On the evening of 23rd April 2026, Reform UK’s Bexhill and Battle Branch marked St. George’s Day in style, welcoming over sixty members and supporters to a dinner at the Cooden Beach Golf Club, that was, by any measure, one of the branch’s most memorable gatherings to date.
The evening had an exceptional headline guest: Linden Kemkaran, Reform UK’s Leader of Kent County Council – one of the most significant Reform UK elected figures in the country, and someone with direct, hard-won experience of what it means to take control of a large county council from the established parties and actually deliver for residents. Her presence gave the evening a particular sense of occasion, and she did not disappoint.
Cutting Through the Spin
Linden’s address was the centrepiece of the pre-dinner proceedings, and it drew the room in from the very first moment. With the East Sussex County Council elections now upon us, her account of Reform UK’s first year running Kent County Council was both practically instructive and enormously heartening.
With wit and clarity, she took attendees through example after example of how the media and the opposition parties had attempted to spin Reform UK’s record in Kent – and then delivered the real version of events, which, as she drily noted, turned out to be considerably less dramatic than the headlines had suggested. The room delighted in hearing the facts behind the fiction.
But it was her account of what they actually found when they took office that proved most striking – and most relevant to what faces the incoming Reform UK group at East Sussex County Council. Linden described the astonishment she and her cabinet felt when, upon arriving and choosing to spend time in the council offices – day after day, working alongside officers and understanding how things actually ran – they were told by council officers that the councillors before them had barely set foot in the building. The council, she explained, had effectively been run by officers, with elected members largely absent from the day-to-day workings of the institution they were supposed to oversee. Reform UK changed that immediately.
Stopping the Gravy Train
Perhaps the most eye-opening section of Linden’s talk concerned the council’s supplier relationships. Reform UK’s incoming administration discovered that a number of long-standing suppliers – some holding multi-million pound contracts providing care services across the South East – had grown accustomed to being handed what amounted to blank cheques. When the new team began scrutinising contracts properly, they found that Kent was being charged significantly more than neighbouring councils for equivalent services.
They spent months holding suppliers to account, calling out over-inflated contracts and making clear that the era of unchallenged billing was over. Among the more startling examples was a contract charging exorbitant rates simply to take elderly residents out for a cup of coffee – a cost that no reasonable scrutiny had ever apparently questioned. Another example involved academy schools attempting to leverage their position, seeking to extract excessive funding for unnecessary new facilities from the council in exchange for admitting students from their own catchment area – a form of institutional blackmail that the new administration refused to entertain.
The parallels with what awaits Reform UK at East Sussex County Council were clear to everyone in the room. East Sussex has faced its own severe financial pressures, with spiralling costs in adult social care and children’s services, and a council that has borrowed heavily just to balance its budget – a situation that has developed under the watch of both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The questions of how council contracts have been managed, whether East Sussex residents are getting value for money from major suppliers, and whether elected members have truly been holding officers and spending to proper scrutiny – these are now live questions, and Reform UK candidates are ready to ask them.
Candidates in the Hot Seat: A Panel Q&A That Delivered
After dinner, the evening moved into what many attendees described as the highlight of the night: a panel question and answer session featuring our East Sussex County Council candidates, joined by Linden herself. Members had been submitting their questions throughout the evening, and the result was a substantive and candid exchange.
Linden used her time on the panel to offer advice both to candidates and to branch officers and supporters – grounded in the hard experience of having already done exactly what our candidates are now seeking to do. It was practical, generous and direct.
Candidates answered openly and plainly about the real challenges facing the county – from the financial pressures bearing down on adult social care and children’s services, to the management of the county’s waste and recycling system, to the introduction of the new food waste collection scheme and the questions it has raised about cost, practicality and communication with residents. There were no rehearsed non-answers. The room appreciated it.
A Branch in Fine Form
The evening ran late – a testament to the appetite in the room for the kind of genuine political conversation that is so rarely on offer. Guests enjoyed a hearty menu of steak and ale pie with chips and peas, or vegan sausages with mash, followed by sticky toffee pudding and custard and coffee, with the paid bar doing brisk trade throughout.
A fundraising raffle with spot prizes added to the atmosphere and raised welcome funds towards our election expenses – a reminder that behind every candidate on the doorstep is a branch working hard to make it possible.
The Branch committee thanks Linden Kemkaran warmly for making the journey from Kent to be with us, and thanks every member and supporter who attended for making it the evening it was.
East Sussex is ready for Reform.
