According to outgoing independent counsellors, many of Nottinghamshire County Council staff have been left “in tears” following Reform UK’s victory in last week’s Local Elections and are actively seeking new jobs due to fears about the incoming Reform administration and it’s focus on productivity and reduction on woke and the requirement to work from the Council’s offices, rather that working from home.
Some who have been holding down second jobs alongside their Council jobs are already handing in their notice because they know the game is up and don’t want to risk being caught and prosecuted for fraud.
Nigel Farage’s party secured a “convincing but astonishing majority” on the Council in the May 1 elections. In Nottinghamshire, the group swept up 40 of Nottinghamshire County Council’s 66 seats, surpassing even their own expectations and easily reaching the 34 needed to form a majority. The local authority had never been run by any party apart from the Conservatives or Labour in its history.
Nottingham hotels for asylum seekers will end
It is widely expected that the planning authority will be taken over by Reform counsellors and that many of the local hotels, currently used for housing asylum seekers, will find themselves receiving planning enforcement notices telling them that they must stop operating illegally – in law, hotels that only house asylum seekers are not actually hotels, but hostels – this means that they must have planning permission to change to a hostel before they can house asylum seekers and if they are already doing so, they are breaking the las and can be shut down – the problem for hotels being that once they have changed to a hostel, there is no guarantee that they will be able to change back to a hotel and that if the asylum seekers are stopped, then they may only be able to operate as hostels for the homeless, something that would bankrupt most hotels.
Huge Changes from Reform – DEI gone!
Reform-run authorities could see cuts to council jobs focusing on diversity, equality and Inclusion (DEI) and seeing a version of the US ‘Department Of Government Efficiency’ (Doge) set up in Nottinghamshire to cut expenditure and stop waste. Mr Farage also said: “Work from home – forget it, that’s gone.” County Councillor John Doddy who defected to Reform in January 2025, previously a conservative, then an independent councillor was re-elected last week as a Reform councillor said the new authority will deal with existing issues “differently”. ..
“The issues have always been clear. Clear to all of the people that were voting, clear to the existing party and any incoming party…..we will cure the issues with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) – people are unable to get the care that they need in schools for their children, having to take them out with home school, the Adult social care challenges, people not being able to get home care ….and we’re in there to take a different approach to the existing problems………We are going to put all our manifesto pledges together, then come up with a plan and policies to achieve all our objectives over the next four years.“