For years, county councils across England have been quietly signed up to a discretionary refugee resettlement scheme — one which takes homes off the local market for months on end, charges the local taxpayer for the privilege, and leaves residents on housing waiting lists wondering why nothing ever moves. In Lancashire, that ends now. Cabinet Member for Rural Affairs, Environment and Communities Joshua Roberts has announced his intention to withdraw Lancashire County Council from the scheme — and as a Reform UK councillor for Preston East, I could not be prouder of the direction we are taking.

£7 Million a Year — For What, Exactly?

The resettlement scheme that Lancashire inherited from the previous Conservative administration in 2015 has cost the local taxpayer an average of £7 million every single year. That is not a small line item buried in a council budget. That is libraries kept open. That is potholes filled. That is social care for our elderly residents. Instead, it has been quietly absorbed into a national programme that the people of Lancashire never voted for and were never properly consulted on.

The scheme takes hundreds of homes across Lancashire off the market for up to three months at a time, holding them empty at taxpayer expense while paperwork is processed. Empty homes. In a housing crisis. Try explaining that to a young couple in Preston who can't get on the ladder, or a family in Burnley on the council housing list. They cannot, because there is no good explanation. It is a policy that prioritises bureaucratic process over local need.

This Is Not About Refusing Refuge — It Is About Control

Let me be clear, because the political left will inevitably try to twist this. Lancashire is not pulling out of the Homes for Ukraine scheme. That programme — where Lancashire residents have voluntarily opened their own homes to people fleeing Putin's aggression — continues exactly as before. What we are withdrawing from is the discretionary scheme: the one that no council is obliged to take part in, the one that consumes our housing stock and our budget, and the one that the people of Lancashire never asked for.

There is a fundamental difference between charitable, targeted, time-limited support for people fleeing identifiable wars, and an open-ended scheme that hoovers up housing supply year after year with no clear endpoint. Reform UK believes in the former. We do not believe in the latter. The two are not the same and we should stop pretending they are.

What This Means for Lancashire Residents

The practical impact will be felt almost immediately. Homes that were being held empty at council expense will return to the local rental market. The £7 million annual cost will be redirected to services that benefit Lancashire residents directly. Local housing waiting lists — already among the longest in the North West — will face less artificial pressure. And the principle that your county council exists to serve the people who live and pay taxes in this county is reasserted.

This is what people meant when they voted Reform UK into control of Lancashire in May 2025. They did not vote for more of the same. They voted for a council that would actually do something different — and now they are getting it.

A Template for Every Reform Council

The Lancashire announcement should be a template. Across the country, Reform UK now controls 14 county and unitary councils. Every one of them inherited the same patchwork of discretionary schemes — climate pledges, voluntary carbon reporting, costly resettlement obligations — signed up to by previous administrations who treated council taxpayers' money like an ideological piggy bank. Every Reform-controlled council should be asking the same questions Lancashire is asking now. Why are we in this scheme? Who agreed to it? How much does it cost? What do residents get back?

If the honest answers to those questions are "we don't know", "no one in particular", "a lot", and "very little" — then the discretionary scheme should go. That is not radical. That is competent local government.

What Reform UK Would Do Nationally

What Lancashire is doing at county level, Reform UK would do at national level. We would end the assumption that Britain takes on permanent open-ended commitments to schemes that ratchet only ever upwards. We would distinguish between targeted, time-limited humanitarian support and unaccountable bureaucratic creep. And we would put the British taxpayer — the person whose money funds all of this — at the front of the queue, not the back.

Local people first. That is the principle. Lancashire is leading. The rest of the country should follow.