Councils run by Reform UK have an average of fewer than 0.5 diversity and equality roles each, it has emerged, calling into question the party’s stated aim to save significant sums of money by cutting such jobs.
According to freedom of information requests, across the 10 Reform-run English councils there was a combined 4.56 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs connected to equality and diversity, not including roles required by law such as those for inclusion in education, including for pupils with disabilities.
Even using an assumed average full-time salary of £50,000, cutting all the roles would save the Reform-run councils slightly less than 0.003% of their combined budget.
Reform won more than 670 seats in May’s local elections across England, taking control of 10 councils. Celebrating his party’s success at a rally the next day, Nigel Farage said staff at these councils working on diversity had “all better really be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly”.
Before the elections, Farage and other senior Reform figures repeatedly talked up the amount that could be saved by cutting diversity and inclusion roles, modelling their ambitions on efforts to slash US government diversity initiatives by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” or Doge.
One much-repeated figure was that cutting such schemes in central government could save £7bn a year. Official statistics show the actual amount spent in 2022-23, the last year for which figures were available, was £27m.
Reform UK said the £7bn figure came from sums compiled in 2022 by a rightwing thinktank, Conservative Way Forward. However, this also covered government budgets for any charities and quangos that carried out what the report saw as “woke” activities.
Asked by the BBC shortly after the local elections how much money Reform could save from councils by cutting diversity efforts, the party’s then-chair, Zia Yusuf, was slightly vague. He hinted that some authorities had tried to hide equalities roles by giving them to “other people who have basically that same job but under a different title”.
Last month Yusuf resigned as chair after a row about one of the party’s MPs calling for a ban on burqas. Two days later he returned to Reform as head of its own self-styled “Doge” team intent on finding council savings.
Since then, Yusuf has said little about equalities initiatives, beyond praising Reform-run Durham council for “renaming several key departments to remove references to climate change and equality and inclusion”. Durham has 1.8 full-time-equivalent diversity roles, but said that these were all connected to duties required by law.
In June he said Kent council, also now run by Reform, had spent nearly £90m a year on “a contract for recruitment services”, saying this was 22% of their annual payroll. However, this was not a contract but a framework for a national public sector recruitment system operated by Kent, with critics suggesting this showed Yusuf did not understand procurement systems.
Potential savings within councils are limited by the fact that for most county-level authorities, most of their budget goes on duties mandated by law, including adult social care and children’s services.
Reform UK was contacted for comment. The councils it controls are Derbyshire, Doncaster, Durham, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and West Northamptonshire.
Amanda Hopgood, the Liberal Democrat opposition leader on Durham council, who heads the party’s “Reform watch” group, said: “Reform’s Doge programme makes a mockery of what it is supposed to achieve. They are more concerned with stoking division than actually saving councils any money.”