Lower council tax rises under Reform UK - Farage

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has pledged that if his party took control of further councils in May's local elections, it would ensure council tax rises in those areas would be lower than in those run by any of the other parties.

Speaking ahead of a rally in Leeds on Tuesday, Farage claimed councils run by Reform UK since last year's local elections had already saved "tens of millions" of pounds.

That had been achieved by cutting "wasteful expenditure, unnecessary work and money being spent on DEI projects", he said.

"Ten months in, what we've been able to do is bring in council tax rises lower than everybody else, and two or three of them are the lowest in the country," he said.

However, he added that "we've still got more to do".

Last May, Reform UK made big gains in English local elections, winning 677 of about 1,600 seats across a clutch of mainly Tory-held councils last contested in 2021.

The party also won control of Doncaster, the only council Labour was defending in May's local elections.

Hundreds of council seats will be up for grabs at this year's local elections - the biggest set of elections since Labour won its landslide general election victory in 2024.

Before the rally at Leeds Arena, Farage visited The Commercial pub on Elland Road in Morley to drum up support and speak to Reform UK activists.

While there, he told the BBC that since last year's local elections, "what we've been able to do is to bring in council tax rises lower than everybody else, and two or three of them are the lowest in the country".

"My promise is, we will keep the record we've built already and our council tax rises will be lower than the other parties, because we will be much more cautious about levels of expenditure."

Farage described local government in England as "a mess".

"Every council in the country is burdened with debt. Local government is in big trouble," he said.

"Leeds' debt is off the charts. It's the second biggest debt in the entire country. Even the interest payments in Leeds on the debt are over £100,000 a day.

"I'm not for one minute pretending we can come in, wave a magic wand and make it better overnight, but I can promise we'll come in, adopt a different approach and incrementally we'll build that over the four-year term."

While at The Commercial pub, Farage also spoke of Reform UK's campaign to save the local, and said his party had a "raft of measures" to help the industry.

He said that included bringing VAT on the sector down to 10% along with removing additional National Insurance charges - which he said were "an absolute killer" for pubs.

To do that, Farage said Reform UK would change rules about where and what prices pubs must pay to buy their beer.

When asked about transport infrastructure in the north of England, the Reform UK leader described Northern Powerhouse Rail as "a disaster".

He said he "firmly believes" the North needed a better east-west rail network, built using private enterprise money rather than the government funding which was planned for HS2.

"East-west in the North is desperately needed," Farage said.

"Do we need a proper northern rail network, and is the urgency east-west rather than north-south? I firmly believe it is."

Those attending the Reform UK rally at Leeds Arena on Tuesday evening were greeted by a protest consisting of about 300 people, including anti-racism campaigners and pro-EU campaigners.

At the end of the rally, Farage invited all 160 candidates hoping to be elected in seats across Yorkshire in May onto the stage.

He said: "These people have put their head above the parapet. These people are keen to lead."

He finished by saying that he believed Reform UK had "every chance of winning in Barnsley, in South Yorkshire, in Wakefield".

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.