Thank you Lara Wildenberg, The Times (22 July 2025) for an interesting piece about George Finch, newly elected 19 year old Reform councillor who is now the leader of Warwickshire County Council. She says he is the youngest council leader in the country responsible for assets worth £1.5 billion, a budget of £400 million, and presumably a lot of staff too. Having questioned in an earlier blog the lack of Reform party housing supply policies put forward at the recent local elections, I was struck by a remark by the Warwickshire Reform councillor, Michael Bannister’s testy comment,
“We have been here two months and they want policy, policy..policy, policy. We are professionals, we have come into this business from scratch and we’re not going to make a decision on day one, week one, week two just because you keep pressing us. You will get the policies when we are ready. We are not failing, we are a group that is going forward with councillor Finch as our leader’”.
After reflecting on this wacky outcome for Warwickshire’s residents my first thought was this. Warwickshire’s residents, at least the ones who troubled to vote, do not care what local policies are followed locally. The Reform party are elected into power despite the fact its councillors do not have any policies. Actually this is wrong. If you look them up on ChatGPT there are five listed: audit and financial transparency; cutting bureaucratic waste; public safety and policing; competency in local delivery; electoral ambitions. The small print seems to focus on reducing net zero and inefficiency programmes, more policing funded from these savings, utilisation of their councillor’s experience; enabling high-quality provision of infrastructure and services with fewer project errors, and finally winning five more seats. The AI take explains Reform’s success is Reform presenting itself as a fresh alternative to Labour and Conservatives by promising localism, transparency, and accountability, with a focus on cutting net-zero spending. At national level the party wish to speed up delivery and introduce loose-fit planning applications. which avoid too many negotiations about planning approval conditions. Which I like the sound of.
At the time I looked there were 357 comments on Lara’s article. Some about the new leader’s young age. Not all were critical, some suggest he or the Reform party are being set up to fail. Some welcoming a fresh approach. Some lambasting the political system. Others think the outcome is a joke.
None of the comments touch on housing supply or the national party’s over-arching policy aspirations. Is this good or bad? Is this level of uninformed debate sufficient to make spatial policy decisions for one or two generations ahead? For example, we are weeks away from the New Towns Taskforce identifying about ten locations for new towns or mayor urban extensions. If any sites happen to be in Warwickshire how will the county respond? Come to that though, the same can be said about the Conservative party spatial policies too. Will they be simply saying ‘over our dead body?’ Or be saying all new houses must be crammed into existing urban areas? Or will they say, I wish, yes, it is time to think ahead on a realistic, generational based time frame?
Ian Campbell
1 August 2025
What out for reactions to the NTT recommendations.
