Reform’s “DOGE” is a superficial response to deep problems in local government

With Donald Trump and Elon Musk tearing chunks out of each other on the other side of the Atlantic, now is perhaps not a good time for Nigel Farage to double down on his promise to roll out DOGE-style units in newly Reform-led local authorities. Whether Trump and Musk kiss and make up or not, we can certainly already describe their efforts to find efficiencies in the US government as a failure – at least insofar as improving the performance of the state goes.

Musk has tried to gut American public administration in what seems more likely to be a data-harvesting exercise alongside a crude attempt to reduce the size of the state. Reform council leaders should be running a mile from this increasingly unpopular state vandalism.  

A DOGE unit will not solve underlying problems in local government

While the DOGE model is no example to follow, the cause of finding efficiencies and improving productivity should not be abandoned. There is essential work to do to improve the performance of both local and national government, and it is to this that Reform should target their efforts.

Improving productivity in services is certainly achievable. But in most cases it will require careful planning, and targeted investment in IT systems and the public estate, not a populist chainsaw.  

Unfortunately, there is little sign of this happening so far. The letter that Reform sent to officers working in Kent County Council (KCC), initiating a review of local authority spending, misunderstands the circumstances facing local authorities. All councils have been caught in an iron triangle of falling funding, rising demand, and legal obligations to deliver services. In that context, every local authority has had to make difficult choices to cut services like libraries, leisure centres, waste collection, or road maintenance to fund acute, demand-led services like adult and children’s social care. There is very little left to cut.

Kent is no exception to this. In late 2022, the then-leaders of KCC and Hampshire County Council (both Conservatives) sent a letter to Rishi Sunak’s government arguing that statutory duties and a lack of funding meant that “there is nowhere left to [cut] in future without severely impacting some of the most vulnerable people in our society”.¹ https://news.kent.gov.uk/articles/county-council-leaders-press-for-urgent-government-action-to-help-avert-financial-crisis  Reform will face the same brutal arithmetic as their predecessors.  

It seems likely that, initially at least, Reform will argue that there is wasteful spending in the head office of KCC, such as diversity and equality programmes. But the numbers do not stack up.  

In 2023/24, KCC spent £985.4m on adult and children’s social care, supporting some of the most vulnerable people in the county. That is 71.6% of total spending. In contrast, spending on head office costs – which is the most likely place that diversity programmes would sit – was £16.0m, just 1.2% of spending.  

Zia Yusuf, whose dramatic resignation as Reform’s chair was followed by his surprise appointment as head of the party’s DOGE unit, argued that residents’ “taxes keep going up, their bin collections keep getting less frequent, potholes remain unfixed, their local services keep getting cut. Reform won a historic victory on a mandate to change this”.¹ https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/reform-reveals-first-council-subject-to-doge-team-02-06-2025/

It is important that political parties address their electoral mandates, and that local government officials respect and abide by democratically legitimate directions from politicians. But that will not resolve the hard trade-offs that such rhetoric implies. Increasing waste collection or road maintenance will likely require cutting services for some of the most vulnerable people in Kent. That could cause serious harm.

Indeed, the only waste the previous head of the DOGE unit in Kent could identify was wasted staff time due to “genuinely ancient” IT systems² https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/outgoing-head-of-reforms-doge-urges-party-to-avoid-musks-mistakes-qcmfhsndn  – a situation that is well known to anyone paying attention to public services. Fixing that could lead to long-term savings, but it will require funding in the short term.  

Any savings may be illusory, and could be illegal

There is an important difference between short-term spending cuts and long-term, sustainable productivity improvements. The former has too often been the pattern in public services since 2010, with local authorities and other agencies cutting services to meet in year spending pressures, only to store up problems for the long-term.  

Reform may decide that an analytical team in the head office of KCC is wasteful spending, or that funding for Kent’s family hub³ https://www.kent.gov.uk/education-and-children/kent-family-hub  should be diverted to bin collections. Both would be false economies. On the first, management and analytical capacity in local authorities – and other services – is vital for effective service delivery. It identifies need, targets support to those who need it most, and enables strategic thinking about how services work over years. On the second, there is strong evidence that investment in early intervention services – such as Sure Start or family hubs – reduces demand for acute services such as healthcare in the future.⁴ https://ifs.org.uk/publications/short-and-medium-term-effects-sure-start-childrens-outcomes  If Reform-led councils cut here to demonstrate some savings, it would likely result more spending in the future.  

There are also legal implications to potential cuts. Local authorities have a raft of statutory duties. They are legally required to deliver a minimum (albeit often poorly defined) level of services. If Reform choose to restrict access to adult social care, or cut library services severely, they may find themselves susceptible to legal challenges from residents who feel they have breached their obligations.  

Perhaps Reform councillors, and the party nationally, will welcome such a challenge – as proof of their virility in cutting spending. That seems to be the model for DOGE in the United States. But it will be residents reliant on social care and children’s services who will feel the sharp cuts of Reform’s chainsaw. Perhaps Donald Trump is already regretting his enthusiastic embrace of Musk and DOGE. Nigel Farage may well come to do the same.