First indication that North Northamptonshire's DOGE review could take a more measured approach

And Reform’s shakedown of council spending at NNC could be rather different from the shock-and-awe approach that appears to have been taken at other authorities.

Last night (Monday, June 9), the council published the agenda for the first executive meeting of the Reform-led council since May’s elections. The executive is a group of ten senior Reform members who each take the political lead on an area of the council’s spending.

As expected, the very first item on the agenda is an ‘efficiency review’ – which encompasses a through look at virtually all areas of council spending. It was one of the party’s key election pledges.

But unlike in Kent, where former Reform Chairman Zia Yusuf announced his DOGE team would be coming to town in a letter warning staff they would be guilty of gross misconduct if they didn’t comply with their demands, here in Northants the review is starting as all new local government initiatives normally do – in the open, in the council chamber, in the glare of public scrutiny.

There’s no mention in the report of DOGE – a dupe of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from the USA, which has stuttered since it was revealed that its claims of saving two trillion did not add up, and Mr Musk and Donald Trump had an explosive public uncoupling.

When Nigel Farage came to Northamptonshire before the election he promised that Reform-led councils would each have a DOGE department.

Since then, a band of unelected Reform volunteers have visited Kent Council, promising to uncover council misspending and waste.

On X, as an example of ‘confirmed council fraud’, Zia Yusuf pointed toward £2.8m of wasted public money that had been previously uncovered by the council’s own audit team and widely covered in the local press.

Lawyers were called in by Kent County Council officers to ensure that what Reform was doing was above board, and the Local Government Chronicle said that Reform’s intervention was ‘beyond insulting’. Another Kent Council leader said that staff had been treated ‘appallingly’ by Reform’s leadership. And questions were asked over whether Reform had any legal right to look at any documentation that wasn’t already in the public domain.

Almost all of Kent County Council’s public meetings have been cancelled or postponed this month, leading to accusations of a lack of transparency.

Political commentators raised eyebrows at Reform’s ‘discovery’ of £350m in spending on ‘recruitment advertising,’ which actually turned out to be a national framework agreement open to every local authority, NHS and public body in the country.

Then on Thursday, just hours before leader Nigel Farage had been due speak to journalists and his new executive members in Corby, the men who had been running the DOGE project, Reform Chairman Zia Yusuf and tech bro Nathan Fried both resigned (although Yusuf later returned in a different role).

Yusuf has announced that West Northamptonshire and Lancashire County Councils are next on the list for his DOGE audits. But no indication has yet been given of when their bus could roll into North Northamptonshire.

Reform’s NNC Leader – and former Tory Wellingborough Council leader – Councillor Martin Griffiths who perhaps has more experience in local Government than many of his Reform counterparts around the country, has already said that his council will not be run from Westminster, and has said that he does not like the term ‘DOGE’.

The elected members of North Northamptonshire are getting on with delivering the promises they made to the electorate well ahead of the DOGE show pulling up beside the Corby Cube.

It looks as though Cllr Griffiths and his executive are determined to put local government finances under the spotlight, with or without party interference.

They will discuss their plan to review financial management and procurement as the opening item on their first ever executive meeting next Thursday (June 17).

The officer’s report crucially does not mention the external Westminster DOGE team. It describes how a review will be carried out over the summer that ‘will shape the budget setting process for next year, identifying in-year efficiencies and improvements to strengthen value for money arrangements across the council’.

It says there will be a ‘renewed focus on transparency’ and will ‘improve communication with residents’. It will take place alongside a major new residents’ survey and will report back to the executive in the Autumn.

The report also goes says that the review will be conducted by a team from within the council including hand-picked executive members as well as the scrutiny committee.

The timetable and scope of the review will be decided by the council leader, the executive member for finance Cllr Graham Cheatley, and the authority’s own chief executive Adele Wylie and S151 officer Claire Edwards.

The report sets out clearly which parts of council finances will be reviewed and why it’s going to benefit local residents.

It says its aims are to ensure that the council is spending public money in an efficient way; that there is strong governance with high levels of transparency; to promote openness and honesty and to improve services in a financially sustainable way.

It will look at all spend over £500, as well as payments to contractors. It will scrutinise planned capital spending as well as contracts with outside companies that provide council services.

The report says that the review will be funded from existing budgets – although there is no mention of how it may duplicate the regular and intensive internal and external audit work already carried out by the council as part of its statutory obligations.

On the face of it, it’s a world away from how things appear to have been done in Kent.

That lighter-touch approach may even garner cross-party support, and crucially, the backing of council officers, which Councillor Griffiths has long been keen to promote as part of a fresh start for staff he promised at the council’s AGM last month.

The meeting takes place next Thursday (June 17), at the Corby Cube, and is open to members of the public. It will also be screened live on the council’s Youtube page.

Some politicians told our reporters last night that they would wait and see how the review was carried out, but that they were concerned that Reform HQ would still intervene at some point.