Reform leader of Leicestershire County Council resigns after leaked redundancy remarks

Dan Harrison, the Reform UK leader of Leicestershire County Council, has announced he is standing down after comments he made about staff redundancies were leaked online. Harrison announced his resignation on Monday, ending a tenure that began in May 2025. He said the decision followed advice from senior Reform colleagues, and that deputy council leader Kevin Crook had taken over as acting leader. Harrison will remain a councillor, representing the Ashby-de-la-Zouch division. The resignation came after Harrison apologised for remarks, made during a Reform party meeting on Tuesday, in which he was recorded saying 76 council solicitors would be made redundant, branding them incompetent, before saying "what I want to look at now is the women". The recording was subsequently released on social media. In a statement, Harrison apologised "unreservedly to the staff and officers of the county council for any hurt, distress or offence caused", noting the comments were made during a heated meeting with an expectation of privacy and confidentiality. He stressed, however, that he had not given any instruction or direction to officers on these matters, and that there had been no discussion or agreement with officers on the issues. He also rejected any suggestion that staffing decisions were being taken based on gender, saying the comments had been taken completely out of context. Earlier on Monday, Harrison had told the BBC he would not be stepping down. He later said he made his decision after speaking with Kevin Crook and group whip Andrew Hamilton-Gray. Harrison had faced pressure from the Conservative opposition before his resignation. The council's 15 Tory councillors had called for an emergency vote to remove him from the leadership, a move group leader Deborah Taylor said was not taken lightly. She said concerns raised in recent days, particularly around the treatment of council employees and the leaked recordings, had left his position untenable. While his resignation ended his leadership, she said there were still questions that deserved answers and that the council should learn from what happened. In a statement, Harrison described leading the county council's first Reform administration as the honour of his life. Labour MPs for the area criticised the administration more broadly. Jeevun Sandher, MP for Loughborough, and Amanda Hack, MP for North West Leicestershire, said the Reform UK administration had become embroiled in controversy and scandal since taking office in 2025 rather than focusing on delivering for residents. They cited last week's finding that councillor Joseph Boam breached the council's code of conduct through his actions against the former monitoring officer, and said other Reform councillors had also been forced to apologise to residents over their behaviour. The Reform group remains the largest party on the authority and continues to run the council as a minority administration.