Reform UK in council power: the first twelve months
Reform UK won 677 council seats at the May 2025 local elections, taking control of ten English councils outright. It was the largest single intake by any political party in modern English local government. The mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire and a Reform-controlled Lincolnshire County Council were part of that wave. This piece is a public-record account of what the first twelve months of that intake has produced, sourced to primary press, council documents, and Reform UK's own statements.
I am writing this as a Greater Lincolnshire constituent and the East Lindsey Green Party's named communications officer. The party's local communications is done as a three-person team; the named-officer title is procedural rather than hierarchical. The companion piece on the Greater Lincolnshire mayor and the candidate vetting record is at /lincolnshire-mayor/. The Doncaster-specific deep-dive on the £57m airport lease scandal is at /doncaster-airport/. This piece touches on politically contested ground while the author has a disclosed political affiliation; the framing is deliberately narrow so that readers can weigh the primary sources themselves rather than rely on my characterisation of them.
A note on scope. I have only included items where there is primary-source documentation. The cumulative picture is the point of the piece, not any individual case taken in isolation. Where allegations have been denied or where Reform has acted without making the underlying conduct public, the language reflects that.
Defections out of Reform
The standard public reference for changes of party affiliation among UK councillors is the running tracker maintained by Mark Pack. As of late April 2026, the tracker records 74 Reform UK councillors having departed the party since the May 2025 elections.
The destinations break across most of the political spectrum. The largest single share has gone to Restore Britain, the new party founded by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe in February 2026 after his split with Reform UK. A coordinated defection of seven Kent county councillors took place on 17 February 2026: Maxine Fothergill, Robert Ford, Paul Thomas, Dean Burns, Isabella Kemp, Brian Black and Oliver Bradshaw. Several of that group had already been suspended or expelled from Reform before defecting. Further Reform-to-Restore-Britain defections have followed across multiple councils.
Smaller numbers of departures have gone to the Conservatives, to the Greens, to the Liberal Democrats, to the Advance UK breakaway founded by Donna Edmunds, have become independents, or have resigned their seats outright without joining another party.
Two pattern observations follow from the destination data. First, Reform's right flank is fracturing under Lowe rather than the centre-left absorbing dissatisfied Reform voters, which is the more politically consequential development because it suggests the pressure on Reform's coalition is coming from further right rather than from the centre. Second, the rate of departures is high enough that Reform's net council position depends on continuing to absorb new defections in from other parties (chiefly former Conservatives) faster than its own councillors leave.
Convictions and expulsions
The most serious case is that of former Cliftonville Kent County Councillor Daniel Taylor, who was sentenced at Margate Magistrates' Court on 20 February 2026 to twelve months in prison after admitting controlling and coercive behaviour towards his wife. Taylor was charged with three offences: threatening to kill his wife, sending an offensive or menacing message, and engaging in controlling or coercive behaviour from January 2016 to July 2025. He had won his seat on a Reform ticket on 1 May 2025, was suspended after his arrest in June 2025, sat as an Independent until pleading guilty on 9 January 2026, and was expelled by Reform after the guilty plea. The seat triggered a by-election, which was won by the Green Party.
Three further Kent County councillors, Brian Black, Paul Thomas and Oliver Bradshaw, were expelled by Reform on 28 October 2025 following a meeting called at the request of KCC group leader Linden Kemkaran. Reform's published statement said the three "have shown a pattern of dishonest and deceptive behaviour which the party will not tolerate from its elected officials". The party did not specify the underlying conduct. The three subsequently defected to Restore Britain in February 2026.
A Reform Kent county councillor, Robert Ford, was suspended in October 2025 amid complaints from several women. The allegations were denied. Cllr Ford defected to Restore Britain alongside the 17 February group.
Several other councillors have been expelled or suspended on grounds related to alleged racism or offensive content, including John Allen (Northumberland, suspended over offensive posts then expelled), Ian Cooper (Staffordshire council leader, expelled following racism accusations), and Robert Bloom (North Northamptonshire, resigned seat following racism allegations). The detail of the underlying material has in some cases not been published, and Reform has not generally provided specific descriptions of the conduct it has acted on.
