REFORM UK leader Nigel Farage has been slammed for showing his “ignorance” in a broadcast, which was shown nationally last week.

Mr Farage told viewers that Cornwall Council is “top of the pops” when it comes to its daily interest bill.

Filmed arriving at a conference on a tractor, the Reform leader listed some of the worst council debt in the country, including Lincolnshire County Council which is running at a loss of over £460-million. He added: “Kent County Council in debt to the tune of over £740-million, but top of the pops, that little county of Cornwall now has a daily interest bill of over £147,000”. Cornwall Council is in debt to the tune of over £1-billion.

Under the banner ‘You council is broken. Reform will fix it’, Mr Farage said his party will fight every single council seat “all over England”. There is a Reform candidate standing in each of Cornwall Council’s 87 divisions.

His TV appearance has been pilloried by Cornwall Council’s deputy leader. David Harris, who is also the Conservative cabinet’s head of resources and has overseen the local authority’s budget for the past four years, told us: “Mr Farage shows an absolute disregard for true facts in his quote. He refers to ‘that little county of Cornwall’ and thereby shows his ignorance straight away. Cornwall is one of the largest unitary councils in England by every measure, budget, population and size.

“He obviously views Cornwall as not worth bothering with apart from silly snide remarks. I haven’t seen a manifesto from his party for Cornwall despite their putting up so many candidates in the forthcoming election, very few of whom have any knowledge or experience of local government.”

Cornwall Council is among the 15 most in-debt councils in the country.

“I will turn to the substance of his comment,” added Cllr Harris. “Yes we do today have a financing cost of around £50-million per annum. We are not broken. Unlike a number of large councils we have not had to seek permission to increase council tax by more than 4.99 per cent, nor have we had to effectively declare bankruptcy by filing a S114 notice seeking central government help.

“We have relatively robust reserves and have set a balanced budget for 2025/26. In this year’s budget we actually tightened the limit on the percentage of our net revenue that could be spent on financing costs from 11 per cent to nine per cent as a prudent measure. Of course we have large borrowings, we could not fund our capital programme without borrowing and nobody else will fund it if we don’t.

“For full details of our capital programme one has only to look at our recently published Capital and Investment Strategy 2025/26 to 2029/30 all of which is aimed at making Cornwall an even better place where everyone can start well, live well and age well.”

The elections for Cornwall Council, Truro City and town and parish councils take place on May 1.