Kent is one of Reform’s flagship councils. With the local elections coming up I wanted to talk about areas where Refrom control the local authority and their track record.
Kent County Council governs one of the largest populations of any local authority in England. It sits at the top of a two-tier system — county, district, and parish — a structure that is itself about to be swept away and replaced by unitary authorities.
In 2025, Reform UK won outright control. Linden Kemkaran became leader, promising to “put the people of Kent at the heart of everything we do.”
What has followed has been something rather different.
One of the early moves was the creation of a new cabinet role inspired by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — an idea that sounds more at home on social media than in county hall. It is hard to see what this has actually achieved in reality, while the costs of political assistants has risen.
The council has also chosen not to fly the Pride flag, and has questioned the presence of a Ukrainian flag in the chamber. These are the kinds of decisions that generate headlines, and Facebook engagement, but have little to do with the day-to-day running of a large and complex local authority.
There has also been confusion. Claims about removing books with transgender themes from libraries turned out not to be true. More broadly, the administration has struggled to maintain discipline. Reform began with 57 of the 81 seats. Within a year that had fallen to 47, through suspensions, expulsions and defections. At this rate, their majority will not last.
The list of incidents is long and, at times, surreal. Councillors suspended after allegations of misconduct. Others defecting, forming new groupings, or joining entirely different parties. A by-election lost to the Greens after a councillor was imprisoned. Leaked footage of internal meetings showing a leadership style that is, at best, combative.
This is not a stable administration.
And yet, none of this explains how Reform won in the first place.
Kent is fertile ground for the politics Reform has chosen to focus on. Small boats are a visible issue here in a way they are not in most of the country. Asylum accommodation exists, and attracts attention. The council has even attempted to declare an “illegal migration emergency”, although it is not clear what that means in practice.
Because the reality is that councils do not control asylum policy. Voting for a Reform Council doesn’t stop the boats, no matter what putative Reform Councillors might tell pepole.
That has not stopped it becoming the central political issue. Even as small boat crossings fall, the anger remains. The presence of asylum seekers in places like the former military camp at Manston continues to provoke strong reactions — including from those who, in principle, argue that asylum seekers should be housed in camps rather than hotels.
Alongside this sits a broader sense that things are not working.
Brexit has brought delays on the roads. Water infrastructure has shown its fragility, with some areas experiencing outages. The everyday experience of the county — transport, utilities, local services — has become less reliable.
These are not problems the county council can easily solve. But nor are they problems it can ignore.
What Reform promised was a focus on waste and lower council tax. In practice, council tax has risen close to the maximum allowed. The “DOGE” approach to cutting costs hasn’t delivered results and the budget relies on savings that look difficult to achieve. As a form accounting officer for a statutory public body I would never have signed off on a budget with that level of Hail Mary savings, and I have never seen a public body with that level of unspecified savings that didn’t end up in serious financial difficulties.
Given the impending local government reorganisation it looks like Reform are simply hoping that by the time the finances fall apart a new Council will be in place to deal with the problem.
Potholes — one of the most visible markers of local government performance — have increased.
There are areas where the council has identified genuine issues. The cost of transporting SEND pupils, for example, is high and in some cases poorly controlled. That is a real problem. But it is also one that every council in the country is struggling with.
Kent’s deeper challenges are structural.
The county still operates a selective education system, with some of the best schools in the country next door to lots of the worst. The gap in attainment between rich and poor is mirrored in health and employment outcomes. Coastal areas in particular face long-term deprivation.
The Kent Marmot Coastal Region initiative, launched in 2026 in partnership with the Institute of Health Equity, is an attempt to address those underlying inequalities — focusing on employment, housing, education and health across some of the most deprived districts.
It is serious, long-term work.
And it sits uneasily alongside a political strategy that prioritises visibility over delivery. Social media over transformation.
It is hard to see how the current administration’s headline policies — flags, slogans, and symbolic gestures — will make any meaningful impact on these deeper problems.
That, ultimately, is the gap.
Reform has been effective at identifying what makes people angry. It has been much less effective at addressing what is actually wrong.