NIGEL Farage says a Reform UK team will help find “significant” savings at Staffordshire County Council.
The party’s national leader made the pledge during a visit to the County Buildings today (3rd June) to meet the authority’s new cabinet following the landslide election victory last month.
Mr Farage spoke about Reform’s plans to send a team of software engineers, data analysts and forensic auditors to comb through the county council’s finances in order to identify savings.
The unit – led by 28-year-old tech entrepreneur Nathaniel Fried – has been labelled DOGE after the controversial Department of Government Efficiency in the United States, previously headed by Elon Musk.
While Mr Farage believes there are significant savings to be made in areas such as climate change policy, he declined to predict how much would be achieved.
The DOGE team, which Reform says will be working for free, have already started at Kent County Council and will be visiting all 10 authorities controlled by Reform over the course of the year.
Mr Farage said:
“Marking your own homework is very difficult. If you ask people who are here already to look at what they’ve done over the past four years, that perhaps puts them in an impossible position.
“Many of these spending decisions are political and to have an independent unit with no particular emotional ties to the county or the administration, is good – and the fact that we’ve got people doing it for free is even better.
“Taxpayers are on the hook for massive consultancy fees at all levels of government. These are very, very bright, entrepreneurial young people, who have done incredibly well in life and want to put something back as a form of public service. We should all be very grateful.
“Great though are our councillors are here in Staffordshire, I’ve yet to meet a tech entrepreneur amongst them or someone who understands how to use AI to deliver very fast results.
“If you want to deeply analyse some of this expenditure it might take a huge team of people six months to do – we believe that these people can bring us significant short cuts.”
By-election cost “unfortunate”
A council by-election is due to be held in Eccleshall and Gnosall following the resignation of Reform councillor Wayne Titley after just two weeks, which is set to cost taxpayers around £27,000.
Mr Farage said this was “unfortunate” but added that the resignation of former Conservative MP Chris Pincher in 2023 had cost taxpayers more.
During his visit to County Buildings, the Reform UK leader was introduced to council leader Cllr Ian Cooper and his cabinet, along with chief executive Pat Flaherty.
He then gave a speech to the wider party group where he urged the councillors to “stick to the plan” that got them elected and keep internal disagreements “behind closed doors”.
Cllr Cooper said the county council was preparing for the arrival of the DOGE team – and gave assurances that its work would align with council rules.
He said:
“I’ve already had conversations with our chief executive and also the county solicitor, because obviously we want to do it properly.
“We don’t just want to come in like a bull in the china shop. We want to have a conversation with the council and Pat has been very receptive to that. So we’re drawing up a set of protocols to make sure everyone is happy with that.
“At some point in time, the DOGE team will interface with the council and ask for the required information. It’s not looking for individual people. We’re looking at departments – what works and what doesn’t work, the granular detail. Without that detail it’s hard to make good business decisions.
“I think a lot of savings will be found. We’ll be coming at it from a different perspective. A lot of our people are from a business background, so they’ll take a fresh look at it.
“We’re not here to frighten people, we’re not here to make people redundant or anything like that. We’re just here to ask how we make better use of the funds available.”
But political opponents have questioned the legality and ethics of the DOGE unit and described it as a “political stunt.
Lib Dem councillor Alex Sandiford said commercially sensitive documents would have to be redacted before being handed over to the team at enormous cost to the council.
He said:
“This will be hugely expensive, totally impractical and ultimately pointless. It’s a distraction tactic.
“Reform’s councillors clearly don’t understand local government and need a headline to cover up the fact they have no serious plan.”
