The Reform UK leader of Lancashire County Council insists “proper process” will be followed when a ‘DOGE’-style cost-cutting team arrives to assess the authority’s finances.
Stephen Atkinson was speaking after opposition criticism of the announcement last week that Lancashire would be next in line to receive a visit from the unit, created by the national party and modelled on the controversial Department of Government Efficiency in the United States, previously run by Elon Musk.
His comments came during a cabinet meeting on Thursday afternoon, shortly before the driving force by Reform’s version of DOGE – the party’s chair, Zia Yusuf – unexpectedly quit.
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He was followed out of the door by Nathaniel Fried, the 28-year-old tech entrepreneur and data analytics specialist, whom he had appointed to lead the spend-slashing operation, which has embarked on a tour of the 10 county councils Reform now controls.
However, in an equally unexpected twist, Mr. Yusuf returned to the Reform fold late on Saturday afternoon, describing his decision to quit – after criticising comments made by one of the party’s MPs calling for a ban on the burka – as an “error” brought on by “exhaustion” and racist abuse received online.
Having spearheaded the creation of the DOGE unit, he will himself now actively lead it.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) had already been told that the dual resignations last week would not derail plans for the DOGE team to pitch up next in Lancashire, having already started work at Kent County Council.
Against the backdrop of the DOGE controversy, the first Lancashire County Council cabinet meeting with Reform in charge saw the approval of an “efficiency review” of the authority’s “financial management, procurement and associated governance arrangements”.
The report setting out the details of that work made no reference to DOGE – and County Cllr Atkinson appeared to put some clear Reform-coloured turquoise water between the two operations.
He told the meeting that there had been “a lot of noise” about the DOGE process, adding: “It is our intention, like any political party, to engage with its national party – but that will be done through proper process and procedure.”
His comment followed criticism from opposition leaders of the idea of an external party-affiliated unit being brought in to go through the county council’s books – which was branded, variously, undemocratic and unnecessary.
The cabinet report states that the efficiency review will be “undertaken by a multi-skilled team of officers and wider council resources working across the organisation” – pointing towards an internal, strictly County Hall-controlled set-up.
A cabinet working group will be established to consider the outcome of the review and members will respond to the findings through the council’s “established governance and reporting mechanisms”, the authority has said.
However, for some opposition groups, the plans still left too many questions unanswered about how the DOGE team would operate.
Speaking to the LDRS after the cabinet meeting, Tory group leader Aidy Riggott said he wanted reassurance that the findings of the DOGE process – even if separate from the review now agreed by cabinet – would be provided in official form to members and staff before “any wider publication”.
He said he would be concerned to first read “potentially politically-motivated snippets” of the outcome on social media.
County Cllr Riggott added he still had concerns about the type of access the DOGE unit would be given to county council files.
“[Information held by the authority] is either public or it’s private and confidential – and so only available to councillors. That’s not [a] council policy, that is national legislation – so you can’t work around that.
“If there was going to be an agreement to share stuff – because sometimes you might have memorandums of understanding [with certain organisations] – that would need a legal agreement and probably [a council vote] to make sure the public’s interests are being served,” County Cllr Riggott added.
He had requested to ask a question on that subject during a section at the start of the cabinet meeting reserved for all councillors to put posers to the authority’s portfolio holders about any item on the agenda. However, the financial review report was added to the running order as an urgent item only on Wednesday afternoon – after the deadline for the submission of questions had passed.
County Cllr Riggott said there was no reason that rule could not have been waived in those circumstances – as he said it would have been by the previous Conservative administration, of which he was a part.
Liberal Democrat group leader John Potter also condemned the lack of opportunity to probe the efficiency review report, saying he had wanted to raise the related DOGE issue to ask “what qualifications these people have got and whether they will [be able] to retain data that they gather”.
The LDRS understands County Cllr Atkinson wants any change to procedural rules to await the outcome of an overhaul already being considered by the cross-party political governance working group – and was open to meeting with opposition leaders to discuss the finance review in the interim.
As leader of the official opposition group, Azhar Ali – who heads the Progressive Lancashire alliance of independent and Green Party councilors – was able to comment on the issue when the report itself was discussed, because he has a permanent seat at the cabinet table.
Having last week questioned the democratic legitimacy of a DOGE team coming into the authority, he focused during the meeting solely on the council-led review process, describing it as a “standard procedure” which takes place every year.
County Cllr Ali called for an opportunity nevertheless to scrutinise any “ideas” arising from the review, as well as the chance to work “collaboratively” to make any necessary savings.
Speaking to the LDRS later, Labour opposition group leader Mark Clifford said that after the “rhetoric” from Reform leader Nigel Farage regarding DOGE, the party locally was now discovering that “the reality of actually running a council and following correct procedures is somewhat different”.
He added: “The idea that private business ‘entrepreneurs’ could walk in and gain access to confidential and commercially sensitive contracts was for the birds.
“It was good to see that County Cllr Atkinson has launched a spending review that will be conducted by officers of the council and follow correct procedures.
“After years of cuts by the Conservatives, I certainly would think all of the pips have been well and truly squeezed out of the budget – [and] the public will not look kindly on Reform if they bring in further cuts to vital frontline services that residents of Lancashire rely upon.”
Putting the council’s money under the microscope
The exact extent of the efficiency review is to be decided by the county council’s interim director of finance and commerce, in consultation with County Cllr Atkinson, chief executive Mark Wynn and the authority’s chief legal officer.
It appears there will be some overlap with the stated aims of the DOGE team to focus on the “financial resilience” of the authority and its “contractual arrangements with suppliers”.
According to the report to cabinet on the efficiency review project, it will:
***provide assurance with regard to the existing savings plans and financial resilience;
***take an insight-led approach involving benchmarking and comparative data analysis;
***consider key contractual and procurement arrangements for both revenue and capital funded activities and explore opportunities for savings through the lens of benefit to the public;
***establish cross-cutting workstreams potentially covering contracts, assets, digital and income to identify further efficiencies;
***consider most effective ways of communicating with the public the Council’s efficiency agenda;
***understand the impact of [the government’s forthcoming] comprehensive spending review in determining the likely funding envelope for the council over the next three years.
When it set its budget in February under the previous Conservative administration, the authority had already identified the need to make £103m of savings over the next two years in order to balance the books – almost half of which were carried over from cost-cutting ambitions which had not been delivered in previous years or were just one-offs and so non-recurring.
County Hall’s under-pressure adult services department was £31m shy of its near £35m savings target during 2024/25.
Established under the Tory regime, each directorate – or service area – within the authority has a finance monitoring board, chaired by the executive director for that group of services, where savings are reviewed and any issues with the capacity to achieve them are considered.
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