Kent County Council

Kent County Council is the county council for Kent in southeast England, one of the largest county councils in the UK. It became Reform UK's flagship local government gain in the May 2025 local elections when Reform won 57 of 81 seats at a single election, the largest council landslide for any insurgent party in modern British local government history. The win gave Reform a clear working majority and turned Kent into the primary live test of whether the party could manage a large public authority.

By April 2026, before any further elections, Reform's Kent group had shrunk from 57 to 47 seats through resignations, defections, expulsions and the seat lost at the Cliftonville by-election on 9 April 2026, the first ballot-box defeat. Green candidate Rob Yates defeated Reform's Marc Rattigan with a 26.7-point swing; the seat had been vacated after Reform councillor Daniel Taylor was jailed in March 2026 for controlling and coercive behaviour. Restore Britain has grown into Kent's third-largest group through Reform defections.

The pattern at Kent mirrors national Reform attrition: HuffPost UK reported 65 of 677 Reform councillors elected in 2025 had Left within a year. Kent County Council is not among the authorities named in the 25 March 2026 MHCLG LGR announcement, but structural pressures on large county councils, including the Essex pre-action protocol letter, are watched closely across the southeast.