REFORM chairman Edward Dillingham said the newly-elected councillors will not go in ‘all guns blazing’ at the town hall - and admits that ‘transparency’ is key moving forward.
The party swept to victory in this year’s elections with a huge majority overall.
From a standing start they received a huge 42 seats as Labour’s hold on the town hall dwindled to a mere 11 seats.
Edward said that the number of seats they received was at the ‘top end’ of their predictions and admitted that their historic win was partly down to the lack of support for Keir Starmer.
He told the Chronicle: “You go knocking on doors and it’s the same thing - it’s Starmer.
“The second one is, obviously, just locally.
“It’s that all the money gets spent in the town centre.
“There’s only so long you can kick locals before they are just done with you.
“Then put that with Starmer and it’s the perfect storm.”
Councillor Dillingham admits that the new Reform council will not go in all guns blazing - but key issues such as money and fixing the roads are high on their priority list.
He added: “I’ve looked at Barnsley Council for years and I cannot understand where all the money goes.
“They give you these numbers, but it’s like, how the hell have you spent this much whilst in debt?
“It doesn’t add up.
“I want transparency.
“We need to sort out the money first - then we need to sort out the basics and get the council in order.
“I want a page on our website that will say along the lines of ‘we found this much money - £200,000 was spent on x’.
“I want to air all the laundry because the people need to know where all this money has gone.
“Because it’s us that’s going to have to pay it back - it’s not those who are now out.
“When we look at the books and figure stuff out we’ll start making plans.
“But it’s not going to be all guns blazing I can tell you that much.
“Once we find a problem we’ll deal with it.
“We’ve had ideas float around of things about how to sort the roads.
“The JCB Pothole Pro and that sort of stuff.
“There’s simple solutions to a lot of these problems that you can implement quite quickly.
“It’s better than whacking a bit of tarmac on it.
“It’s a case that there’s some things we will be able to act quickly on but there’s others that are gonna take more time I’m afraid.
“But we’ll be working our backsides off.”
Only two of the new Reform councillors - Andy Gillis and Gill Carr - have any experience of working in the role, meaning 40 are going in blind.
But Coun Dillingham thinks that may be a positive.
“I think it’s a good thing,” he said.
“We’ve got people from every walk of life.
“We’ve got architects, business owners, people who work for massive businesses, builders and electricians.
“I can sit all those people in the room and the ideas they come out with are awesome.
“Put them all in a room and they’re going to smash it.
“I’m proper buzzing for this because I cannot stand the thought of being run by politicians.
“Look where it’s got us.”
