Reform ‘£6k-a-day’ claim

Reform UK has been accused of “back of a fag packet” accountancy after claiming to have saved £6,000 a day since taking control of Derbyshire County Council.

In a Reform UK press release, not issued by the council, the new administration at County Hall claims to have made the saving in its first two weeks in charge.

But other councillors say the real figure is considerably lower, equating to around £3,739.

This is the equivalent of 0.007 per cent of the council’s £770 million budget.

Reform UK has stood by it’s £6,000 a day claim, but does say parts are “planned savings” that are yet to be made.

All of this comes as Reform announces that its “DOGE” (department of government efficiency) unit will start its audit of the county council “in due course”, headed up by 28-year-old tech entrepreneur Nathaniel Fried.

This aims at fulfilling an election manifesto commitment to audit councils to discover waste and find extra savings, copying the approach used by Tesla CEO Elon Musk under USA President Donald Trump.

Musk has now left his role of “DOGE” after 128 days before falling out with President Trump.

Reform pins its claimed savings on three issues:

• Scrapping nine cabinet support member roles – claimed saving of £67,824
• Abolishing the climate change committee (and its associated chair and vice chair roles) – claimed saving of £12,988
• Merging the roles of council chair and civic chair into one role and scrapping one of the allowances – claimed saving of £7,536.

These claimed savings total £88,348, which is £6,310 a day across the first two weeks of Reform’s county council control, equating to 0.01 per cent of the authority’s budget.

However, Reform has not scrapped nine support roles, it has removed eight and retained one for SEND and education, with a top-up salary of £7,536

It has also introduced an additional cabinet member role, with a top-up salary of £20,928, increasing the senior cabinet from nine to 10 councillors.

This brings the savings compared to the previous Conservative cabinet down from the claimed £67,824 to £39,360.

The allowances for the climate change committee chair and vice chair are correct and scrapping them will save £12,988.

Meanwhile, the roles of council chair and civic chair have not and cannot yet be merged, although they are now held by the same person, Cllr Nick Adams, and his salary for each role is not decided by the council administration.

Reform’s first full council meeting on May 21 saw Helen Barrington, the authority’s director of legal and democratic services, clarify that merging the two roles would require a change to the constitution – which has not yet taken place – and that it would be for the independent remuneration committee to consider how that may affect the allowance.

This means that even though Reform intend to make the saving of £7,536 it has not been made yet and cannot be made unless the council’s constitution is amended.

The £7,536 figure also signifies the scrapping of the civic chair allowance, with Cllr Adams retaining the full chair allowance of £10,476, not the merging of both allowances, which will currently see Cllr Adams receive a total extra salary of £18,012.

Cllr Alex Dale, Conservative Group leader, said: “It’s not surprising Reform have got their figures wrong. It really is back of the fag packet stuff from them.

“Clearly any savings are welcome, but ultimately this is a drop in the ocean when you consider that the council has already saved hundreds of millions of pounds in recent years.

“It remains to be seen how effective their new cabinet and committee arrangements will be and so we’ll reserve our judgement on whether it represents good value for money yet.

“But given it equates to less than 7p per Derbyshire resident, they’re going to have to come up with a lot more than that if they want to meet their commitment of reducing council tax.”

Cllr Gez Kinsella, leader of the Green Party group, said: “We are talking about a tiny percentage of money that is claimed to be saved.

“The actual figure is more in the region of about £3,000 per day, amounting to 0.007 per cent.

“The Green Group welcomes any savings but this is not going to save the council from bankruptcy.”

He said there would be consequences for those savings, saying this could see less investment in clean and renewable energy and associated jobs, along with fewer homes gaining improved insulation.

Cllr Kinsella said: “DOGE is a discredited idea. Elon Musk knows it and so does Derbyshire’s Reform leader Alan Graves.

“I hope for the best but I am prepared for the worst with this US-style solution.

“None of the DOGE team have any experience in local government or specifically in children’s services and adult social care, which make up approximately 70 per cent of the council’s total costs.

“We in the Green Group would be looking at making changes to the very services that cost so much, not fiddling around at the edges.”

Cllr Ruth George, leader of the Independent Group, said: “I am pleased that Reform have rolled back from the increase of £66,600 in the special responsibility allowances that the Conservatives made at the start of the last council term.

“However this is a drop in the ocean of the cuts Derbyshire needs to make. There is a huge job to make sure that cost savings are genuine inefficiencies and frontline services are protected.  

“The Conservatives made vast cuts to direct services such as day centres and care homes, whilst paying millions more to the private sector. We don’t want more of the same cuts that cost more.

“We need an administration that is committed to working with all staff and with residents to run our council better.  

“The Independent Group are committed to supporting the new administration to do that and I hope we can find efficiencies as well as run better services.”

Cllr Alan Graves, Reform’s council leader, said: “Just a few weeks in, it’s evident that the previous Conservative administration in Derbyshire had lost control of spending. 

“We were elected on a clear mandate to deliver efficiency savings in order to reinvest in local services and we’re getting on with the job.

“In this short time, we have delivered almost £6,000 of savings every day. 

“This is just the start and we look forward to welcoming the DOGE unit to the county and delivering even more cost savings for Derbyshire.”

When the corrected figures were put to them, a Reform UK Derbyshire spokesman said: “The Conservatives clearly left the council on the brink of bankruptcy. Reform UK has been elected to clean up their mess.

“Instead of taking what we could as the opposition previously did, we have started as we mean to go on. Watch this space.

“The merger of cabinet roles is a planned saving and will be official as soon as possible.

“Whilst the views of the Independent Remuneration Committee will be taken into account, it will in reality be up to the executive to decide the allowance of the new role.”