Reform UK’s Paranoid “Coup” Claim in Kent: Political Theatre Meets the Hard Limits of the Law

By any normal standard of political language, accusing the Prime Minister of plotting a “coup” against Kent County Council is the sort of thing you say when you’ve run out of evidence and still need a headline.

That, in essence, is what Richard Tice MP and Cllr Linden Kemkaran have served up this week: a dramatic narrative that Labour is “scheming” to collapse confidence in Reform’s flagship council so ministers can “send in commissioners” and seize control — possibly “over Christmas” or “into the New Year”. 

They can call it whatever they like. But in legal terms, this “coup” story is nonsense — not because central government never intervenes in councils, but because there are only a handful of strict, written legal routes that allow Whitehall to do it, and none of them are triggered by Westminster heckling or a bad week in the press.

To understand the difference between political noise and real intervention, you need to know what “takeover” actually means in local government law.

First, what “commissioners” are — and what they are not

When people hear “commissioners”, they often imagine a Ministry of Truth marching into County Hall and firing the elected leadership. That is not how the system works.

A commissioner, in this context, is an unelected expert appointed by central government to run some of a council’s functions — sometimes finance and governance, sometimes a failing service area — under formal legal instructions called Directions. Councillors are still councillors; the council still exists; but parts of its decision-making can be temporarily taken out of local hands.

It is a serious step. Which is exactly why it is fenced in by statute.

Route one: “Best Value” — the main legal trigger for commissioners

The most common route is intervention under the Local Government Act 1999, which imposes a “Best Value duty” on councils. In plain English, Best Value means the council must be able to show it is delivering its services with proper economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and that it is continually improving. 

If the Secretary of State believes a council is failing that duty (or at risk of failing it), government has a set of escalating options set out in its statutory guidance — from non-statutory support through to full statutory intervention. 

The key point is this: ministers don’t get to wave a magic wand. They normally build a record.

They can, for example, appoint an inspector to carry out a Best Value inspection — essentially an official investigation into whether the authority is meeting the duty. That power is explicitly written into the 1999 Act.

And if the government then decides intervention is required, it can issue Directions — legally binding instructions — that can include appointing commissioners and authorising them to exercise specified functions. This is the nearest thing England has to a legal “takeover” of a council. It is real. But it is not casual. It requires a statutory basis, a rationale, and usually a paper trail that can survive scrutiny. 

This is why the “coup” claim collapses under its own melodrama. You don’t “discover” a Best Value intervention like a plot twist. You arrive at it through documented concerns and formal steps.

Route two: children’s services — where central intervention is more common

There is another route that can bite a county council hard: children’s social care.

Where children’s services are judged inadequate, government can issue formal directions under section 497A of the Education Act 1996 (as applied to children’s social care through later legislation). 

In practice this can mean a Children’s Services Commissioner is appointed and the council must comply with instructions aimed at driving improvement. You can see how this operates from published statutory directions to other councils, which explicitly require the authority to cooperate with the commissioner and follow improvement instructions. 

Again, the point is not that intervention is impossible — it plainly is possible — but that it is grounded in legal powers normally used in response to specific, evidenced service failure (often following inspection findings). A political row is not a substitute for that.

Route three: structural reorganisation — the government can abolish and replace a council

If you want the truly blunt instrument, it exists: government can restructure local government by order.

The cautionary tale is Northamptonshire, where major failure ultimately led to a structural change that abolished the old councils and replaced them with new unitary authorities. That was done by a Structural Changes Order, debated and made through the legal machinery of Parliament. 

This is not “sending in commissioners”. It is wholesale reconfiguration: the council, as it exists, can be wound up and replaced. But it is politically heavy, administratively complex, and not something a government does on a festive whim because it fancies a headline.

Route four: emergency powers — legally possible, practically irrelevant to political spats

There is also the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which contains emergency powers for truly exceptional national or regional crises. 

This is not a tool for disciplining a council or winning an argument. It is designed for genuine emergencies. Invoking it as a template for everyday politics is like citing wartime rationing rules because you didn’t like the menu.

So what is this really about?

Tice and Kemkaran’s “coup” rhetoric lands in a context where Kent has become a national punchbag. The Prime Minister has used PMQs to say Kent residents are suffering from Reform’s “staggering incompetence”. The Chancellor has also attacked Reform’s promises on savings and council tax in Commons exchanges. 

Those interventions are political — and, to Reform’s irritation, they are delivered in a forum where local government leaders do not have a direct right of reply. But politics is not the same thing as statutory intervention.

The gap between the two matters. Because if Reform wants to convince the public that a government commissioner is about to seize Kent, it needs more than suspicion and theatrics. It needs to explain, clearly, which legal trigger is supposedly being met: a Best Value failure? A specific service collapse? A documented inspection pathway? Something so severe that Parliament would entertain structural reorganisation?

Instead, we get the language of conspiracy: that Labour is “sowing loss of confidence” to manufacture a pretext. 

That isn’t a serious description of how intervention happens. It is a political storyline — one that may be useful to Reform in rallying supporters, deflecting criticism, or reframing scrutiny as persecution, but which does not match the boring, paperwork-heavy reality of English local government law.

None of this is to say Kent is immune from intervention. No major authority is. The law provides mechanisms precisely because councils sometimes do fail — financially, operationally, or in critical services. But the mechanisms are constrained and reviewable, designed to be defensible in public and, where necessary, in court.

If ministers ever did move against Kent, the decisive question would not be whether Richard Tice MP shouted “coup” first. It would be whether government could show, on evidence, that Kent was failing a statutory duty and that intervention was a proportionate response.

Until then, the public can safely treat the “Christmas coup” talk for what it is: a lot of noise — and not much law.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent