ESSEX — Reform UK launched a data-driven campaign across Essex as the party seeks to win control of Essex County Council in the upcoming local elections. Party leader Nigel Farage toured half a dozen towns in the county, including Waltham Abbey, during a midweek walkabout that culminated in a meeting with 80 local candidates.

The party currently holds a single seat on the council, which has been primarily controlled by the Conservative Party since its foundation in 1974. More than one million votes for council seats, which oversee a £1.2 billion budget, are up for grabs in the elections.

The Essex push is intended as a demonstration of Reform UK's professionalisation in expanding voter turnout, combining mobilisation of core supporters with outreach to first-time voters and those other parties may have given up on. The campaign includes an "air war" of mailshots, leafleting, and targeted Facebook adverts. Reform UK spent nearly £100,000 on targeted Facebook adverts in the 30 days before the election, according to Meta's Ad Library.

For the first time in a major election, the ReformGo app will assist thousands of activists in door-knocking, while the ReformPro app, connected to electoral register data, is used by senior activists in Essex, Birmingham, and northern towns. Volunteers from around Britain are staffing phone banks in the party's new office in Millbank Tower.

One Reform UK supporter described the technology during the Essex tour. "It's a very comprehensive app and we can see week by week it's improving, data refinement, ease of usability on it. People can see the doors they need to knock, list responses – anywhere from 'I'm voting for you' down to 'go away' or 'I'd like a garden board please'." The supporter added: "The capture of that voter intention data is going to help us going forward."

Farage, who visited a pie and mash shop in Waltham Abbey before the candidates' meeting, said the technology was central to the party's growth strategy. "We have to broaden our vote and the app is a big step towards doing that," he said. He compared the approach to that of the late Liberal Democrat leader. "They're really, really good at picking an area and saying 'right, this is good for us,' and then they're very ruthless about their data, how they manage it, how they protect it. It's the Paddy Ashdown school of thought. When you win significant local representation, you build upon that and then target areas for the general election," Farage said.

Reform board member Gawain Towler said real-time data was helping the party identify operational issues. "If things are not working well then it's getting picked up much faster. In a place I was in recently, the Labour letter was arriving two days late for postal voters. We used to make that error," Towler said.

There have been allegations of Reform UK candidates making racist or offensive comments in the past, including a candidate in Gateshead who called for a "white Britain" and said Keir Starmer should be shot. Joe Mulhall, Director of Research at an anti-racism organisation, said the volume of such cases continued to grow. "The amount we have found has astonished us. Despite what they say about their professionalisation, clearly they continue to have a systematic problem," Mulhall said.