Staffordshire County Council managed an underspend on its budget last year, which at first sight looks like pretty good housekeeping, but even here, the Reform DOGE project is underway.
A significant number of third-party contracts have been in place for years, and the incoming Reform administration wants to make sure that they represent value for money.
In short, no stone will be left unturned, and the audits will be detailed and thorough, even where previous management looks as if it has been prudent.
The man in charge of Reform’s DOGE initiative is the former Party Chairman, Zia Yusuf. He has an impressive track record in both business and politics.
Reformers will know he is the man who set up 400 branches from nothing and produced enough candidates to fight nearly every council seat in the last round of local elections. His DOGE brief probably makes him a man to fear!
Of course, very few councils are run with the prudence which Staffordshire brought to the job, and I have a feeling that some of the more profligate Labour councillors are going to be left with a large amount of egg on their faces.
The concept of DOGE originated in the USA, but its principle is universal: taxpayers have a right to know not only what their money is spent on, which they can find out anyway, but far more importantly, they have a right to know whether it is being spent wisely and providing value.
What Reform's Doge unit has uncovered is about to make Labour councillors look very foolish - Ann Widdecombe
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There has always been a philosophical difference between the approaches of Labour and Conservative Councils. Tories want to keep taxes low, and Labour wants to provide maximum amounts of civil amenities. In 1986, I moved from London’s Tory Hammersmith and Fulham to Labour, Lambeth.
My rates (as they then were) shot up, but suddenly I found the local libraries open on Sunday and an ability to put out as much rubbish as I liked instead of trying to tamp it down into one wastebin.
That sums up the tension in local government finances: you can have low taxes and restricted services or high taxes and generous services, but you cannot have low taxes and expansive services.
That, however, is only part of the story. The issue for DOGE, as noted above, is not what you are buying but whether you are getting the best value for the money being shelled out.
It is as possible to misspend small amounts as it is large ones, a simple but under-appreciated concept which might mean that even Staffordshire can be shown to have wasted public money, let alone the high-spending councils to which underspends are distant dreams, if they dream of such restraint at all.
I do not think it will take long before the first of the worst practices is revealed. Local press is going to be very interested in what this exercise reveals, and voters will at last have a glimpse into the way their money has been used.
For those councils where Reform now has control, DOGE is but the first step. The next one is to do much better, and on that rests the Party’s future success.
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