REFORM UK caused a political earthquake when they took over Staffordshire County Council in this month’s local elections.
Nigel Farage’s party took 49 of the authority’s 62 seats, ending 16 years of Conservative rule in Staffordshire, with gains at both the Tories’ and Labour’s expense.
No doubt many Reform voters were motivated by disaffection with both the two main parties nationally, along with concerns over national issues such as immigration.
But Mr Farage and many of his new councillors have spoken of the need to cut “wasteful spending” in local government, citing areas such as climate change policy and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Reform have blamed such expenditure for rising council tax bills and poorer performance in areas like road repairs.
The ruling Reform group on Staffordshire County Council has yet to set out its plans in detail, but here are some of the key issues they will have in their in-box.
Local government reorganisation
The single biggest issue that most councils will be dealing with over the next few years will be local government reorganisation.
At the moment, local services in Staffordshire are split between the county council and the eight districts. But the Labour Government wants to abolish two-tier councils and replace them with a single layer of unitary authorities, which ministers believe are more efficient and effective.
Staffordshire’s previous Conservative leadership, while opposing the principle of reorganisation, favoured a county unitary model which would see the county and district councils effectively merged, with Stoke-on-Trent remaining separate.
An alternative plan would see Staffordshire divided between northern and southern unitaries. These interim proposals were submitted by the Staffordshire councils – including Lichfield District Council – in March, with feedback expected from Government soon.
Councils will then be expected to submit final proposals by November.
As the ruling party at the county council, Reform will now be a key player in the reorganisation in Staffordshire. Mr Farage has previously spoken of his scepticism of local government reorganisation and his opposition to counties being abolished.
But even if Staffordshire’s Reform group opposes what is happening, it is unlikely they will be able to stop the reorganisation, which could happen in 2028 at the earliest.
Social care
Care services for vulnerable adults and children now account for the lion’s share of local government spending.
Nearly 70p out of every pound that Staffordshire residents pay in council tax goes towards social care, leaving less money available for other services.
This year the county council has allocated an extra £21.2million towards adult social care, which will help providers meet the cost of the increased minimum wage and higher National Insurance contributions.
But local government leaders, including those in Staffordshire, have long been calling on the Government to put social care on a more sustainable financial footing nationally.
They say that extra funding has not been enough to meet demand, while the 2% social care council tax precept is not considered a long-term solution.
In the absence of a national solution, like the Tories before them Reform will have to find a way of ensuring the county council fulfils its statutory duties on social care with the limited resources available.
Potholes
Few local issues get people irate like the state of Staffordshire’s roads.
While social care is clearly a bigger area of spend, potholes are a much more visible sign of a council’s failure to do its job.
Earlier this year the county council’s previous Conservative administration announced that a further £45million would be invested in maintaining and improving Staffordshire’s highways over the next three years, along with a further £15million being ploughed into the Fixing More Roads scheme which repaired 36,000 potholes last year.
But while council leaders spoke of road maintenance work going “from strength to strength”, many people choose to trust the evidence of their own eyes when it comes to potholes.
Mr Farage clearly understood the importance of road repairs as an election issue when he posed with a Pothole Pro machine on a visit to JCB’s headquarters during the campaign.
Now that they are in power at the county council, Reform will have to quickly deliver on their promises to improve the situation on Staffordshire’s roads, or else the anger that voters feel will soon be directed at them.
Special education
Staffordshire, along with many other councils, is facing a ticking time bomb when it comes to spending on special education.
The simple truth is that local authorities are not getting enough funding from central government to meet the rocketing cost of SEND.
Staffordshire’s overspend on its high needs block (HNB) was expected to reach £55million at the end of 2024-25 – and without mitigation this deficit is projected to rise to a staggering £350million by the end of the decade.
The Government has put in place a statutory override which allows councils to keep their HNB deficit separate to the main revenue budget, which normally has to be balanced each year.
But this override is due to come to an end next year.
While this is a national problem which will require a national solution, Staffordshire’s new Reform leaders cannot afford to overlook this vital issue.
During the election Farage wrote to local residents: “It is clear that the Tory-run council in Staffordshire has wasted vast amounts of your taxpayer money, running up huge debts, and keep cutting services to you.”
But on BBC Politics Midlands County Councillor and Staffordshire Coordinator for Reform, Martin Murray, nodded vigorously when former Leader, Phillip Atkins, was saying they were a, “well managed, well run and financially stable County Council.”
Their candidates also said they were going to stop solar farms and have more bin collections – even though they don’t have those powers. So yes, I hope Lichfield Live will keep residents informed of what they will actually do in power.
May I shed some insight onto what local politicians do? They take a business upon a ‘gateway’ site, demolish it, plan some pie-in-the-sky facility which falls through, then they put a larger wooden billboard around it. The perpetrators run away and live happily ever after. Some time later a perfectly serviceable car-park is demolished and in its stead a bleak open space is created, perhaps using Banksy’s Dismaland as inspiration. Then the former business is turned into a temporary car-park as there is no longer space anywhere for people to park. In the meantime the ‘art-house’ cinema, which is yet to materialise is a voracious money-pit. I expect Tom, Dick & Harry have already been planned and fully completed for the latest cohort of local politicos to run away and live happily ever after.
@Dishy Des…Yours is an exact description of the history of the Friasgate Site. A sad tale of waste, lies and mismanagement. And yes the perpetrators disappear into the background with no sense of culpability. It has finished as yet another housing development, loss of a much needed car park, and a business venture that puts great financial onus on the council. We do not have council or leaders worthy of the name, and certainly no concern as to what they are passing on to posterity.
@Philip / @Des – Certainly won’t attempt to defend some of the historical decisions re: Friarsgate, but equally I won’t shy away from my part in the decisions from 2019 onwards when I was elected Leader.
I took the decisions to break the site up into smaller component parts to get things moving, to put a design code in place to ensure anything built would take an architectural form which we as residents could be proud of, to drastically reduce the proposed retail units (which would have killed the rest of the city) and to encourage the private sector to develop the site rather than the council trying again and again and failing.
We will now have a cinema coming to Lichfield, a genuinely high-quality housing development on a brownfield site opposite the train station, a £multi-million cheque back to LDC to cover it’s outlay, as well as ongoing rental yield, a linear park to improve the “welcome” to the city from the train station, and 100’s of jobs – and I’ll not be disappearing!
@Doug: You are only prepared to own decisions made about Friarsgate since 2019, but they’re some of the worst. Demolishing a perfectly sound multi-storey car park, that was sorely needed in a city which at peak times desperately lacks parking, also putting at risk the viability of the Garrick Theatre in the process. Planning to move an ideally placed and busy bus station to a site that is far too small in order to sell off the land to private developers. The more recent decisions about Friarsgate smack of a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing something after well over a decade of dithering, but even that dithering was preferable to what is happening now. At least we still had a car park and a decent sized bus station.
That’s one opinion Cllr Pullen but most residents have another. You wasted money refurbishing the multi storey before then demolishing some years later. You had the opportunity to turn one of the original cinemas back into its former glory in the old Kwik Save building. This would have been a fantastic art deco cinema draw for tourists. However you said at the time despite support from residents that the Council didn’t get involved in business ventures. Really? Funding a failing business chain that we can see through but you can’t! Then we have the leisure centre debacle in which you take green parkland away from residents and inflict misery on them with not a care. The list is endless but unfortunately you never listen to residents unless it suits yourselves.