22OCT

Nine of 14 Reform councils raise council tax

3 min read

16:26UTC

Nine of the 14 Reform-controlled councils raised Band D council tax for 2026/27, and eight replaced 'climate change' or 'decarbonisation' in their planning language with softer terms, per The Canary's analysis and the LSE Grantham Research Institute assessment.

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Key takeaway

The pledge has not survived first contact with the budget; nine of 14 raised tax inside one week.

Nine of the 14 Reform-controlled councils raised Band D council tax for 2026/27, per The Canary's analysis published 12 May 2026 and an LSE Grantham Research Institute assessment.⁠¹ Eight of the 14 replaced "climate change" or "decarbonisation" in their published planning language with softer terms ("environment", "sustainability", "energy efficiency"). Several of those decisions pre-date the May 2026 election: councils Reform took in earlier rounds were already breaking the tax-cut pledge by the time the 7 May results came in.

The attribution caveat matters. The Canary is a left-leaning UK politics outlet and the LSE Grantham Research Institute is a Westminster-based climate-policy think tank; the council-tax and climate-language analyses derive from their joint reading of council documents, not from a primary-source enumeration. The Reform-led councils have not responded with line-by-line rebuttals. The pattern is consistent with the published budget papers, but individual council audits have not been done.

The statutory hook is the Climate Change Act 2008. The Act places duties on public bodies, including councils, to contribute to net-zero by 2050; removing the language does not remove the duty. Planning officers (not councillors) sign off on the underlying frameworks and remain personally liable for compliance. A judicial review brought against a council whose published planning policy no longer references the Act's terminology turns on whether the substantive duty is being discharged, not on what label sits on the cover sheet. Reform-led councils may discover the legal difference between the cover sheet and the duty.

The pledge-versus-delivery gap also lands inside the MHCLG Section 114 architecture. Thurrock sits at 41 of 49 Reform under continuing MHCLG commissioner control of its £1.5bn Section 114 budget; the LGA found 22 per cent of social-care councils balanced 2026/27 only on Exceptional Financial Support. Cutting council tax in that environment is mathematically harder than raising it, which is the deliverable-versus-pledge tension nine of the 14 councils have just resolved against the pledge. Reform's 1,448 council seats won the election; the £1.5 billion-class budget environment chose the policy.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Before the election, Reform UK promised to cut or freeze council tax if it won control of local councils. Per The Canary's analysis and the LSE Grantham Research Institute, nine of the 14 councils Reform now controls have instead raised council tax for the coming year. Reform also ran on rolling back climate policies. Per the same analysis, eight of those 14 councils have removed words like 'climate change' or 'decarbonisation' from their planning documents. The reason for the council tax rises is not complicated: local councils spend most of their money on social care for elderly and disabled people. Those contracts are signed years in advance and are very difficult to cut in a hurry. A new councillor can change the language in a planning document on day one; they cannot cancel a care home contract on day one without consequences.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Band D council tax is the reference rate from which all other bands are derived by fixed ratios. In 2026/27, the average English Band D rate is approximately £2,250. A 5 per cent increase (roughly the maximum permitted without a local referendum) adds £112 per household per year.

For the nine Reform-controlled councils raising the rate, the typical increase generates between £8 million and £40 million in additional revenue depending on the council's tax base, against an adult social care budget typically running between £100 million and £500 million. The rises address a fiscal gap, not a transformation.

The climate-language change is economically secondary in the short term: it generates no direct revenue saving. The medium-term risk is procurement: councils in England must comply with the Environment Act 2021's biodiversity net-gain requirements and the Climate Change Act 2008's net-zero duty regardless of planning-framework language.

Procurement officers removing climate terminology from tender specifications may inadvertently expose councils to judicial review on individual planning decisions where the statutory duty can be read into the decision-making record.

Consensus view: The Taxpayers' Alliance, which Reform's tax-cut pledge most closely mirrors, has tracked council tax data continuously since 2003 and notes that no English party running a zero-council-tax-rise pledge has achieved it in a majority of its controlled councils within the first budget cycle they control; the structural reason is that adult social care spending growth is contractually locked in through multi-year supplier agreements signed by predecessor administrations, so a new controlling group cannot cut the largest expenditure line without breaking contracts.

Counter-view: The Adam Smith Institute has argued that the real Reform pledge was not zero council tax rises but zero new bureaucratic spending; councils can raise the basic rate while cutting management overheads and DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) programmes, and the tax rise figures cited by The Canary's analysis and the LSE Grantham Research Institute assessment do not capture what was cut alongside what was raised.

The net fiscal picture may be different from the headline.

Key tension: Whether the nine-of-14 council tax rises represent a wholesale pledge abandonment or a rational budget response to inherited contracts that a more granular breakdown would partially justify.

Sources:The Canary

Mentions:Reform UK →Space Research Institute RAS →Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) →Exceptional Financial Support →Westminster →London Stock Exchange →Local Government Association →Thurrock Council →The Canary →London School of Economics →Climate Change Act 2008 →Adam Smith Institute →

First Reported In

Update #8 · Mutiny in week one

The Canary· 14 May 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Reform short 894 seats on MRP

Reform winning 14 councils (3146) is what gave the pledge-breach pattern something to examine; 9 of 14 councils raised council tax.

Occurred 7 May 2026

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Reform sweeps Sunderland and Wakefield councils

Reform's sweep of Sunderland and Wakefield (3157) places both councils among the 14 whose council-tax decisions are under scrutiny.

Occurred 7 May 2026

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This Event

Nine of 14 Reform councils raise council tax

The two headline Reform pledges (tax cuts and climate-policy rollback) broke inside the first week of council control; some of the tax-raising decisions pre-date the May election, meaning councils Reform took in earlier rounds were already breaking the pledge by the time the 7 May results arrived.

Led to

Grantham: 7 of 9 Reform councils cut climate

Eight 2026 Reform councils softening climate language in week one (ID:3306) is the immediate predecessor data that Grantham's 2025 baseline analysis contextualises.

Occurred 20 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

Scottish National Party / John Swinney

Swinney told the SNP conference in Aberdeen on 17 October that Scotland is ready for independence, but set no referendum date, bill or Section 30 request. He launched a new campaign instead and extended the £2 bus fare cap to the north east from April 2027.

Liberal Democrats / Ed Davey

Davey ruled out a national partnership with the Greens on 19 October after their Brighton conference passed a "Zionism is racism" motion, and wrote to two Jewish community bodies. He left untouched the councils the two parties already run together.

Reform UK / Richard Tice

Tice alleged ITV's reporter used false details to get a press-office job and said ITV had "likely broken the law", telling members not to speak to it until it apologises. Reform also opened investigations into members, with some suspensions, so the party is contesting the broadcaster and disciplining councillors at once.

Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)

Ap Iorwerth presented six priorities to the Senedd on 22 September without numeric targets or a named partner party, promising to work across the chamber where there is common ground. He says his government will be judged on results.

Michael Marra / Scottish Labour

Marra won the leadership on 19 September, and three days later his 17 MSPs backed Swinney's right-to-decide motion once their child-poverty amendment was written in. He says Scottish Labour's task is to tell voters what it stands for.

Andy Burnham / Labour Party

Burnham told conference in Liverpool on 29 September that Labour's next manifesto will commit to changing the electoral system, and invited every party into a National Commission on Electoral Reform. He has not named a replacement system, and no chair or remit has been published.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.