For those working in the energy sector, Reform UK's unprecedented gains across English councils had always been a theoretical concern. However, after the 2025 local election results and 4x as many councils going to the polls next week on 7 May 2026, ReformUK is a live planning reality.
A year on and the party that has partly built its national profile on scrapping Net Zero and ending renewable subsidies holds the power in Council Chambers and is deciding major energy applications.
With the next round of local elections on the horizon, we wanted to take a deeper look on how the rhetoric balances with the reality of decision-making. Not what Reform says about energy; but how its councillors vote when faced with real applications, real economic arguments, and real planning considerations.
A shift in the terms of the debate
Reform's national energy platform is not subtle. It commits to scrapping the UK's Net Zero targets; withdrawing subsidies for renewable energy (particularly the Contract for Difference mechanism); expanding domestic oil and gas production; and opposing large-scale renewable infrastructure. The 'Drill Baby Drill' framing, borrowed from Trumpian politics, has become shorthand for an approach that treats fossil fuel expansion as both an economic and a sovereignty necessity.
What Reform is doing, in effect, is reframing the energy debate. Where the prevailing consensus has treated decarbonisation as the organising principle of energy policy, Reform puts cost, sovereignty, and consumer affordability at the centre. Whether or not that framing is economically coherent, and there are serious reasons to doubt it given that global energy prices are set by global markets rather than domestic production decisions, it is politically resonant. And it is beginning to shape the environment in which planning decisions are made.
What the data actually shows
We analysed planning decisions on major commercial energy applications, schemes over 10 acres in size, across ten local authorities where Reform UK holds control or is the largest party. The results are counterintuitive.
Of 29 applications considered, 19 were approved and 10 were refused. That is a 66% approval rate. Across a range of technologies including solar, battery storage, wind, and combined heat and power, the majority of schemes are getting through.Councils including those in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and Kent, among the ten authorities in our analysis, have approved significant renewable and energy infrastructure in the period since Reform gained control.
The refusal pattern is equally revealing. In every case where an application was refused, landscape and visual impact was cited as the determining reason. Heritage considerations featured in approximately 30% of refusals. No committee minutes reference Net Zero as a reason to refuse. No officer reports cite Reform's national policy platform. The decisions read like conventional planning decisions.
The contradictions in the council chamber
The picture that emerges from the detail, however, is more complicated than the headline approval rate suggests. Reform councillors are not a monolithic bloc, and the gap between national rhetoric and local behaviour is wide, but it is not uniform.
On one end of the spectrum, there are figures like Sean Matthews, Leader of Lincolnshire County Council, has stated publicly that he would be prepared to lie in front of bulldozers to prevent a solar development in his area. His opposition is visceral, landscape-based, and entirely consistent with the national messaging around industrialisation of the countryside.
On the other end, there are figures like Hull and East Yorkshire Combined Authority Mayor, Luke Campbell, who has written to MPs explicitly endorsing green energy development on the basis of local economic benefit, including jobs, investment, and energy security for his constituents. One of Reform’s most powerful politicians is seemingly not blindly following a national anti-renewables brief. Luke Campbell is a politician weighing up what is good for the area he was elected to represent.
These are not isolated examples. In our experience of engaging with Reform councillors on energy and infrastructure schemes, the economic argument consistently carries more weight than the environmental one. A scheme framed in terms of its contribution to local jobs, community energy costs, or inward investment will get a different hearing than one framed primarily around carbon reduction or Net Zero compliance. This is not new; it was true of many Conservative and Labour councillors before the Reform surge. But the emphasis has sharpened.
What this means for the sector
The practical implications for developers and promoters working in Reform-controlled areas can be drawn from this analysis with some confidence.
First, the risk is real but it is not universal. A 66% approval rate across ten authorities is not a hostile environment, but it is one where the margin for error is narrower, and where the wrong approach to engagement can tip a marginal decision. Landscape and visual impact are the pressure points. Schemes that generate significant visual effects without a compelling benefits case are vulnerable.
Second, the framing of benefits matters more than it used to. Quantified local economic impact, including jobs during construction and operation, rates contributions, community benefit, and supply chain, needs to be front and centre in any application and in any pre-application engagement. Presenting a scheme primarily through its carbon or renewable energy output will not land well with Reform. Presenting the same scheme through the lens of what it delivers for the local economy, and why refusing it would mean that investment going elsewhere, will.
Third, early engagement is increasingly important, not less. The variation between Reform politicians, means that committee outcomes are harder to predict from the outside. Understanding where individual members sit before an application goes in, and tailoring the engagement strategy accordingly, is the kind of intelligence that can change outcomes.
Rhetoric and reality
Reform UK's energy policy undoubtedly represents a departure from the prevailing direction of travel. It challenges core assumptions about the role of Net Zero and the value of renewables. At a national level, its influence on the policy debate is real and growing.
But the evidence from the planning system to date does not support the conclusion that Reform control means renewable energy is dead on arrival. The data shows a party, when faced with actual applications, applying regulatory planning principles rather than ideological tests. The decisions that are being refused are being refused for reasons that would likely have led to refusal under other political administrations.
What is changing is the context in which those principles are applied: a greater emphasis on cost and economic value, a sharper sensitivity to landscape impacts, and a more explicit expectation that development must justify itself in terms that resonate with the communities it affects.
While the language may have changed, the fundamentals of good development, clear benefits, careful positioning, and robust justification, remain as important as ever.
