Arthur Reynolds is a journalist, a former civil servant and government speechwriter.
On 2 May 2025, Nigel Farage was in a triumphant mood. Reform had won almost 700 seats at the local elections and gained control of 10 councils.
When he marched onto the stage at a Durham social club, he left his party’s faithful, as well as council staff, in no doubt about his plans for local government: “I would advise anybody who’s working for Durham County Council on climate change initiatives or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or… thinks that you go can on working from home, I think you all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly.”
More than a year later, it appears his advice has gone unheeded. In fact, the problem is worse than Farage envisaged. Freedom of Information requests reveal that over the last financial year – 11 months of which the council spent under Reform control – 26 staff at Durham’s Council were allowed to work remotely from overseas.
They did so for a combined total of 113 days, from countries including the United States and Mexico. The council described all these trips as “based on recorded work related travel”. But that seems hard to square with their revelation that in “a single request… [an] individual travelled across multiple countries (Slovenia, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria)”.
Durham isn’t the worst offender.
At Lancashire County Council, over the last financial year and the first quarter of this one, 35 staff spent 652 days between them working abroad in destinations from Australia and India to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
From experience, I know how tightly Whitehall departments control where officials can work abroad and which devices they take into which countries. It is difficult to reconcile that caution with Lancashire allowing staff to work from countries that maintain conspicuously close relationships with Moscow or Beijing.
County councils may not hold state secrets, but their systems hold sensitive information about children in care, vulnerable adults and residents’ finances – and I’d bet good money their security arrangements are not terribly sophisticated.
Farage may not have publicly raised the issue of council staff working abroad, but last year his chief whip, Lee Anderson, used a parliamentary question to urge the government to ban the practice. I’m sure Anderson will be delighted to learn that the Reform-run Nottinghamshire County Council he and his constituents fund permits staff to work from abroad for up to “60 days in any one UK tax year”.
The town hall will not, however, be able to tell him how many staff have done so. In keeping another Reform-run council in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire does not centrally record the number of staff who work from abroad.
Readers may also remember that Anderson was so outraged by England’s footballers taking the knee at Euro 2020, as Black Lives Matter mania swept the nation, that he refused to watch any of their matches. Imagine, then, his horror to discover that staff at Reform-run North Northamptonshire Council held a “Race Equality Week Networking Event” in the council chamber during working hours.
As the council’s FOI response made clear, “attendance at network meetings is part of working time. The aim is to schedule all meetings during core times and in term times to maximise the number of employees that can attend.” This stands in direct contradiction to Reform’s national position.
Only last week, Danny Kruger, the party’s head of preparing for government, took to Substack to claim Whitehall staff networks cost taxpayers more than £200 million a year and declare that meetings “must also always take place outside of working hours”.
Well, Mr Kruger, may I suggest Reform first gets its own house in order. Under their leadership, the aforementioned Lancashire Council said in an FOI response that it makes £20,000 per year available to support People Services–led engagement activity…including the employee equality networks.
It also disclosed that during the last financial year, £1,968.61 was spent on their “Forum of Asian, Black and Ethnically Diverse Employees” Conference – an all day event given the strapline “Steps to Being Proudly Anti-Racist”. I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether this represents a good use of taxpayers’ money.
Back in Anderson’s native Nottinghamshire, I can also reveal that staff networks receive a combined annual budget of £6,336 and in the last financial year staff spent an estimated 414 hours attending network meetings at an estimated cost of
£6,292.80.
Less than two months ago, the council’s “LGBTQ+ network” paid CJ DeBarra, whom they described as a “local Queer Archivist”, £150 to deliver a talk on “the queer history of Nottingham”. The event took place at 14.30 on a Wednesday afternoon; I can only assume Anderson’s invitation was lost in the post.
These are not the only Reform national policies its local administrators appear to reject. In an FOI response, Kent, supposedly the flagship council for Reform’s DOLGE programme, divulged that its “Staff Ethnic Diversity Forum” held a 2025 “Refugee Week Lunch and Learn” event.
The invitation issued to staff is enough to give Zia Yusuf an aneurysm. It urged them to join the event “to hear about how our community in Kent is organised to support and welcome refugees, to reduce stigma and discrimination and ensure fair access to resources.”
Granted, Reform inherited these networks and working arrangements – shamefully, in many cases from Conservative administrations. But as Farage and his comrades are keen to tell the Labour government, a poor inheritance does not make one immune from criticism.
As the party gathers in Birmingham to debate what the first 100 days of a national Reform government could achieve, these disclosures reveal what an abject failure their first 500 days in local government has been. If Burnham calls a snap election, voters across the country ought to take note.