Kent County Council SEND Taxi Invoice Irregularities Found by Counter Fraud, Not Reform UK DOLGE

Reform UK came into County Hall promising a “laser-like focus” on waste, set up its Kent Department of Local Government Efficiency, and said home-to-school transport was under review. Yet the public paper trail shows SEND taxi invoicing irregularities were already known, and kept surfacing afterwards. The awkward point for Reform is that the latest findings come not from its DOLGE team riding in to clean house, but from the council’s Counter Fraud team and routine invoice checks.

By The Shepway Vox Team

Kent County Council’s latest SEND taxi invoice row ought to be politically uncomfortable for Reform UK, and for one very simple reason: this was not a mystery that suddenly emerged from the undergrowth last week. It was already a known issue in KCC’s own papers.

That matters because Reform did not arrive at County Hall promising to shrug at this sort of thing. On 10 July 2025, council leader Linden Kemkaran said her newly installed Department of Local Government Efficiency, or DOLGE, was bringing a “laser-like focus” to saving money. KCC’s own news page said DOLGE had already identified millions of pounds of potential savings, while home-to-school transport was singled out as one of the authority’s biggest spending areas where work was under way to “streamline the service and cut waste”.

The formal DOLGE papers make the point even more plainly. KCC’s Scrutiny Committee was told in July 2025 that DOLGE had been tasked with finding efficiencies across the council, had identified more than £40 million of potential savings in its initial phase, and that its service review work included Home to School Transport. The same papers also made clear that Kent’s DOLGE was a council programme led by Reform’s administration, separate from the similarly named Reform UK head-office DOGE project.

So here is the uncomfortable question. If home-to-school transport was already one of the headline areas under review, and if Reform had made public virtue of cracking down on waste, why were further irregularities still being identified afterwards?

The answer, on the public record, is not that DOLGE swooped in and exposed the problem. It is that KCC’s Counter Fraud and audit machinery was already picking it up. Internal Audit’s 2024/25 annual report lists “Home to School Taxi Services” as a financial irregularity already reported to Governance and Audit in November 2024, March 2025 and July 2025. In other words, this issue had a paper trail before Reform’s efficiency project had barely got its boots on.

Then came the March 2025 Counter Fraud report, which said outright that “irregularities within the invoicing of Home to School transport by taxi companies” had increased referrals for invoicing for services not delivered. For April to August 2024 alone, KCC recorded 15 cases worth £29,649. The council said these were identified by checking invoices against school attendance, with overclaims clawed back and warnings or contract action available where behaviour did not change.

By July 2025, the annual Counter Fraud report said a further 10 home-to-school transport invoicing irregularities had been reported, bringing the total for 2024/25 to 18 and the total loss to just over £25,000. By November 2025, KCC was reporting a further 30 irregularities from April to September 2025, with savings of £36,459 identified. And now, from the report you have supplied, comes the latest round: a further 39 irregularities and £84,892 identified. The pattern is not of a problem being stamped out. It is of a known problem continuing to turn up in instalments.

That is where the political point bites. Reform can say, with some justification, that it inherited a council with longstanding control problems in SEND transport. That is fair enough. But it cannot very convincingly present itself as the gang of fearless waste-hunters if, after months of DOLGE fanfare and a declared focus on home-to-school transport, the fresh findings are still being generated by Counter Fraud reporting and routine verification checks rather than by some obvious Reform UK DOLGE breakthrough.

And that is the nub of it. This was a known issue. Reform said it would bear down on known issues. Yet the public trail still shows irregularities surfacing after Reform took office and after its DOLGE team had home-to-school transport in its sights. On the evidence now in public, the team doing the useful digging was Counter Fraud, not DOLGE. If DOLGE is making a decisive difference here, KCC’s own papers have not yet shown it.

That leaves Reform-led County Hall with a question sharper than any efficiency slogan. If this issue was truly under the microscope, why did KCC’s Counter Fraud Team, not Reform UK’s loudly touted DOLGE operation led by former KCC officer turned councillor Chris Hespe (pictured), keep being the one to find more?

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent