What now for county council after shock Reform win?

Early on Friday morning, before a single result was actually confirmed, my phone started to buzz with sources from various parties telling me their predictions from before polling day - that Reform UK would gain a handful of Nottinghamshire seats - might have been wide of the mark.

The only party which had been backing Reform to win enough to take control of the county council was Reform themselves.

As the day went on, their confidence was proven to be well-placed, but even they were surprised by the scale of their victory - "I had to pinch myself", as one successful candidate told me.

But with a new party now set to take control of the levers of a council that's responsible for everything from social care to road maintenance, there are a lot of questions about what exactly they'll do with those levers.

For one thing, we don't yet know who the council leader will be.

Other parties came into the election with group leaders who, had their party won enough seats, would have become leader of the council.

Reform, on the other hand, had just the one incumbent - John Doddy.

As a de facto spokesperson, he told me on Friday that Reform councillors would pick a leader from among their ranks "in the next 24 hours".

That doesn't appear to have happened, and now we're told to expect a group meeting next Monday during which there should be a leadership vote.

When asked, Doddy didn't deny his interest in the role, but added he didn't expect to be the only candidate.

"I have every expectation that when I say 'who would like to lead the group?', I could get 30 hands going up," he said.

"These are newly elected, ambitious people who want to make the most of their opportunity, so although I've got twelve years knowledge and I'm the most experienced individual there, I do not expect to have a free run."

"I expect it'll be more like the Grand National."

The other name I have most often heard linked to the leadership is Mick Barton - a former Mansfield Independent councillor who joined Reform last year.

He's been a Mansfield district councillor for several years, and is the current leader of the Reform group on that authority, but won a seat in the Mansfield East division of the county council last week by a comfortable margin.

Until there is a leader in place, it's somewhat harder to judge exactly what a Reform-led council will look like, but there have been clues from some of the party's senior figures.

The Reform MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, has told the BBC the first thing they will do is "look at where the money's being spent and see what savings we can make".

"They've got big budgets, millions of pounds on these net zero teams. We need to look at that closely, scrap some of these roles and use this money to spend on frontline services."

He also suggested most council workers will not be allowed to work from home.

"You're employed to work from an office. It's taxpayer's money, they pay your wages," he said.

"They need to be in the office, they need to be mixing with staff, they need to be monitored, some of them."

"Some of them can work alone, and there's always going to be a case for the odd one to work from home if they've got some problems at home, but the vast majority should be in the workplace doing the job they're paid to do."

Whoever gets the leadership job, everything will have to be confirmed in time for the first full council meeting of the new administration, scheduled for 22 May.

Two council seats are yet to be contested following the death of Mansfield North candidate Karen Seymour, with a by-election set to take place in June.

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