Peter Harris

Peter Harris was elected Reform UK group leader at Essex County Council on 11 May 2026, with Russell Quirk as deputy, following Reform's landslide win of 53 of 78 Essex seats on 7 May. Formal confirmation as full council leader was scheduled at the Annual General Meeting on 28 May at County Hall, Chelmsford.

The first early policy signal under Harris's leadership was to reverse the library charge (so-called "book tax") introduced under the previous Conservative administration. The harder governance challenge is structural: Essex's financial position reflects a national picture in which the Local Government Association found 22 per cent of social-care councils balanced their 2026/27 budgets only on Exceptional Financial Support. Reform's national pledge of no council tax rises has already been broken on nine of its 14 newly-won councils.

Harris also led Essex into judicial review proceedings against the Local Government Reorganisation programme. On 18 May 2026, Essex sent Secretary of State Steve Reed a pre-action protocol letter citing six legal grounds, with Norfolk and Suffolk confirming parallel letters in the same week. Essex is the largest and most prominent of Reform's 14 new councils; Harris's capacity to govern without implosion is treated by the party nationally as a template test.