KCC DOLGE: Reform UK’s Waste Hunt Finds “No Obvious Wasteful Spending” After £22.7m Overspend

Reform arrived at County Hall promising to hunt waste. Then KCC’s own DOLGE paper said the job was to check “there was no obvious wasteful spending”. That’s the sentence that changes the whole story, because after the big stick, the forensic-sounding audit squad and the tough talk, Kent County Council still ended 2025/26 £22.7m over budget and had to reach into reserves to make the books balance.

DOLGE came in with its boots on.

Not softly.

Not quietly.

Not like some polite savings group with a spreadsheet, a lukewarm coffee and a plate of council biscuits.

On 26 May 2025, less than a month after Reform took control of Kent County Council, a letter headed “D.O.G.E Request for Co-operation” was sent to KCC. It said the new administration had resolved to review the council’s financial management, procurement activity and governance, and that Kent Council had appointed a D.O.G.E team of software engineers, data analysts and forensic auditors to carry out the work.

The letter wanted access to council documents, reports, records, finance data, procurement data, audit data, contract data, major procurement correspondence, internal investigations, whistleblowing reports and anything else that might help. Then came the line officers will not have missed: if anyone resisted, Reform said it was ready to pass a council motion to compel co-operation and would consider obstruction of councillors’ duties to be “gross misconduct”.

Gross misconduct isn’t a friendly phrase.

It doesn’t mean “please help us when you’ve got a spare minute”.

In workplace terms, gross misconduct is the sort of language that can sit on the road to dismissal. So no, the letter did not literally say “you’ll be sacked”. But it did put dismissal-level wording on the table, and everybody around County Hall would have known exactly what sort of stick was being waved.

Now jump to the paper going before KCC’s Policy and Resources Cabinet Committee tomorrow, 2 July 2026, and the mood music has changed.

The paper says the Department for Local Government Efficiency was created in May 2025 to provide “a new pair of eyes” on KCC’s budget, interrogate every line of council spending, check whether money fitted the new administration’s priorities, and make sure “there was no obvious wasteful spending”. That phrase matters. In fact, it matters more than almost anything else in the paper.

“There was no obvious wasteful spending.”

Read that again.

“There was no obvious wasteful spending.”

That’s not the same as saying DOLGE found a mountain of waste. It isn’t the same as saying officers had hidden millions in daft contracts, pointless schemes or pet projects. It isn’t even saying obvious waste was uncovered. It says the work was to make sure “there was no obvious wasteful spending”. That’s a check. It isn’t a trophy.

And that raises the question sitting in the middle of the room with its muddy boots still on.

If “there was no obvious wasteful spending”, what exactly was the big stick for?

Because KCC’s DOLGE paper doesn’t give residents a list of obvious waste found and cut. It doesn’t say: here are the contracts binned, here are the consultants stopped, here are the schemes scrapped, here are the pounds saved that would not otherwise have been saved. Instead, it says DOLGE made input into budget monitoring, worked with procurement, oversaw the first Commercial Strategy, worked with adult social care, helped introduce spending controls, supported debt reduction, identified savings options, backed a local government reorganisation option, and proposed committee restructuring.

Some of that may be useful.

Some of it may even be necessary.

But it’s council management, not a grand discovery of hidden waste. As “there was no obvious wasteful spending”, then DOLGE wasn’t really finding obvious waste. It was pushing savings, tightening controls, leaning on budgets and trying to make the council machinery behave itself. That’s a very different story from the early talk of forensic auditors and full access to the books.

The rebrand tells its own story too.

The “Department for Local Government Efficiency” is now becoming “Delivery of Local Government Efficiency”. Same acronym. Different animal. The Department bit has quietly gone. The Delivery bit has arrived. The hard-edged unit is being softened into a council-wide strategy, with the paper saying DOLGE will be owned by Cabinet Members, other administration members and staff, with senior staff involved.

That’s handy, politically.

A department can be asked what it found.

A unit can be asked what it cost.

A small group can be asked who was responsible.

But a “delivery” concept spread across the whole council is harder to pin down. Everyone owns it. Which can also mean nobody quite owns the awkward bits when the numbers don’t behave.

The paper says DOLGE will not be about “wielding a chainsaw or a salami-slicer”, but about sensible, pragmatic solutions. Fine. Councils should not be run with chainsaws. But that’s a long way from the letter that warned of gross misconduct if officers obstructed the work. One year it’s big-stick politics. The next year it’s collaborative culture change.

And still the phrase keeps coming back.

“There was no obvious wasteful spending.”

If that was the test, then the public needs to see the workings. What was checked? What was found? What wasn’t found? What was genuinely saved? What was already in the budget anyway? Without that, DOLGE starts to look less like a waste-cutting machine and more like a political badge stuck on ordinary budget work.

Then there’s the inheritance argument.

The DOLGE paper says Reform inherited an “incredibly challenging financial position” from the outgoing Conservative administration. It lists £732m of long-term debt, £84,000 a day in debt interest, a 2025/26 savings and increased income target of £121m, a previous overspend of more than £20m, and ballooning adult social care spend. That’s serious stuff. Nobody sensible should pretend KCC was handed over as a neat little household budget with every bill paid and a tenner left in the jar.

