This comes after Reform UK’s election victory at the May 2026 local elections.
Reform has said there is ‘no need’ to bring in a team to audit Barnsley Council, despite local election campaigning promises.
Reform UK’s Department of Local Government Efficiency (DOLGE) is a cost-cutting scheme modelled on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory group for the US government.
In their campaigning for the 2026 local elections in Barnsley, Reform leaflets promised voters that the party would ‘bring in DOGE’ to ‘audit the council’s finances to identify and eliminate fraud, corruption and wasteful spending’.
At a full council meeting on July 16, Labour councillor James Higginbottom asked when residents can expect the arrival of the ‘DOGE’ or ‘DOLGE’ team.
Coun Martin Bancroft, cabinet spokesperson for core services said: “Basically there is no need to bring in DOGE as we have the experience in our team and our ranks.
“I can also report that we are in the process of inducting an internal line-by-line investigation of the accounts.”
Coun Higginbottom criticised the party for “another broken promise” from their election campaign leaflets.
“Will he offer an apology to the director of finance and his excellent team for the misleading comments that were made at the previous full council meeting, about the so-called ‘black hole’ in the council’s finances?”
Coun Bancroft responded: “I think you’ll find as a matter of record if you look through the accounts, there is a £30 million gap in the budget, when you go to the year 2029/30.”
In the first full council meeting after Reform won the election in Barnsley, council leader William Brown claimed ‘since opening the books, [they] discovered a black hole of over £30 million left by Labour”.
However, councils have a legal duty to set a balanced budget for each financial year.
