seizing multiple county councils in the local elections.
'I think every county needs a Doge,' Mr Farage declared on the BBC's Today programme on Friday.
'I think local government has gone under the radar for too long.
'We've seen the high-profile cases of Croydon, of Thurrock where they've gone bankrupt, Birmingham indeed where they've gone bankrupt.'
Mr Farage, whose party has won hundreds of county council seats, vowed to launch a rescue plan modelled on the initiative backed by the Tesla owner, who he met for the first time in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in November.
Mr Musk, who recently announced he is stepping back from his government role, claimed the initiative saved more than $10 billion (£7.5 billion) a week since the US president entered office, but this claim has not been supported by evidence.
Nevertheless, Mr Farage is keen to follow in these footsteps.
'We look at the millions a year being spent in many cases on consultants, we look at money being spent on climate change, on areas that county councils frankly shouldn't even be getting involved in,' he said.
On top of consultants and net zero, Reform's mini-Doge units will also axe diversity roles, working from home, and inefficient pothole schemes.
'So we want to get the auditors in, look at long-term contracts, ask why they're signed up to, for example, pothole providers that aren't doing the business. And a change of culture, no more work from home, increased productivity from staff,' he said.
Among their victories, Reform won majorities on Staffordshire and Lincolnshire county councils, both previously Tory-held, and ended four years of coalition rule in Durham.
Mr Farage said that council staff working on diversity or climate change initiatives should be 'seeking alternative careers' after Reform took control in Durham.
'I would advise anybody who's working for Durham county council on climate change initiatives or diversity, equity and inclusion or ... things that you go on working from home, I think you all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly,' he said.
In February, the government's spending watchdog warned that almost half of councils in England risk falling into bankruptcy.
The National Audit Office said that rising pressure on public services and delays to spending reforms meant town halls were in an 'unsustainable' financial position.
The Telegraph has carried out a deep dive to understand what a Doge under Reform could mean in practice.
Ban on council employees working from home
Calling time on council home-working may be Reform's easiest win – albeit five years late.
Data obtained by The Telegraph in December reveal that 97 per cent of councils still let staff work from home at least one day a week, with nearly a third allowing three days a week, years after lockdown ended.
Local authorities where home-working is rife suffer from low productivity and routinely cut public services, such as public lavatories and free car parks, to cover mounting shortfalls.
Council bosses at Labour-run Rother district council, where more than 95 per cent of employees can work from home for three days a week, recently proposed charging motorists to use free car parks, and has already closed several public lavatories.
Meanwhile, staff at Broxbourne borough council were admonished in Parliament by Lewis Cocking, the Tory MP for Broxbourne, who told a select committee that constituents were being let down by the local authority's working-from-home practices that left staff almost uncontactable.
A joint MIT and UCLA study last year found an 18 per cent productivity drop for home workers compared to office staff. Earlier Stanford research put the decline at 10 to 20 per cent.
But if Reform's Doge units could end working from home, it might not only lift output – it could also directly save money by ending the practice of taxpayers' footing the bill for council workers' utility bills.
Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted by the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) revealed that councils spent nearly £700,000 on staff's home internet expenses between 2019 and 2023.
The Labour and Liberal Democrat-run North Hertfordshire council topped the list with £136,578 paid since 2021, while Newcastle city council spent £101,410 since 2019.
Figures obtained by the campaign group also revealed that 11 councils alone had spent nearly £450,000 on their employees' home heating since 2019.
Diversity and inclusion spending scrapped
Axing equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) schemes is another possible route for Reform to save on council costs, with spending on diversity officers nearing £52 million over three years.
According to the TPA, councils more than doubled their outlay on EDI jobs, rising from £12 million in 2020-21 to nearly £23 million in 2022-23.
Labour-run councils were among the worst offenders, with the bankrupt Birmingham city council hiring an assistant director of community services and equality, diversity & inclusion salary of about £103,000 in 2022.
Calderdale council in West Yorkshire also came under fire after hiring a 'staying well team manager' – one of 40 similar 'wellbeing' roles across 10 authorities, costing taxpayers at least £1,149,441 between them.
Councils have even faced costly legal challenges from staff unwilling to toe the ideological line.
Votes are still being counted for Cambridgeshire county council, which last year was forced to pay £63,000 in compensation and legal costs to Elizabeth Pitt, a social worker, after disciplining her for criticising a colleague's 'gender-fluid' dog.
The dachshund, named Pabllo Vittar after a Brazilian drag queen, attended a council Pride event in a pink tutu to provoke a 'debate about gender'.
