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England's council elections delivered ‘a terrible and challenging set of results' for Labour. That was the verdict of local government secretary Steve Reed last week.While these were the worst local elections results for Labour on record, Reform UK proved that what it pulled off last May – when it seized control of 10 councils, becoming the largest party in four others and winning two mayoral elections – was no anomaly.Speaking to The MJ, Reform's local government efficiency guru Ben Bradley calls the results ‘game- changing in a lot of ways, in a lot of places'.Bradley is a former MP and ex-Conservative leader of Nottinghamshire CC. He took a break from politics before throwing in his lot with Reform last December and embracing a new role as head of local government action in the party's Elon-Musk inspired Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).Politics will not be the same again, he asserts.Reform's shake-up of local politics is part of what Duncan Flynn, senior director, Home Counties, at Cratus Group has described in The MJ as an ‘age of electoral insecurity' in a new era of five-party politics. Following 7 May more than 45% of councils lack an overall controlling group.Bradley's party now leads 32 councils. That includes 24 where they have outright majorities and eight where the party holds a minority administration or is the largest party in a hung council. There are now a total of 2,357 Reform councillors.Bradley echoes deputy party leader Richard Tice in saying there would be no ‘formal coalitions' with other parties. Dramatic all-out elections in Birmingham City Council have left the 101-seat council in ‘no overall control' with, at the time of writing, Reform's local group leader saying there is ‘no viable route' for it to take control of the council.The North and the Midlands saw sweeping swings to Reform, with notable gains from Labour including Wakefield, Sandwell, Barnsley and Sunderland.Bradley namechecks Bradford as the result that ‘really surprised' him, with the party gaining the most seats and likely to run it through a minority administration.Reform is now firmly at the forefront of a crucial set of councils at the centre of local government reorganisation (LGR). It gained control Essex CC, Suffolk CC, Thurrock Council, is expected to run Norfolk CC as a minority administration and is the largest party on East Sussex CC. Things are likely to get bumpy for the LGR programme. Essex CC and Suffolk CC have both announced plans for legal action against reorganisation, and the party's new leader at Norfolk says it is committed to taking the same step if it forms the new administration.Bradley says the party is ‘absolutely prepared to be awkward' on LGR and agrees the judicial review option would be open to any Reform-controlled councils impacted by LGR plans already decided on by Government or that will land in the next swathe of decisions still due to emerge this summer.Bradley adds: ‘I think [party leader] Nigel Farage has been clear over the campaign that this version of LGR does not work for all sorts of reasons. Financially, it makes no sense.'Reform has said it found savings of £700m at the councils it took over a year ago and Bradley says the push to slash spending at councils will continue.He points to leader of Reform UK-led Kent CC Cllr Linden Kemkaran's focus on cutting the cost of social care contracts with private sector through renegotiation, ‘and the savings that they've made there'.Kemkaran is also on record as saying that the council has ‘knocked a few million' off the costs of the home-to-school transport budget by improving the routes taxis and buses take to pick up children.How will efficiencies be delivered on a wider scale across councils run by his party? 'We've got areas, and Lancashire is a good case, with some real professional expertise in the cabinet. We've got Leicestershire, where they basically said: "Look, Newton [Consulting] come in, tell us how to do this, and give us the examples and make the savings and we'll see what works. I'm not averse to consultants as a principle, if it delivers results.'Bradley says that around the party there are ‘supportive volunteers, people with real professional backgrounds, what might have been referred to as DOGE, but actually some of those people are able to offer expert advice, whether they are legal, finance or business people who are prepared to help'.The road ahead could be difficult, with Bradley saying in March that Worcestershire CC's 9% council tax rise had been used to ‘bash us over the head'.But he says the overall assessment when speaking to council chief executive is that relationships between officers and the party's councillors are ‘good'.He adds: ‘Some officers have said it's been a breath of fresh air and that "we've been working in a certain way for a long time, and this proper kind of scrutiny and attention to detail is good and right."‘In places where it hasn't worked, we're working with those leaders and those officers to manage that, but it's very much in the minority. Our advice that has gone out to all the new leaders talks about the importance of the relationship with officers.'His advice to this massive new intake of councillors is to ‘not feel like you've got to rush into things and to do the inductions, do the training, get to grips with the basics'.Bradley concludes that the bigger the scale of change ‘the more it presents practical challenges. But these are good problems to have'.

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POLICY AND POLITICS

Reform's good local government problems

By Ann McGauran | 20 May 2026

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