Reform UK’s local branch chair Ben Suter discusses his party’s plans for the borough should they win next month’s election, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter
Reform UK could be course to win control of Barking and Dagenham Council next month, according to the latest poll.
Polling company YouGov this week predicted a tight result between Reform and Labour – with Reform just taking the town hall.
Election expert Tony Travers also recently told the BBC that Labour are going to lose seats “probably to Reform, possibly the Greens” and that the council could end up with no party in overall control.
Yet when Nigel Farage visited Dagenham earlier this month he struck a more cautious note.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) he didn’t think his party was favourite to win in the borough, pointing to Labour’s dominance – currently holding 47 of 51 seats – and the rise of the Greens.
Ben Suter, a Reform UK candidate in Eastbrook and Rush Green who chairs the party’s Barking and Dagenham branch, says the election campaign “is not going to be an easy ride”.
“Look, we’re starting from zero,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service this week.
But, he adds: “People are desperate for change, especially after the last 60 years of a Labour council.
“Our roads are crumbling, our streets are dirty, there’s fly-tipping everywhere. We’ve got council flats riddled with damp and black mould. People in temporary accommodation have been treated very, very badly.
“Overall, people want change.”
Suter thinks Reform UK could do particularly well in the east of the borough – “anywhere with an RM postcode” – where the party is focusing its efforts.
“That’s where our support is,” he says. “I think it’s a part of the borough which has been ignored for decades. Dagenham has always been seen as the ugly little brother of Barking, when actually Dagenham is the bigger town.
“We’ve always been the last thought and under Reform that’s going to change.”
Suter says this is also Labour’s fault: “We’re going to look after the whole borough no matter where you are, and we are serious about doing that. The Labour Party do gimmicks.
“In my ward we’ve been campaigning for road resurfacing for years. And in the year of election, a whole estate up there gets the roads resurfaced.
“It’s like throwing a dog a bone. That’s what the Labour Party think of people in this borough, as if they’re throwing bones to dogs.”
Suter is scathing of the council’s housebuilding programme, which is responsible for the vast majority of the council’s £1.6 billion debt.
The council’s Labour leader Dominic Twomey is hugely proud of the programme, often speaking of how the borough has built 3,700 homes and of how income from rents and sales have brought “significant returns” that cover the debt and subsidise the council’s budget.
But Suter is dismissive. “This council has made risky financial decisions to borrow over £1bn to build flats in Barking.
“This debt is going to be saddled on the people of this borough, and for what? So Dominic Twomey and Labour figures can pose outside flats in Barking with Sadiq Khan?”
Suter also claims the homes the council has built “aren’t good quality” – pointing to the collapse of a balcony at the newbuild Weavers Quarter, part of the Gascoigne Estate, in 2023.
Nor, he says, are the new homes genuinely affordable.
“I like to call them the unaffordable affordable,” he says. “These leasehold homes, which are leased out, and they’re on heat networks which absolutely cripple tenants.”
Criticism is easy but finding solutions is harder. “It’s a very difficult thing to navigate,” Suter admits.
He says that if Reform wins it will bring in the party’s “Dolge” team – which he says stands for “department for local government efficiency – to “rip out the waste that is being spent in this council”.
Yet, Reform’s attempts at doing this in other councils have proved harder than perhaps it expected, such as at Kent County Council, which the party took control of last year.
Paul Chamberlain, a Reform councillor in Kent, told the BBC in February that austerity had made finding further spending cuts difficult.
“I think we felt the savings would be there,” he said. “But in reality, local government has been cut and cut and cut over many, many years.”
Suter won’t promise Reform will “go in and fix it on day one”. He also warns a Reform-led council would “make tough decisions the Labour Party is not willing to make, to get our council in a better financial position.
“Luxuries that we don’t need will be gotten rid of.”
Nor will Suter promise not to raise council tax, adding: “Council tax will have to go up. Of course it will because of the state of our borough’s finances.”
A major problem, Suter aknowledges, is that like every council, the town hall faces rising demand and costs for services it legally must provide – particularly social care, special educational needs and homeless accommodation.
At the same time, its funding isn’t enough to cover the costs.
“These costs are just too much for local authorities,” Suter says. “The problem is that council budgets have not gone up in the same way alongside the increasing pressures and costs.”
The council’s Labour leaders describe this as the result of “14 years of Tory austerity” whereas Suter was a Conservative Party member until as recently as last year.
“I joined the Tory Party at the age of 15 and left when I was 19. A lot of people like to make that line, that somehow I’m an ex-Tory who’s to blame for every decision the last 14 years of Conservative government has made, but I’m not.”
But, he adds: “The Tory government at the time of the financial crash had to make difficult decisions.
“Loads of money was wasted in local government. A lot of that money was taken back, and a lot of that money was taken too far back. But these decisions had to be made.
“Do I think they went too far? Yes. Do I think they’re the sole reason that this council is in the position that it’s in now? No way at all.”
Suter says if Reform wins control “we’re going to pick up the pieces”. But “we just truly don’t know what the results are going to be”.
Every council seat is up for grabs in the elections on Thursday, 7th May. The LDRS is aiming to interview candidates from every party standing.
“I will probably run around the rings of Saturn before I’m able to tell you the results of the elections,” Suter admits.
“You’re going to have a lot of areas where the Greens take a lot of votes from Labour, where we come through the middle.
“It’s going to be very close everywhere.”