Ms Pitt, a lesbian, and her colleague were both reprimanded for criticising this gesture and raising concerns about trans people in women-only spaces.
In West Sussex, Arun district council – which has said it could be bankrupt within five years – spent £398,616 building 14 gender-neutral toilet cubicles in 2021-22.
Following the Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, the council may even need to spend more money undoing this renovation.
Meanwhile, the TPA has also uncovered councils splashing out on LGBT+ rainbow symbolism.
Haringey council spent £22,000 on three rainbow-painted pedestrian crossings. Other schemes in Kingston and Hertfordshire brought the total to £29,000.
A surge in Reform support in Hertfordshire has contributed to the Tories losing control of the county council, with votes still to come in.
Since 2019, more than £230,000 has been spent nationwide on the diversity-themed street furniture – enough, campaigners pointed out, to pay for 109,000 free school meals.
Potholes filled while wasteful repair contracts axed
It has also transpired that Mr Farage's act of planting flowers in a pothole in the lead up to local elections was no mere stunt.
Last month, the Clacton MP joined a man in a pink high-vis vest to fill several craters with blooms – highlighting what he called a 'monstrous' national embarrassment.
'This should embarrass every county council in the country,' Mr Farage said in a widely shared TikTok clip.
But behind the viral video lies a serious policy pitch. Mr Farage has vowed to scrap wasteful pothole repair contracts that are failing motorists.
Earlier this year, The Telegraph laid bare the scale of the crisis with our Fix Our Potholes campaign, which revealed that councils are leaving roads in disrepair at record levels, despite soaring maintenance budgets.
Portsmouth city council, run by the Liberal Democrats, is among the worst performers. Its spending on major roads has nearly tripled over the past decade – up from £3.7 million in 2014-15 to £10.3 million in 2023-24. Yet the condition of its network continues to deteriorate.
In the year to March 2024, the council logged 284 potholes on major roads – a 37.9 per cent rise on the previous year. Despite this, it spent £345,000 per mile – the highest cost in England and seven times the national average of £49,000 per mile.
Mr Farage claimed that Reform's Doge units will audit existing highway repair contracts and demand answers from councils paying above the odds for second-rate work.
End to costly net zero projects
Slashing green initiatives could be another quick victory for Reform's Doge units.
Days after Sir Tony Blair criticised Labour's net zero stance – comments on which the former prime minister later rowed back – Mr Farage has targeted local authority climate schemes, arguing that councils 'shouldn't even be getting involved'. More than 80 per cent of councils have declared climate emergencies, with many pledging to hit net zero by 2050.
If Reform follows through on its pledge to cut these projects, there are plenty of schemes that Mr Farage could end – beginning with adult cycle training.
The TPA found councils have spent more than £2 million teaching adults how to ride bikes since 2021. FoI data show 88 councils funded more than 31,000 lessons in three years – with Wigan, Lambeth, Redbridge and Plymouth among the highest spenders.
Some eco schemes are not only costly, but also impractical. The TPA also found that residents under Blaenau Gwent, Cotswold and Merthyr Tydfil councils have been told to sort waste into no less than 10 separate bins and bags.
Blaenau Gwent, with the UK's highest average band D council tax in 2022-23 (£2,099), requires separate disposal for household refuse; food waste; paper; plastics and tins; glass; cardboard; household batteries; textiles; small electrical items; and green waste bags.
Long-term contracts and consultants audited
Reform is also promising to end the use of costly consultants and audit long-term contracts to ensure that the public is receiving value for money.
Last month, The Telegraph revealed that the bankrupt Labour council at the centre of Birmingham's bin strike chaos spent more than £53 million on external consultants between 2020-21 and 2023-24.
Local authorities are increasingly paying private sector consultancies to do work for them, arguing that they do not have capacity themselves.
In south London, Southwark council spent £31 million on consultants and agency staff in less than 10 months – £6.2 million more than it did over the same period last year.
The advisers were brought in to work on a scheme called 'Southwark 2030' and a school closures programme – despite growing public concern.
In Croydon, where the Conservative minority-led council has issued multiple Section 114 bankruptcy notices, £6 million was spent on three consultancy firms last year. One contract alone cost £1.8 million for less than six months' work.
But Reform may need to look at the high salaries of council's full-time employees if it wants to truly maximise spending.
The TPA found that at least 3,906 council employees received total remuneration of £100,000 or more last year – up 26 per cent on the year before.
Of these, 1,092 earned more than £150,000, and 262 exceeded £200,000 – a record since the campaign group began compiling its 'Town Hall Rich List' in 2007.