The Truth About Reform UK's Durham County Council Financial 'Black Hole'

By Cllr Darren Grimes, Deputy Leader of Durham County Council

Lefty blog’s misleading graphic

Wheelchairs Over Windmills: The Truth About Durham’s Finances

The accusation that the Reform UK administration in Durham has engaged in “financial vandalism” is not just a falsehood; it is a grotesque inversion of reality. It is a smokescreen designed to hide the uncomfortable truth: that for years, the previous Liberal Democrat administration prioritised virtue-signalling over solvency, and that this Labour Government is now prioritising foreign nationals over the people of County Durham.

Let us look at the cold, hard data—numbers that do not care about political narratives or a lefty blog’s misleading graphic.

The Myth of “Overborrowing”

Critics claim we have lost control of the finances. The ledger proves the opposite. Upon taking office, we did not turn on the spending taps; we turned them off. Through a forensic Capital Programme Review conducted in June and July, we stripped out uncosted fantasies and reduced the council’s borrowing requirement by £21.3 million.

This is the very definition of prudent financial stewardship. We looked at the credit card bill we inherited, saw it was unsustainable, and cut it up after the electorate had divorced the partner committing the spending. We are not kicking decisions down the road like the last lot; we are taking the heat now to prevent insolvency later. This is where I was born, I will make whatever decisions are necessary to turn the tide.

Binning the Gimmicks

We made the unapologetic decision to rescind the previous administration’s “Climate Emergency” declaration. This was not ideological; it was an act of financial survival against viewing virtue as more important than balancing the books. We cancelled the solar panel scheme on council buildings—a “green” vanity project that tied up capital we simply do not have with paybacks as long as 17 years, by which point only the late Mystic Meg could tell you if the buildings would still be standing.

We halted the expensive transition to an electric vehicle fleet, including an eye-watering electric bin line-up that would make Mike Ashley’s austerity measures Newcastle United squad look excessive.

Why? Because when you are facing a £18.2 million surge in Children’s Social Care costs in just two months, you do not buy electric bin vans that cannot get down one street without needing a plug socket; you pay for foster placements. We chose to declare a “Care Emergency” because we believe in wheelchairs over windmills. We prioritised the statutory care of our residents over the eco-posturing of the Liberal Democrats.

Speaking Of The Statutory Straitjacket…

The so-called “black hole” in our budget is not of our making. It is driven entirely by statutory services we are legally required to provide. The explosion in costs for Children’s Social Care—specifically the soaring Looked After Children (LAC) bill—and Home to School Transport is a national crisis, exacerbated by a broken market where private providers hold councils to ransom.

I visited a High Needs school in the County this month, and I was told in no uncertain terms how the school was building outhouses to accommodate the unprecedented stream of children into their care. Outhouses. Like they’re farmyard animals. Some of those children, I regret to inform you dear reader, ought never have been placed into this school. The school’s intake has more than doubled over recent years. The system is being gamed, and it’s Durham’s local authority that’s picking up the tab for those who want smaller class sizes, exam exemptions and greater 1-1 support via home-to-school transport and much else. For a school to have to say to genuinely high-needs children “I’m sorry, we’re full”, is unacceptable to me. How about you?

We have gripped what we can whilst whacking at the weeds. We renegotiated the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF) waste deal, securing a projected £73 million saving for Durham taxpayers—a deal the previous administration was happy to sign without reading the fine print. We have identified £10 million in new savings, cutting back-office waste and deleting 88 empty posts to protect the frontline. Despite the fact that I would love nothing more than to spend more on, for example, our brilliant Clean and Green teams that work daily to make our beautiful County catwalk ready, sadly that just is not possible under these pressures.

Labour’s Betrayal

But no amount of local efficiency can fix a broken national model. We are in a statutory straitjacket, tightened by a Labour Government in Westminster that has made its priorities clear.

While they stripped the Winter Fuel Payment from 90,000 Durham pensioners, forcing them to choose between heating and eating, they continued to pour billions into housing foreign nationals and processing asylum claims, some in our County that has made many residents feel less safe than they ever have before. They attacked our rural family farms that make our County great.

They mandated a rise in Employer National Insurance—a “stealth tax” that cost the care sector in the North East alone £19.5 million —and then expected us to pick up the bill. Our bill was £8 million, if you’re wondering. This is not a failure of local management; it is a failure of national priority. They are bankrupting local government to fund a global charity service. We are fighting to keep the lights on in County Durham while they turn them off for our pensioners, farmers and those willing to work to pay for their open borders. Meanwhile their energy bills, food shop and car costs go up and up.

The Verdict

We have consolidated the budget, reduced debt, and focused every penny on the Care Emergency. We have done the dirty work that others were too cowardly to touch. If there is vandalism here, it is being committed by a central government that treats Durham’s taxpayers as an endless resource for its own ideological pet projects. We are the ones stopping the looting. Reform in Local Government will always serve you and not them, that’s why, despite these pressures, I am proud and privileged to serve my home, my people and my County.

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