On the 7th May 2026, East Sussex County Council holds elections that were cancelled twice by the political establishment and restored only after Reform UK won a High Court challenge.
These elections matter more than most. Whoever wins will shape the transition to the new Sussex-wide unitary authority and decide who is held accountable for fourteen years of financial mismanagement, £211 million in debt, council tax raised to its legal maximum, and roads in a condition no resident of East Sussex should have to accept.
Our leaflet – the one landing through your door – sets out our plan: fix the council finances, cut the waste, fix the roads for good, restore democracy, and put community needs first. Every word of it is backed by verifiable figures and a team of candidates with the professional background to deliver them.
Reform UK is fielding eight candidates across the Bexhill and Battle constituency. Each is standing for one reason: to fix the county council. Not to add another title to a list of existing council positions. Not to accumulate mandates across multiple tiers of government. Just this – one role, one focus, full commitment to their community.
“These are community builders, engineers, business owners, veterans, and financial professionals. People who have spent their careers delivering results. They are standing for county council because East Sussex deserves better management than it has received.”
That is what sets this team apart. When you look across the candidate field in East Sussex, you will find career councillors, many of whom also who hold elected district council positions and some even hold town council seats simultaneously too, now seeking yet another paid role in local government. You will find the same familiar faces and the same familiar promises. Our candidates are doing one job. They are asking for the mandate to do it properly, with complete focus, for the people of East Sussex.
Fourteen Years. A Financial Crisis. Now They Want Another Term
Before introducing our team, it is worth being clear about what they are standing to fix – and who is responsible for it. East Sussex County Council has been under Conservative control for fourteen years. During that time, the Conservative Party also ran the national government. For fourteen years, the Conservatives had every opportunity to fix the structural problems in adult social care funding that every expert and every councillor knew were coming.
Andrew Dilnot handed them a fully costed social care reform plan in 2011. It was shelved. Numerous Conservative prime ministers. Fourteen years. Zero structural reform. The social care crisis now consuming county council budgets across England – including East Sussex – did not have to happen. It was a choice. Repeated, year after year, by the same party that is now asking you to trust them with another term.
The financial consequences are visible in every figure on our leaflet. East Sussex County Council has a deficit of £211 million. A further £70 million is being borrowed in 2026/27 just to cover running costs – not to build anything, not to open any new service, just to keep the lights on. That borrowing carries around £3 million a year in interest: money that cannot go to roads, care, or anything residents actually need. Council tax has been raised to the legally permitted maximum in consecutive years. Roads are deteriorating, with East Sussex paying out among the highest compensation amounts in England and Wales to drivers whose vehicles have been damaged by potholes.
But the failure does not stop at the county council. Many of the candidates standing against our team in these elections already serve on the County Council, Rother District Council or on Bexhill Town Council – some on two of them simultaneously. We do not question their intentions. We do question their record. Rother District Council has been brought to a financial knife-edge under their watch, some driven by idealistic intent, some by very poor financial judgment and a lack of economic understanding. Its finances reflect the same pattern of poor decisions and weak management that has defined the county council: failed loans, financial mismanagement, and a planning, environmental, and highway system that is creaking under the weight of those failures.
And then there is the Bexhill Town Council. In 2026, the Town Council proposed a council tax rise of 120 per cent. Not 5 per cent. Not 10 per cent. One hundred and twenty per cent. Reform UK challenged it. We forced a reversal – helped by town council’s own conduct failed to comply with its governance obligations and the rules of this country. The people responsible for that proposal are, in some cases, the same people now asking residents to trust them with a county council seat.
We are not asking voters to take our word for any of this. These are public records. The debt figures are published. The Town Council’s proposed tax rise is a matter of public record. The reversal we forced is documented. The question for the 7th of May is simple: do the people who created these problems deserve the opportunity to design what comes next? We do not think they do.
“Fourteen years of Conservative government. Fourteen years of Conservative county council control. The social care crisis, the financial crisis, the planning failures – none of this was inevitable. It was a choice. And it is a choice that residents of East Sussex are now paying for.”
On the Greens: Fine Words, No Plan
The Green Party will stand in many of these divisions presenting themselves as the environmental conscience of local politics. They will oppose development, champion the countryside, and speak warmly about community. These are not wrong instincts. Reform UK shares these values. But good instincts are not the same as a credible plan. And in local government, the gap between the two costs residents money, services, and countryside.
Here is the reality. The draft Rother District local plan – championed and shaped under the Liberal Democrats, who hold the Cabinet Member for Planning position – proposes hundreds of high density, cramped new homes in countryside locations across our sensitive countryside, including large housing allocations in Bexhill, Battle, Flimwell, Hurst Green, and Robertsbridge and across the county. Development on sites that many residents and conservation groups believe should never be built on, and all within the High Weald National Landscape.