Conflicts of interest
The named individual case is that of Cllr David Knight, City of Doncaster Council. In the autumn of 2025, Cllr Knight and Cllr Rachel Reed (also Reform, then deputy leader of the council) registered a private company called Fly Doncaster (Auxiliary Services) Ltd. The company name was substantially similar to a company the council itself was preparing to register for the operation of the planned reopened Doncaster Sheffield Airport, which the council was funding through a £57m borrowing facility approved in November 2025. Cllr Knight at the time sat on the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee, the body responsible for scrutinising the airport reopening plans.
Cllr Knight was removed from the OSMC and from his chairing role on the Health and Adult Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Panel, and lost the Reform whip in October 2025. Cllr Reed resigned as deputy council leader but remained a Reform councillor, and resigned her directorship at Fly Doncaster (Auxiliary Services). The Reform UK group leader Cllr Guy Aston stated that Cllr Knight's decision to establish the company without consultation had caused reputational damage and placed the group's work under unnecessary strain.
On 18 December 2025 Cllr Knight was reinstated to the Reform UK group on the City of Doncaster Council website "pending a formal review". At the time of writing, Fly Doncaster (Auxiliary Services) Ltd remains registered as active on Companies House.
Cllr Knight has been the subject of a separate controversy involving public comments about children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), in which he suggested children were "trained to comply" with SEND assessment criteria by their parents. His private transport company, which had been contracted to provide school taxis, ended its contract following the comments.
Policy and governance decisions
Two specific policy decisions are recorded here in summary. Both have full treatment in companion pieces.
The first is Lincolnshire County Council's decision to terminate its £133,000-a-year Edge of Care contract with Safe Families on 30 June 2026. Safe Families is a Christian volunteer charity that supports families whose children are at risk of going into care. The Conservative group leader at LCC described the decision as "indefensible". Full treatment of this decision and its political context is in the Greater Lincolnshire mayor piece at /lincolnshire-mayor/.
The second is the Doncaster Sheffield Airport lease scandal. In November 2025 City of Doncaster Council approved a £57m borrowing facility to fund the reopening of the airport. In January 2026 The Yorkshire Post obtained a copy of the underlying lease, which contained terms councillors had not been shown when they approved the borrowing. The terms include a £5m annual base rent payable to Peel Group, a potential 20% turnover rent on top of the base rent, and break clauses favouring Peel if passenger targets are not met. Reform and Conservative councillors are now pressing to rescind the £57m facility at an extraordinary council meeting on 11 May 2026. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has publicly criticised Reform for campaigning on airport reopening then trying to kill the project. Full treatment is at /doncaster-airport/.
Active monitoring of City of Doncaster Council
In November 2025, City of Doncaster Council's Chief Executive Damian Allen contacted the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government over governance concerns following the May 2025 local elections. The council documents describe the Reform majority in the council chamber alongside the Labour mayoralty (Mayor Ros Jones) as having "placed particular demands" on governance and on working relationships between elected members and officers. The MHCLG report places Doncaster Council under "active monitoring", which the report distinguishes from formal intervention but characterises as "structured engagement" reflecting "a sufficiently serious position".
Active monitoring of an English council by central government is a relatively rare administrative status. Doncaster's previous experience of formal intervention dates to 2010, from which the council was led out by Mayor Jones a year early.
The pattern
The cumulative picture is that the same vetting culture which produced the candidate-record items documented in the Greater Lincolnshire mayor piece is also producing a pattern of post-election conduct that does not look like the pattern produced by major parties with established candidate-screening processes. Convictions, suspensions, expulsions, conflicts of interest, defections at scale, and a council placed under government monitoring within twelve months of taking power do not, taken individually, prove that any one councillor was wrongly selected. Taken cumulatively, they argue that the screening process which produced the slate as a whole was not adequate to the task of selecting people fit for the offices Reform's candidates were standing for.
That is the substantive concern that the dossier as a whole is documenting. Whether the political response to it is a tightening of vetting standards across all parties, a particular response from Reform itself, or some other change, is for the public and the press to weigh.