A New Kind of Local Government Reform?
Simon Goacher, Head of Local Government at national law firm Weightmans, explores the legal and governance challenges facing newly elected Reform UK councils as they transition from opposition to administration across ten local authorities in England.
Last week, there were local elections across England and, in a historic first, Reform UK took control of 10 local authorities, having not previously had a majority on any local authority. And while the results have been announced, the real result is yet to be seen. The question now is what this will mean for those authorities and their legal teams?
Reform UK, having achieved a spectacular result in the local elections now has a clear democratic mandate to implement its policies. However, coming into power doesn’t make it immediately easy to enact policies that you proposed when in opposition, which other political parties can attest to.
A change in administration, whatever the political persuasion, often triggers a period of transition and uncertainty and the position of senior officers who are often seen as having worked closely with the previous administration can be precarious.
At Annual Council, a new leader is appointed, who will then form a new cabinet. Committee appointments also follow, based on the political balance rules – meaning that Reform UK, as the majority party, will hold sway across committees in their councils. The political group meeting will select the group leader who will then inevitably become the leader of the council.
All of this has to be done in a short period, creating pressure for both members and supporting officers. In many of the newly-Reform UK-led councils, a unique complication arises: these is no large, established group of Reform UK councillors with council experience or existing relationships with officers. While some members bring prior experience in ot parties, this steepens the learning curve and could make the transition more of a challenge than would usually be the case.
Like any new administration, Reform UK will want to hit the ground running and implement their policy proposals as quickly as possible. However, this can often take longer than members like and anticipate. There may be a need to consult on new policies, take decisions through scrutiny or full council and obtain detailed financial and legal advice on the implications. There may also be legal challenges to changes which can take time and money to resolve.
The policy pronouncements made by Reform UK before and after the elections suggest that there may be some legal issues for council officers to grapple with if these are to be implemented.
Reform UK has stated that it will:
- Reduce spending in local government via an equivalent of DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency in the USA headed by Elon Musk) in each local authority area
- Stop employees working from home
- Reject any proposals to house asylum seekers in the area of a council they employ
- Remove any employees with Diversity and Inclusion responsibilities in their role and stop all net zero projects.
Implementing these will be far from straightforward to implement. The authorities Reform UK has won control of are all county councils or large unitary authorities. They have seen years of funding cuts whilst delivering complex and expensive services such as adult and children’s social care and special education needs. Those authorities have found it challenging to make ends meet whilst meeting statutory obligations let alone making significant savings. Any savings proposal may need to be consulted on and implementation may be legally challenged.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice stated he would write to all prospective developers in Lincolnshire, where Reform won both the county council and mayoralty elections, to say it will block net zero projects. However, the role of the County Council and the Mayor in the determination of planning applications are constrained to national policy. A blanket stop on all net zero projects is likely to be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in practice.
Reform UK also now controls four unitary authorities responsible for most local planning decisions. However, central government holds the key levers of planning law. Attempts to reject net zero developments without valid planning grounds could face appeals, potentially with costs awarded against the council.
Local authorities also play a very limited role in the asylum process.
It has been suggested that Reform UK run councils will use their planning powers to oppose any use of hotels to house asylum seekers in their areas but a number of councils have in the past sought to restrain use of hotels for asylum seekers under planning powers through injunction applications arguing that doing this amounted to a change of use. However, most of those attempts ultimately failed with refusals to extend initial injunctions granted to Ipswich Borough Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Fenland District Council and Stoke on Trent Council. North Northamptonshire Council was refused an injunction on the first application. Only Great Yarmouth Council was granted a final injunction preventing the use of a hotel to house asylum seekers, but that case turned on the specific facts and policies which applied in that district.
Councils which seek to use these powers to obtain injunctions and fail face potentially significant bills for costs. These cases were also district councils (or unitary authorities exercising district functions) seeking these orders and it is difficult to envisage grounds on which a county council in a two-tier area would be able to use its planning powers to even try to do this.
Reform UK’s plan to remove diversity and inclusion officers will also collide with employment law and many councils don’t even have such posts. Those affected will likely have employment protections, and dismissing them for ideological reasons is likely to be unlawful.
Ending remote work will also pose practical problems. As Unison have already pointed out, most local authorities have been introducing flexible working policies for a number of years and have rationalised their office accommodation. This means that if all staff were required to attend the office, many would struggle to find a desk to work at. Post-COVID, some of the difficulties that local authorities had in recruiting staff in key areas had also been improved by the ability to recruit from a wider area as a result of people being able to work remotely and any move back to the office could seriously affect authorities’ ability to recruit staff in some areas.
Reform UK has also said its councillors won’t attend equality or diversity training, raising questions about compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). Councils could face judicial review challenges if decisions appear to lack proper consideration of impacts on groups with protected characteristics of its decisions.
Six of the ten authorities which Reform UK has gained control of are subject to proposals for local government reorganisation. They will need to work with the districts in their area to submit final proposals for reorganisation by November 2024.
There are interesting and challenging times ahead for Reform UK and the councils under their power as it faces the test of being a party of governance for the first time. The statutory officers and legal teams within authorities will have to work with the new leaders and administrations to support them as they seek to deliver their policy programme in a lawful manner, and this may not be easy to achieve.
Simon Goacher is Head of Local Government at national law firm Weightmans.
