'We don't need you': Reform shuts door on local media hours after taking control of Suffolk County Council

By any measure, Reform UK had a remarkable election. The party took outright control of Suffolk County Council, winning 41 of 70 seats, and gained 10 of the 16 seats contested in Ipswich.

For a party that did not field a single candidate at the last county elections in 2021, it was an extraordinary advance. It also brought, overnight, a substantial set of responsibilities.

What it has not brought, it appears, is a willingness to engage with local democracy.

An open invitation, repeatedly extended

This publication's attempts to engage with Ipswich Reform began long before polling day.

On Monday, 20 April, we wrote to Ipswich Reform chair Shayne Pooley and Tony Gould, who would later be reelected as the Reform councillor for Whitton, inviting every Reform candidate to answer the same five questions we had put to candidates from every other party. Labour, Conservative, Green and Liberal Democrat candidates had been contacted on the same terms.

The questions were straightforward — about candidates' backgrounds, the issues facing their wards, local government reorganisation, their personal achievements, and how they would make themselves accessible to residents if elected.

"We'll publish all responses in full, without editing, alongside those of your fellow candidates," the email said. "As an apolitical publication, no candidate will receive more or less prominence than any other."

The email also offered Reform candidates the chance to visit our newsroom on Upper Brook Street and meet the team — an invitation extended on identical terms to every other party.

Where Reform candidates had no public contact details — which was the case for nearly all of them — we approached the party's local leadership directly and through mutual contacts well known within Reform. The invitation was repeated. It was rebuffed repeatedly.

In the end, only one Reform candidate engaged at all. Tony Gould answered the five questions, but indirectly through a Reform PR representative rather than in his own voice.

A party-wide instruction

The reason became clear during the campaign. Reform candidates and councillors had been instructed by Ipswich Reform's chairman, Shayne Pooley, not to speak to Ipswich.co.uk, or any other media for that matter.

The instruction held throughout the campaign. On election day itself, only one Reform candidate, Stuart Allen, spoke briefly to the BBC. The party's other candidates, including newly elected councillors, declined to be interviewed or photographed on Pooley's orders.

When approached by us on results day, a newly elected Reform councillor told us they wanted to engage with this publication but had been told they could not, and that they were only permitted to speak to GB News.

A public statement from Reform's local chairman

After the results were declared, I wrote privately to Shayne Pooley, Tony Gould and potential new county council leader Chris Hudson, congratulating them on the result and reiterating the offer of a meeting and a desire to engage constructively.

Nothing in response.

Instead, Pooley's response came not by email, but in the comments section of a Facebook post in which we publicly congratulated Reform and asked them to engage with us.

"Voters can contact their councillors directly, no need to offer you a sound bite, we are not a paycheck for you, neither we or the voters need you," was his response.

"Neither we or the voters need you"

While it is astonishing that so soon after elections, the chairman of Ipswich Reform has publicly stated that the voters of Ipswich do not need a local news outlet that, in the last 30 days alone, was visited by more than 82,000 people, his statement is not really about Ipswich.co.uk at all. It is about whether scrutiny of elected leaders should be welcomed, tolerated, or refused.

Reform, within hours of being elected, has refused it.

Shortly after Pooley shunned local democracy, he wrote on his own Facebook page:

"VICTORY FOR DEMOCRACY !! Thank you to all that voted, your Councillors look forward to serving their Constituents, and working towards making Ipswich a town you can all be proud of."

A common pattern

This isn't an isolated issue. In August 2025, Mick Barton, the Reform leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, banned the Nottingham Post and its online arm Nottinghamshire Live from speaking to him or any of his councillors. The ban was understood to follow a disagreement over a story on local government reorganisation.

In a statement at the time, Barton said the move was "not about silencing journalism" but "about upholding the principle that freedom of speech must be paired with responsibility and honesty". He added that Reform "will not be engaging with Nottinghamshire Live or with any other media outlet we consider to be consistently misrepresenting our policies, actions or intentions".

The Nottinghamshire Live editor, Natalie Fahy, called the ban "unprecedented" and "a direct attack on the free press and our ability to hold elected members to account". The Liberal Democrats wrote to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage asking him to intervene. Conservative party chairman Kevin Hollinrake called it a "disgrace". Labour MP for Mansfield Steve Yemm said: "Shutting the door on local journalists doesn't just block criticism, it cuts off residents from the facts."

Similar tensions have emerged between Reform and local media in Leicester and Kent.

The pattern matters because Suffolk's two-tier system is on borrowed time. Ipswich Borough Council and Suffolk County Council will be replaced by a new unitary authority for Ipswich and South Suffolk from April 2028, with shadow elections due in May 2027. The councillors elected on Friday will serve a foreshortened term — and Reform, on current form, is well placed to contest those unitary elections too.

If the relationship between the largest party in Suffolk and the town's local media is to be defined by silence, it will be defined now.

The case for keeping the door open

Local journalism is not, and has never been, the opposition. Its role is to report what councils and councillors do, to ask questions on behalf of residents who do not have the time to attend every committee meeting, and to give every party — including the one in charge — the opportunity to put its case directly to readers.

That offer remains open to Reform. Every Reform councillor in Ipswich and on Suffolk County Council is welcome to contact this publication, on or off the record, at any time. Every Reform spokesperson is welcome to put a statement to our readers, in full and without editing, on the same terms offered to every other party. The newsroom door on Upper Brook Street is firmly open.

It is also open to Shayne Pooley.

The bottom line

Reform says they do not need Ipswich.co.uk. We disagree — respectfully, and on the evidence of our own readership. Scrutiny is not opposition, and engagement is not endorsement. The invitation stands. We hope, in the interests of the town and the people who voted for them, that Reform will accept it.

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