For years the line from the establishment was that Reform UK was all protest and no delivery. Plenty of noise, they said, but what would we actually do if we ran anything? After the 2026 local elections, we started answering that question — in office, with the books open, where it counts.
From Protest to Power
At those elections Reform UK took control of 14 councils and won more than 1,400 council seats, including flagship wins such as Essex and Havering — our first London borough. This was not a few lucky results in safe territory. It was a broad advance across the country, in places that had been run by the old parties for as long as anyone could remember.
Winning is one thing. The real test is what you do the morning after, when the rosettes come off and the budgets land on the desk.
Lowest Tax Rises in the Country
So here is the early verdict. Reform-run councils have delivered some of the lowest average council tax rises in the country. While councils of other colours reached straight for residents' pockets, Reform administrations held the line and asked a different question first: where is the money actually going?
That matters to every family looking at a council tax bill that has climbed remorselessly for years under the old guard. It is the difference between treating residents as a cash machine and treating them as people whose money you are trusted to spend wisely.
Cutting Waste, Not Services
The way you keep tax down without gutting services is by going after waste — the pet projects, the bloated communications departments, the consultancy contracts that deliver nothing a competent officer couldn't. Reform councillors were sent in to challenge the assumption that every line of spending is sacred. Most of it isn't, and residents know it.
None of this is glamorous. It is the unglamorous, line-by-line work of running things properly. But it is exactly the work the established parties stopped doing, because for them spending other people's money was never a problem.
This Is Just the Beginning
Fourteen councils is a foundation, not a ceiling. Every Reform administration that holds taxes down and delivers clean, efficient local government makes the same case to the country: this is what we would do nationally, given the chance. The doubters said we couldn't govern. We're proving, council by council, that we can — and the lowest tax rises in the country are the receipts.