Reform UK leader Nigel Farage writes for the Echo

Durham Council, and in fact every council across the country, have been run into the ground by Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem administrations.

These local authorities, responsible for the day-to-day administration of basic necessities that all of us rely on, are fundamentally and institutionally broken.

From managing schools to providing social care, emptying your bins to filling in potholes, these are services that many of us have probably taken for granted for years. But I’m sure, like me, you’re noticing that things have taken a nosedive.

Roads looking like the surface of the moon, bins overflowing, and schools struggling – whilst your council tax continues to soar. In Durham, council tax has increased by almost 23% in just five years. Local residents from Barnard Castle to Chester-le-Street are paying more for less.

Put simply: you’re being ripped off.

Nigel Farage at a Reform conference in Houghton le Spring, County Durham, earlier this year (Image: SARAH CALDECOTT)

Over the past few months, we in Reform have been hard at work issuing thousands of Freedom of Information requests to find out exactly what’s going on and why our councils are so broken. The findings have shocked us.

Decades of mismanagement, hundreds of millions of pounds of wasted taxpayers’ money, CEOs on salaries magnitudes higher than the British Prime Minister, eye-watering debts spiralling out of control – it’s all there in black and white.

Durham Council’s CEO earns over £213,000 a year – £46,000 more than the Prime Minister – to oversee this mess. 

Conservative and Lib Dem maladministration has run up over £409 million worth of debt. That’s costing local people more than £46,000 every single day just in interest payments.

It’s no wonder when the council spent over £40,000 to send four executive staff to the South of France, £160,000 in translation costs over the past two years, and over £100,000 on less than a mile of cycle lane bollards.

Or – try this on for size – almost £16 million on external training and consultants.

The list goes on. And this is all funded by you: the taxpayer.

What’s even more astonishing is that many of these councillors will end up becoming Members of Parliament and government ministers. It’s no wonder our country is in the mess it’s in.

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We’ve diagnosed the problem. Your council is wasting unjustifiable sums on salaries, vanity projects and pointless schemes. Reform councillors entering County Hall on May 2 will be on a mission to stop this bleeding from day one. Then we can begin the treatment and get Durham back on track.

So the election for Durham County Council has come at the perfect time for local people. In Reform UK you finally have an alternative you can vote for that will do things differently, cut the waste and get your public services in order.

Durham is broken. Reform will fix it.