The Greens have presented themselves as the party of environmental protection. Despite being part of the District Council leadership cabinet, along with the Independents, Labour, Conservatives, and the rest of the Liberal Democrats – they have done nothing to stop this plan, indeed they have actively supported it, some even in their leaflets for this election. They cannot explain how they would fund the infrastructure the development requires. They have not set out the difficult financial trade-offs that any credible environmental commitment at council level demands.
This is the pattern. Candidates make promises on planning and the environment that sound compelling on a leaflet but come without the financial rigour, the operational detail, or the honest acknowledgement of the constraints any councillor actually faces. Protecting the High Weald National Landscape from inappropriate development is a serious commitment that requires a serious plan: how you use the statutory consultee role, which applications you challenge, on what grounds, and what evidence you deploy. Saying you care about the countryside is not a plan. It is a starting point.
Our candidates have that plan. East Sussex County Council is a statutory consultee on all large planning applications in the district. A Reform county councillor has a formal, legally recognised role to object on grounds of road capacity, drainage, school places, and highway safety. That is not a campaign promise. It is a specific, deployable power that our candidates – with backgrounds in construction, infrastructure, and finance – are uniquely placed to use. The difference between Reform and the Greens on planning is not values. It is competence and honesty about how the system works.
“Saying you care about the countryside or over-development is not a plan. Our candidates have a plan: the statutory consultee role, the professional background to use it, and the financial rigour to explain what it costs and what it requires.”
Meet the Team
Eight candidates. Eight divisions. Eight different sets of skills, experiences, and community ties – and one shared commitment to bringing competent, honest, and genuinely local representation to East Sussex County Council.
Donald Walmsley
Standing in: Bexhill North
Donald Walmsley has lived in Bexhill since 2014 and spent more than thirty years working in secondary schools – in the community, with families, watching the pressures on public services from the inside. He helped found the local Reform UK branch because he believed, after years of watching both Conservative and Labour governments make promise after promise and deliver nothing, that East Sussex needed a genuine alternative. Bexhill North is the division where that frustration is most concentrated: a former Conservative stronghold whose voters have concluded that fourteen years of the same management is enough. Donald is standing to give them a practical, focused representative who will hold the council to account for every pound it spends.
Victoria Carson
Standing in: Bexhill South
Victoria Carson worked as a production accountant, managing large budgets on film and television productions across multiple countries. She went on to become a financial controller, supervising other accountants through government audits to Department of Culture, Media and Sport qualification standards. Years ago she chose to make Bexhill home, settling in Cooden. As a member of the Rother Forum – which connects residents directly with local GPs, the police, and community charities – Victoria understands what the council’s financial failures mean in practice: social care waiting lists, a seafront that deserves better investment, and a town centre whose potential is being squandered. Bexhill South has the most service-dependent electorate in the constituency. It deserves the most financially rigorous candidate. Victoria is that candidate.
Martin Kenward
Standing in: Bexhill East
Martin Kenward was born in Bexhill and returned to East Bexhill after completing military service. He has spent his career in the private sector – as a senior manager for a large utility company, overseeing the kind of infrastructure that communities depend on every day. He has previously served as both a district and county councillor, which means he knows the system from the inside and understands exactly where it fails the people it is supposed to serve. Bexhill East is the most economically pressured division in Bexhill: a community that has felt ignored, where the lowest turnout in the constituency reflects a deep disengagement from politics. Martin’s message to East Bexhill residents is straightforward: he was born here, he lives here, and he is not going anywhere. New housing is arriving in East Bexhill without the roads, schools, and services to support it. That has to change.
Pete Morley
Standing in: Bexhill West
Pete Morley has spent thirty years building and running businesses – managing budgets, creating jobs, and delivering results. For twenty-five of those years, his business life has been rooted in the Bexhill community. He is a member of the Bexhill Chamber of Commerce, employs local people, and has raised thousands of pounds for St Michael’s Hospice and the UK Sepsis Trust. Bexhill West was the safest Conservative seat in Bexhill in 2021. It has since become a Reform UK target, driven by an electorate of professional homeowners who have watched the council lurch from one financial crisis to another and concluded that they would not accept this standard of management in their own lives. They are right. Pete knows what competent financial management looks like because he has practised it for three decades. He is standing because residents who manage their own finances carefully deserve a council that does the same.
Austin Henderson
Standing in: Battle & Crowhurst
Austin Henderson served his country in the Army. He now manages complex construction projects across the South East – delivering infrastructure on time and on budget, which means he knows exactly what adequate road capacity, drainage, and school provision look like, and exactly what it costs a community when planning approvals ignore them. Battle and Crowhurst is a division that cares deeply about its countryside, its village character, and its identity. As a new father, Austin has a personal stake in the future of this community. He is standing because new housing developments around Battle are arriving without the infrastructure they require, and because the county council’s statutory consultee role gives a Reform county councillor the formal power to object when applications fall short. He intends to use that power. Every time.
