Kent ‘down to the bare bones’, says care chief amid council tax rise fears

Reform UK has already started to save money at one of its largest town halls, party insiders have said, amid reports it could be on course to raise council tax.

Nigel Farage’s party ousted the Conservatives at Kent County Council (KCC) in May, with a promise to slash what Mr Farage has called “wasteful spending”.

But the authority’s new adult social care chief Diane Morton has hinted at a 5% rise to KCC’s share of the bill, as she warned that services in the county were already “down to the bare bones”.

Labour’s Polly Billington has accused authority chiefs of making “huge promises about savings, then failing to find any because they don’t know what they’re talking about”.

She claimed Kent was a blueprint for Mr Farage’s UK, if he is able to form a government.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Ms Morton said of a rise in KCC’s share of the tax bill: “I think it’s going to be 5%.”

The councillor said: “We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing.”

Ms Morton added: “We just want more money.”

According to council papers, KCC faces a £27.9 million overspend in the new year, beyond its £1.53 billion budget.

These figures account for the period between April and June this year, either side of the May election.

A Reform UK Kent spokesman said the council has a new “no more borrowing” policy since this year’s poll.

“Our team in KCC have already done some fantastic work to clean up the mess left by the Kent Conservatives and reduce the county council’s debt by £66 million in their first five months in office,” he said.

“The majority of that has come from savings as a result of their Dolge (Department of Local Government Efficiency) unit.

“This includes implementing a ‘no more borrowing’ policy which will reduce their debt by a further £33 million by March 2026, scrapping KCC’s net zero renewable energy programme to save £32 million over four years, and stopping the move to a new council building which has avoided an additional £14 billion of borrowing.”

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper warned that the Dolge unit, based on US president Donald Trump’s Doge (Department of Government Efficiency) in Washington, once headed by X chief Elon Musk, was “nothing but smoke and mirrors”.

Referring also to Reform UK’s former chairman, Ms Cooper said: “Just like his idol Elon Musk, Zia Yusuf has spectacularly failed to deliver what Doge promised.

“It turns out cribbing the notes of dodgy American tech billionaires is no way to run a council.

“Zia Yusuf should personally apologise to the people of Kent for misleading them.”

East Thanet MP Ms Billington said: “Reform’s leader in Kent said that Reform councils were ‘the biggest advert’ for what a Nigel Farage government would look like.

“Well, she’s right.

“Now we know what putting Reform in charge means – huge promises about savings, then failing to find any because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

“That’s what they’re doing in local government and it’s what they’d do to Britain.

“Only Labour can renew Britain by securing our borders and making working people better off.”

KCC leader Linden Kemkaran earlier this year told GB News: “If we do our job efficiently and effectively from day one, that is the biggest advert that we can give to Nigel Farage being our next prime minister.”