But there’s a catch.

The 2025/26 budget was set in February 2025, before Reform took control in May. It was a Conservative budget, and Roger Gough knew it was grim. At the budget meeting he said: “There is no cavalry coming over the hill. There is only the hill.” KCC’s own news report said the budget continued transformation and savings, made progress towards nearly £20m in policy savings, and included significant savings and income amounting to £96m to balance the budget.

That matters because DOLGE’s new paper claims the authority made “in excess of £100 million savings” in its first year. But KCC’s outturn report says the 2025/26 budget already included £99.0m of savings and additional income, with a further £22.5m of undelivered savings from the previous year added in, taking the total requirement to £121.5m. KCC then achieved £98.6m of savings and additional income, including £3.3m of alternative savings.

So let’s not dress that up as magic.

KCC delivered most of a savings programme that was already baked into the budget before Reform got the keys to County Hall. That’s not nothing. But it isn’t the same as DOLGE marching in and finding £100m of fresh waste under the carpet. And again, if “there was no obvious wasteful spending”, the claim needs careful handling.

The bottom line is less flattering.

KCC’s outturn report says the council ended 2025/26 with a £22.7m overspend, including £1.1m of roll-forwards. Roll-forwards are spending commitments carried into the next year. The report says the overspend represents 1.5% of the overall net revenue budget and must be funded from General Fund reserves. In plain English, the day-to-day budget did not balance, so the council had to dip into its rainy-day money.

That’s the bit Kent residents will understand.

Not “dynamic process”.

Not “strategic areas”.

Not “core principles”.

They will understand this: Reform came in promising to hunt waste, KCC’s own paper says the job included checking “there was no obvious wasteful spending”, and the year still ended with £22.7m coming out of reserves to balance the books.

Adult social care is where the bill really bit.

KCC’s outturn report says Adult Social Care and Health had a £42.9m overspend. Long-term adult social care alone was £46.7m over budget, partly offset by other areas. The report says £20.7m of the adult social care overspend was linked to savings not being achieved, with another £22.2m due to other service pressures. In normal language, more care was needed, care cost more than expected, and some planned savings did not arrive.

That’s not a few posh biscuits in a meeting room.

It isn’t some officer ordering too many staplers.

It’s older people’s care, homecare, residential care, complex needs and the awkward truth that statutory services don’t disappear just because the budget would like them to. This is why the phrase “there was no obvious wasteful spending” is so important. The pressure wasn’t mainly a cartoon version of council waste. It was care, demand, cost and savings that did not fully land.

To be fair, KCC did introduce spending controls.

The Revenue and Capital Budget Monitoring Outurn Report for 2025/2026 , which went before KCC’s Reform UK led Cabinet, on the 25 June 2026, says recruitment needed approval, requisitions were reviewed, and managers who wanted agency staff for more than three months had to submit a business case. It also says the position improved by just under £14m compared with quarter three. That’s better than doing nothing. But improving an overspend isn’t the same as wiping it out. If you were heading for a bigger hole and ended up with a £22.7m hole, you are still in a hole.

And that brings us back to Cllr Linden Kemkaran’s promise.

In her first leader’s speech at County Hall, Kemkaran said Reform would “simply put the people of Kent at the heart of everything we do”. It’s a warm line. It sounds good in the chamber. But Kent residents don’t live inside warm lines. They live with council tax bills, care worries, SEND delays, transport cuts, potholes, service pressures and a council that still had to use reserves to cover the gap.

If DOLGE is really about putting taxpayers’ money to better use, then the public deserves a proper ledger.

Not just “we made savings”.

Not just “we inherited a mess”.

Not just “there was no obvious wasteful spending”.

A proper ledger would say what DOLGE found, what it stopped, what was genuinely new, what was already in the Conservative-set budget, what did not work, and why KCC still overspent by £22.7m.

That’s what the Policy and Resources Cabinet Committee should be asking on 2 July 2026.

Because this paper isn’t just a bit of harmless admin. It asks the committee to consider and endorse, or make recommendations on, the proposed Cabinet decision to approve and adopt the DOLGE strategy. Cabinet is then due to take the decision on 22 July 2026. This is the moment the big stick gets tidied up, renamed, softened and folded into the council’s normal machinery.

DOLGE may have done useful work.

It may have tightened controls.

It may have helped slow the overspend.

It may have made senior officers and Cabinet Members look harder at the bills.

But that’s not the same as finding a hidden mountain of waste. And it’s definitely not the same as balancing the books.

So no, DOLGE isn’t dead.

It has been renamed.

It has been softened.

It has been spread around the building.

And the sentence that sticks hardest is still sitting there in Reform UK KCC’s own paper: “there was no obvious wasteful spending”.

That’s the problem.

Because Reform started with a big stick and a waste-hunting promise. A year later, KCC’s own paperwork says the job included checking “there was no obvious wasteful spending”, the Department has become Delivery, and the council still had to raid the reserves piggy bank to cover a £22.7m hole.

That’s not putting taxpayers’ money to better use.

That’s telling the people of Kent you have got the household budget under control, then quietly lifting the lid on the emergency tin because the bills still beat the wages.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent