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Sean Matthews, who became leader of Lincolnshire County Council in 2025, said he had shared an IT contract with Yusuf, who was Reform chairman at the time, soon after he was elected. 

Speaking on the Reform Party podcast earlier this month, Matthews said: “A lot of the work that we have is contracted out, and some of those contracts are ridiculous. Some of them are 25-year contracts.”

He continued: “When I took over last year, there was a new IT contract waiting to be signed and…the contract was put in front of me, and it was an 11-year contract in IT, and you go, this is not something I’m about to sign.

“In fact, I sent it off to Zia Yusuf and said, ‘look, am I being crazy here, is this contract ok?’ He said ‘leave it with me, I’ll have a look at it’.”

Matthews went on to claim that Yusuf “had a look at it” but, in the meantime, he had looked through it himself and come to the conclusion that it was “a lot of money” and “a long time”.

The council leader said he had persuaded the company offering the contract to make some changes, introducing a no-break clause and “they saved us over the period of those seven years, over £20m”.

After Matthews appeared on the podcast, PoliticsHome understands that his comments were raised with the council. As a result, the case was referred to the Council’s Information Assurance Team to be reviewed.

Nigel Farage’s party went into the 2025 local elections pledging to cut council waste through what it described as its own ‘Doge’ (Department of Government Efficiency) unit. 

Inspired by Elon Musk and the Donald Trump administration, and led at the time by Yusuf, the party said this cost-cutting drive would free up money for Reform-run local authorities to lower council taxes.

The plan ran into GDPR issues, with questions raised over what data Reform councillors were legally able to share with senior party figures. Reform-run councils have also been forced to raise council tax, though the party argues they are smaller increases than those implemented by other political parties.

A Reform UK spokesman said: “Reform has a wealth of businesslike experience and we support our council leaders wherever we can. We do that in the right way, with the right boundaries, and our councils have achieved huge savings and efficiencies.  

“We will not take any pathetic lectures from bureaucrats or journalists who whinge if we don’t save money, then whinge if we take action to save money. Reform UK are proven to be delivering better value for taxpayers.”

Lincolnshire County Council did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Lucas said that the party had made “the right decision” not to throw all of its resources at the Makerfield by-election (Alamy)

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“I have to say that the foot is about to be on the pedal for the mayoral, of course, now in Manchester to replace Andy Burnham,” she said in an interview with The House magazine.

“The Greens definitely will be throwing everything at that, and I would absolutely support them in so doing, and will be up there to do what I can to help.”

Speaking to The House following Andy Burnham’s landslide victory in Makerfield, Lucas, who was the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion for 14 years, said Zack Polanski’s Greens had made “the right decision” not to run a full-throttle campaign there.

Responding to suggestions last month that the Greens would properly contest the by-election in Makerfield, Lucas posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “I hope this isn’t true.

“There are times when it’s more important to put country before party. This is one of them. Burnham’s longstanding commitment to a fairer voting system could transform our democracy and counter [the] dire threat of a Reform UK government.”

Lucas, who was the party’s first MP, told The House that the Green candidate in Makerfield, Sarah Wakefield, “did a good job, and she did us proud, but it wasn’t the kind of campaign where the whole party was absolutely throwing all of our resources at it, and that was the right decision”.

Wakefield won just 308 votes (0.68 per cent of the vote share) after the party was widely seen to have counted itself out of the contest.

Burnham cruised to a comfortable victory, securing almost 55 per cent of the vote and winning more votes than all other candidates combined.

He must now resign as the Mayor of Greater Manchester as the law forbids him from continuing with that role while also being an MP.

The election to choose Burnham’s successor will take place on 30 July, and Lucas believes the contest will be less like Makerfield and closer to the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, when Green candidate Hannah Spencer unseated Labour. 

“The Greens are out there to win as many seats as possible, and as I say, the next priority is the Manchester mayoral, and we think we’ve got a really good chance of winning that.

“We think that will be much more along the lines of Gorton and Denton than it was along the lines of Makerfield. I know Zack is going to be up there at the weekend getting ready to launch a campaign, so we’re taking it very seriously.”

Asked who she would like to see as the Green candidate in Greater Manchester, Lucas said that the party “have just such a wonderfully broad now set of really qualified, excellent candidates that I just want to see who’s putting their name in the ring”.

“I haven’t seen the full list yet, so I don’t doubt that we’ll come up with a really good person.”

The leader of the Green group on Trafford Council, Geraldine Coggins, is expected to be the party’s candidate, The New Statesman reported on Friday.

Commenting on the idea that the Greens could step aside for Labour in the mayoral election, Lucas said: “We certainly won’t be doing that.”

The election to choose Burnham’s replacement will use a more proportional voting system than first-past-the-post, in which voters express a first and second choice. If no candidate secures 50 per cent of the votes after the first round, then the top two candidates will be given the second preference votes from the defeated candidates.

A Green Party spokesperson said: “The Greens will be campaigning hard to win the by-election for the Greater Manchester Mayoralty and, as we showed in the Gorton and Denton by-election and local elections in the area, it is going to be a clear Greens vs Reform race in this election.”

The House magazine’s full interview with Caroline Lucas will be published in print and online in June.

19 June 2026. Andy Burnham speaks to supporters after the Makerfield by-election in Ashton in Makerfield. (Alamy)

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“It is our last chance to change, but we’re going to take it, aren’t we? We are going to take that opportunity, and we are going to lay out a new path for Britain,” said Burnham, who secured his return to the House of Commons by winning over 50 per cent of the vote on Thursday.

“We have an opportunity to turn the tide to make the country feel like it’s working again, to make people see that politics can make a positive difference, to make people feel hope again.”

Burnham, who must now resign as Greater Manchester mayor to take up his role as MP, comfortably defeated his closest rival, the Reform UK candidate Rob Kenyon, by 20 percentage points.

The by-election in the northwest of England has widely been described as one of the most consequential in British political history, with Burnham now expected to launch a bid to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister.

PoliticsHome reported on Friday that he is expected to meet with Labour MPs in Westminster on Monday as he prepares his push to enter No 10.

Starmer had today insisted he would fight any leadership contest, warning that he would not simply “walk away” after being elected nearly two years ago.

In a speech to supporters, Burnham called for an economy that “works for everybody” and the end of “trickle-down economics”, saying he wanted to see the renationalisation of key industries and the use of public procurement to reindustrialise Britain.

“You have to respond to what people here are saying. You have to do something to make life more affordable, to put more money in people’s pockets, to give people more breathing space again, so that they can have a better life.

“That’s what people were saying, and we must respond to that.

“We need an economy that works for everybody, not a few in far-off places from here, but an economy that works for people right here.”

He continued: “We do need to bring down water bills, energy bills, rail fares, just as we brought down bus fares in Greater Manchester to make life more affordable for people.”

The former health secretary said he would apply a “Makerfield test” and that if policies did not work for his constituency, they could not work at all.

He called for an education system less “dominated by the university route”, and on immigration vowed to bring an end to “HMO Britain”, whereby communities are not given a proper say over asylum accommodation in their areas.

“It’s not fair that they think that they can just operate like that and not hear the call of people here, the decent people here who always will do the right thing, the compassionate thing, but not when it’s unfair in terms of the way places like this are treated.”