‘I had to learn very quickly’: Reform UK leader, 19, defends council tax rise

The 19-year-old leader of a Reform-led council has defended proposals for a 3.89% council tax rise, despite senior officers saying anything less than 5% would put the financial viability of the local authority at risk.Financial executives at Warwickshire county council said in December that the proposed increase was a “riskier financial strategy” that would threaten the medium-term sustainability of the local authority.Reform UK’s position on council tax has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks after the party was accused of betraying its election promise to reduce taxes. At least four of the 10 councils the party controls had proposed 5% council tax rises, the maximum permitted by law, at the beginning of this year.George Finch, who has led a minority government at Warwickshire county council since he was appointed leader in July, defended proposals to increase council tax by 3.89%.Finch said: “It’s not an ideal situation. We want low tax, low spend and we were always committed to that. It’s just that national pressures that the government is not solving [such as] Send [special educational needs and disabilities] home-school transport.“The people understand that taxes do have to go up now. I am dead against increasing taxes and I will do as much as I can to lower that bill and that burden.”Council officers told the administration in December that to balance the budget it would have to make further cuts of £4.2m for every 1% reduction from the maximum council tax rise. “Material levels of additional budget reductions would need to be approved,” the report stated.Finch said such officers were expected to “use their professional opinion”, but that it was the “easier” option to implement a 5% council tax increase. “It’s easier to go for 4.99% … we wouldn’t have to change the whole environment of the council. We wouldn’t have to look underneath the backs of the sofas.”Finch said he hoped to make savings through using AI and “transformation savings”, but did not detail on how this would be done.Finch said he had not anticipated the “blockage” he would face after the 2025 local elections. “I had to learn very quickly … the elected members are not fully in control straight away,” he said, adding that council workers and bureaucrats had caused “a lot of blockage”.“The shutters were coming down,” he said. “They realised straight away that George isn’t going anywhere, Reform ain’t going anywhere so they had to start working with us.”Councils have said repeatedly they are facing a dire financial situation, with many struggling to meet their legal duty to balance the books because of rising costs and demand. Most are expected to increase council tax by the maximum amount in April.Reform UK swept to power in the local elections last year, gaining more than 600 seats, and pledged to scale back diversity and climate policies and tackle “waste” and “fraud” through a initiative mirrored on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).However, Finch said the party’s national equivalent – their Department of Local Government Efficiency (Dolge), led by Reform’s head of police, Zia Yusuf, was yet to visit Warwickshire council. Instead, the council launched a “value for money” programme, which the leader said he hoped would bring £70m-£100m of savings over the next four to five years.Challenged on what specific savings had been made at the council by Doge-style cuts, Finch described a £1m investment fund to improve local roads and streets, the purchase of a “fleet of buses and taxis” for home-to-school transport for children with special needs, as well as savings in the procurement of contracts.At Kent county council, Paul Chamberlain, one of the Reform UK cabinet members in charge of Dolge cuts, said councillors had not found any significant waste to cut.Chamberlain told the FT: “We made some assumptions that we would come in here and find some of the craziness that [Musk’s] Doge found in America … and that was wrong, we didn’t find any of that.”The admission raises questions over claims by Nigel Farage, Reform UK’s leader, and Yusuf that there is vast waste and fraud in local government.Councillors will vote on the new budget on Thursday.