Nigel Farage Suggests Referendum

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is to launch a campaign against what he says are “absolutely insane” local council reorganisation plans in Kent.

Mr Farage, speaking on a visit to Kent Council Council (KCC) in Maidstone, said Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s devolution programme would strip the county of its identity.

The government plans to slim down Kent’s 14 councils, including KCC, to a much smaller number of larger unitary authorities, possibly with an elected mayor.

But today Mr Farage said there has been no public consultation on the issue.

He added: “I bet you if we walked out now onto the streets of Maidstone and stopped a hundred people not one will have heard how things are going to change.

“I just think that with an historic county like Kent, people have a very strong county identity. If you told them KCC was to go, to be broken up into three or four or five unitaries, I think they would ask real questions why that’s happening. We should fight this tooth and nail. It’s absolutely insane.

“I am a very experienced campaigner and I think we need to go out and test this. We’ll have a mass leafleting campaign, put Facebook ads up, we’ll ask people to sign a petition.

“If we find that the public, once they know about this, feel as I do and as the cabinet does, then we’ll push on for a referendum.”

KCC leader Linden Kemkaran said: “We can call a referendum on any subject we like but the only down side is that they cost time and money and I am trying to save money for the tax-payers of Kent.

“Do I want to launch a referendum on local government reorganisation that is going to cost somewhere north of £1m? That’s a big decision I would have to make.

“Clearly, if I can find the savings elsewhere I might be able to justify it. Nigel Farage has given his full backing to fight back as much as we can.”

Cllr Kemkaran said she has already “pushed back” against the government’s council reforms, asking the minister Jim McMahon for a four month extension to the November deadline for all Kent councils to produce a set of proposals about how to proceed. He refused.

She added: “It’s a ridiculously short space of time, bearing in mind we have just been elected and the previous administration had agreed to all these timelines…but the minister said no to my proposal.

“Naturally if something is going to be done to you as a county, you want to have some say in how that is done. I think for us to refuse to co-operate would be very foolish in the short-term but, long term, I keep hoping the government will realise that local government reorganisation will probably not give them the power they hoped it would when they introduced it.

“It could be that they carve Kent up into three unitary authorities. Each of those could come under Reform control quite easily and with devolution we could get a Kentish mayor and that could easily be a Reform person. Does the government want to give Reform even more power?”

Mr Farage waded into the furore over the recent KCC ruling that trans literature must not be displayed in the children’s section of Kent’s libraries.
He said: “I am very concerned about young kids being poisoned, very concerned indeed. We said that material like this should not be put in front of young people…for which we have overwhelming public support.”

Cllr Kemkaran will set out a series of savings she and her team say they have found since sweeping into office with a landslide majority on May 1.

Cllr Kemkaran said that there will be a motion going before full council on Thursday to impose a 5% cut in member allowances, which will free up £206,000 to be redistributed to community grants.

She is also considering staying at County Hall, rather than moving into the Invicta House block of offices next door which could cost the tax-payer £14m.

County Hall was put on the market during the previous Conservative administration but there has been no update on any progress of the sale.

“I am going to propose that probably is not the best use of tax-payers’ money considering that the government wants to abolish Kent County Council as soon as 2028. So we are looking at all the options.

“The project moving costs are somewhere in the region of £14.2m, a not insignificant sum of money. If I can save that straight away for the tax-payers, then I would chalk that up as a win.”

There will be other announcements to follow, said Cllr Kemkaran, which are subject to further research and due diligence.

Mr Farage said he hoped that te Reform UK administration will be able to reduce the “ridiculous sums of money” being spent on areas of high-spending such as home-to-school transport for special needs pupils which is currently costing an estimated £98m a year.

He also called for more “parental responsibility” around the issue of how children get to school.