Daniel Lach
Standing in: Brede Valley & Marsham
Dan Lach has lived in Etchingham for thirty-five years. He has watched rural lanes deteriorate every winter, seen flooding cause damage that goes unfunded, and experienced what it means when a county council treats rural communities as an afterthought. His career has taken him through corporate finance at the highest level – Deloitte, Barclays, multi-country international work – which means he knows how to read a budget, identify where money is being misallocated, and make the case in numbers. In Brede Valley and Marsham, that matters. The farming and village community here has moved away from the Conservatives precisely because fourteen years of promises on rural roads, flooding, and fair funding have delivered nothing. Dan supports local farmers, pubs, and small businesses – not as a political position, but because after thirty-five years in Etchingham, they are his neighbours.
Jonathan Jennings
Standing in: Northern Rother
Jonathan Jennings has made East Sussex his home for twenty-three years. He served in the Armed Forces and now works as an electrical engineer, managing infrastructure projects that deliver real energy savings for NHS hospitals and schools – applying professional rigour to public sector budgets every working day. For nearly ten years Jonathan ran Beaver and Cub Scout groups and managed a Scout activity centre: organising, leading, and delivering for his community long before he entered the political arena. You will find him walking at Bewl Water or Bedgebury – landscapes he has known for more than two decades. Northern Rother is a genuinely winnable division for Reform. Jonathan is the right candidate to win it: rooted, credible, practical, and entirely focused on this one role rather than accumulating positions across multiple tiers of local government.
Mark Ashdown
Standing in: North West Rother
Mark Ashdown lives in Burwash Weald, in the heart of the countryside he is standing to represent. He comes from construction – which means he knows what proper roads, drainage, and infrastructure look like, and he can see when planning applications are approved without them. In Rother North West, the draft local plan is proposing 150 homes at Hurst Green and large allocations across north-west Rother – without the infrastructure to support them. The Lib Dem candidate’s own leaflet features Teresa Killean, the Lib Dem Cabinet Member for Planning at Rother District Council, who is responsible for driving those proposals. As county councillor, Mark will use Reform UK’s statutory consultee role to formally object to every planning application that lacks adequate road capacity, drainage, and school provision. That is not a promise. It is what the role allows – and he will use it.
What Makes This Team Different
Read those eight biographies again and notice what is not there. None of these candidates is a career councillor. None of them came through a party machine. None of them has spent years moving from one elected position to another, accumulating titles and building a political career.
These are Engineers. Community Advocates. Business owners. Builders. Accountants. Veterans. People who have spent their working lives managing budgets, running organisations, and being accountable for results – not accountable to a party whip, but accountable to the people who depend on them every day.
“These candidates are not asking to add county councillor to an existing portfolio of elected roles. They are asking for the chance to do one job properly, with complete focus, for their community.”
Compare that to some of the other candidates standing in these divisions. In Bexhill West, an independent candidate is already serving as both a Rother District Councillor and a Bexhill Town Councillor while seeking a third elected role. Across the constituency, the established parties are fielding candidates whose primary qualification is party loyalty. Our candidates’ primary qualification are years running businesses, managing large budgets, delivering construction infrastructure across the South East, or leading Scouts for nearly a decade in the community.
Together, this team covers every division in the Bexhill and Battle constituency. They share intelligence, coordinate on issues that cross division boundaries – particularly the planning and infrastructure failures that are damaging rural and suburban communities alike – and they will work as a Reform group at county level to formally challenge planning applications and budget decisions that fail residents. Individually they are strong. As a team, they are uniquely positioned to deliver the kind of coordinated, professional, accountability-focused representation that East Sussex County Council has never seen.
Why This Election Matters More Than Most
These elections were cancelled twice. Conservative and Labour councillors both voted to deny East Sussex residents the right to hold them to account. Reform UK took that to the High Court, won the case, and had the elections restored. Labour conceded and agreed to pay our legal costs.
The people who created the financial crisis at East Sussex County Council were hoping to avoid this vote. They did not succeed. On 7 May, East Sussex residents get to decide who builds the new councils that will govern this area for decades to come. The question is simple: do you want the same people who caused the crisis to design the replacement? Or do you want a new team – people with real skills, real accountability, and a genuine focus on fixing what has been broken?
“We went to court to give you this vote back. Now we’re asking you to use it.”
Every vote matters. In marginal divisions, the difference between a Reform county councillor and four more years of the same management could be a handful of votes. If you live in any of these divisions, make sure you vote – and make sure the people you know vote too.
Please consider voting Reform UK on the 7th May 2026.
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