Reform take on county council leadership

Reform UK councillor Andy Woolley has been elected as the new leader of East Sussex County Council.

Reform won 22 seats, the most of any party, at the recent local elections.

The party will now run the 50-seat council as a minority leadership.

"The people of this county did not send us here to manage decline, they sent us here to change it," said Woolley, who grew up in Chatham in Kent.

Woolley is a newly-elected councillor for Heathfield and Mayfield, where he has served on Heathfield and Waldron Parish Council for 16 years, including six as chair.

He was elected as council leader with 25 votes, of which 21 were cast by Reform councillors and the remaining came from the council's three Conservative councillors and its sole independent, Stephen Shing.

The authority's other 24 present councillors, made up of 13 from the Liberal Democrats and 11 from the Green Party, had voted for Lib Dem group leader Kathryn Field, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

One councillor, Reform's Neil Cleaver from Hailsham New Town, was not at the meeting.

Addressing the council for the first time, Woolley described himself as "the kid who missed the 11+" and said he left school during his A-levels to take a job in banking.

He went on to be a business director and consultant for 40 years.

Woolley spoke about growing up in a family with a single mother and how they would pay into a Christmas savings pot each week in order to afford presents come December.

He also named his cabinet for the year, with Pete Morley as deputy leader and the cabinet member for economy, Stephen Chapman as lead member for resources and climate change, and Mark Estcourt as lead member for adult social care and health.

In addition, Daniel Bradley is lead member for children and families, Paul Soane is lead member for education, and Peter Griffiths is lead member for transport and environment.

Meanwhile, Martin Kenward, Reform councillor for Bexhill East, was elected chair of the council.

He will have the deciding vote when there is any tied vote, which already held sway in electing some of the committee chairs.

However, the makeup of the cabinet drew criticism from Lib Dem councillor Sarah Osborne, who said: "Homogenous groups are prone to groupthink and an all-male leadership contradicts commitment to equality and inclusivity, which can lead to [a] blind spot in policy."

Woolley replied saying he had instead "appointed women to a lot of the committees, because that is where a lot of the groundwork is done" and because those councillors could give him and others "direction about what they are seeing" at a grassroots level.

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