Reform councillors cutting school budgets in England campaign in Caerphilly by-election

Martin Shipton

The leader of a Reform-controlled council in England that is being criticised for cutting school budgets less than five months after taking control of the authority came with party colleagues to campaign in the Caerphilly by-election at the weekend.

Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran, a former BBC journalist, posted to X a video featuring her and Reform councillors Sarah Emberson and Brian Collins, also from the English county in the south east of England.

All three were upbeat about the party’s chances of winning the by-election on October 23, although Cllr Emberson mispronounced the word “Senedd”.

But despite winning 55 of the 81 seats up for election in May 2025, Reform has already admitted that the big cuts on wasteful expenditure it promised to make aren’t feasible.

A Reform UK-run council where the party sought to pilot drastic cost-cutting plans is going to have to raise council tax, a cabinet member has admitted.

🚗 Kent hits the road for Caerphilly!

“So much support for @LlyrPowell – people here know that if you want real change in Wales, you vote Reform” ⬇️#VoteReformUK @cllrsarahem @LeaderofKCC pic.twitter.com/xJmaRNR0K0

— The Reform Daily (@ReformDaily_) October 11, 2025

Services at Kent county council were already “down to the bare bones”, said Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care, Diane Morton. It makes Kent the latest local authority controlled by Nigel Farage’s party to signal its intention to raise council tax.

“We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing,” Morton told the Financial Times. “We just want more money.”

Raise council tax

Morton said she believed the local authority would raise council tax by 5% – the maximum permitted – as councils try to honour their legal duty to make sure spending adds up before budgets are set for next year.

Morton’s comments are particularly relevant because in Kent Reform had been seeking to pilot an Elon Musk-style “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit to examine all council spending in areas it controls and cut costs.

Instead, a “UK Doge” team led by Reform’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, appears to have run into difficulty in accessing sensitive council data at Kent and elsewhere.

Polly Billington, the Labour MP for East Thanet in Kent, said: “Reform’s leader in Kent said that Reform councils were ‘the biggest advert’ for what a Nigel Farage government would look like.”

Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the admission of a looming council tax rise in Kent was a “spectacular failure” for which Yusuf must “personally apologise”.

Classroom cuts

Reform UK-run Kent council plans to raid £2 million from schools’ already-squeezed budgets to pay for vital services it can no longer afford, sparking fears of more classroom cuts.

Opponents say the proposals fly in the face of Reform’s pre-election pledges to identify efficiencies and savings through a pilot of its own Elon Musk-style DOGE unit.

National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede told the education news website Schools Week: “They promised that they would reduce waste to make the council more efficient.

“Having failed to identify actual waste, they have resorted to charging schools for council services. This result will be more cuts to Kent’s schools. The NEU doubts this is what voters expected of them”.

Kent has long used council tax cash to cover several services available to its authority-maintained schools.

But documents published by the authority show it decided to launch a review of funding to ensure it “was not now inadvertently advantaging maintained schools over academies”.

County hall officials noted it was “not providing this subsidy” to trust-run primaries and secondaries, which account for around half of its schools and teach two-thirds of its pupils.

The council is now proposing to increase the top slice it takes from its maintained schools by just over £2.2m to pay for services which are currently subsidised.

These include statutory compliance testing, which includes asbestos management and fire and electrical safety, and health and safety advice.

Kent also wants to scrap in-house occupational health services, saving almost £345,000, with schools expected to buy in the support themselves.

But Kebede said Kent schools “have been hard hit by the last 15 years of austerity” and added NEU analysis shows four-fifths of its schools have the equivalent of £126 million less spending power now than in 2010.

Council papers show almost 60 per cent of schools opposed the proposals to top slice budgets for statutory compliance testing and surveys.

A Local Government Association spokesperson said the “financial challenges” faced by councils have forced some to cut services, while “understanding that schools also have significant budgetary pressures”.

“This highlights why it is vital councils are adequately funded in the autumn budget so they can adequately meet their statutory duties for education.”

DOGE team

Reform previously claimed its DOGE team, led by the party’s policy chief Zia Yusuf, had identified over £24,000 had been spent on trampolining, bowling and cinema trips for asylum seekers.

Yusuf said at the time: “Reform will fight for taxpayers.”

A Kent County Council spokesperson said the authority is “under significant financial pressure due to rising costs, increasing demand for services like adult and children’s social care, and limited funding from government and local taxes”.

The spokesperson added: “To set a balanced budget, the council must make savings and focus spending on its top priorities.”

Independent experts such as the Institute for Government have said that Reform-run local councils face “the same brutal arithmetic” as those its political opponents control.

While the party has suggested it could look at spending in areas it regards as wasteful, such as diversity and equality programmes, the IFG said this year that the numbers did not stack up and previous councils that had been tempted to make short-term spending cuts had only stored up problems for the future.

For example, the thinktank said that diverting funding for Kent’s family hub – a network aimed at assisting children and young people, including those with SEN – would be a false economy in terms of the long-term savings it produces, and would also face legal challenges.

Damaging

Lindsay Whittle, who is Plaid Cymru’s candidate in the by-election, said: “I have had two stints totalling nine years as the leader of Caerphilly council and it’s not easy to make cuts without damaging core services. It seems Reform in Kent may be learning that lesson.

“It’s easy when you’re in opposition to shout from the sidelines, but getting into government or running a council is difficult. Even though I’m the leader of the opposition now, I’m prepared to support the controlling Labour group when I think it’s right to do so.”