The Reform UK leader visited as part of his party's local election campaign - and was interviewed by local democracy reporter Paul Faulkner.
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00:00Good morning Nigel. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for coming. I'm a local businessman.
00:09What are you doing? They're telecoms.
00:14Oh I say, some reform talent suites. Yeah, obviously.
00:18There you go.
00:30Mr Farage, you've lauded the fact that you've got council candidates standing in seats all over the country including here in Lancashire from pretty much a standing star for you this time last year.
00:40Isn't the problem with that that these are people who haven't got any experience of running councils, maybe not even sitting on councils?
00:46Why would the people of Lancashire put novices in charge at County Hall?
00:50Well you're quite right in one way. A lot of our candidates have never been in politics in their life.
00:55And we're getting involved in politics because they think the country as a whole is going down the drain.
00:59And in the case of Lancashire they see a council hugely in debt, frankly on the verge of bankruptcy, spending money on things that they would not choose to spend it on.
01:08So that is true. However, however, we have former county councillors from other parties that have defected to us.
01:15We have a council leader. The leader of Ribble Valley has joined us.
01:20If he wins a seat on the county council, you've already got at least a handful of people with experience of running things.
01:26So it's a mixture of people very new to politics, enthusiastic but new, but we have got some old lags.
01:32I think the Conservative-controlled Lancashire County Council would dispute that they're on the verge of bankruptcy.
01:37But you have talked a lot about waste in local government in this campaign.
01:41For an authority like Lancashire County Council, which has had to take a decision to cut peak time concessionary bus fares for disabled passengers and acknowledges that it needs to save £100 million over the next two years,
01:53on top of the hundreds of millions that it's saved over the past 15. Where's the waste in an authority like that?
01:58Do you know the daily interest payments on the debt for Lancashire County Council are £135,000 a day?
02:08So they've got the thing into the most awful mess. Yes, now they're saying they've got to take tough action, but they've got it into an awful mess.
02:14That's for capital spending though, isn't it? That's for projects, not day-to-day spending.
02:18I fully understand that, you know, county councils have had less money from central government since 2010.
02:23I understand the ageing population. I understand, you know, the social care bill. I understand these things.
02:29But let me ask you a question. Why did Lancashire County Council spend half a million quid on ergonomic chairs for their staff?
02:35I don't consider that to be a good use of money. Why are they spending money on combating climate change?
02:40That's not the job of a county council. So there are many things that we think look wrong.
02:45On the ergonomic chairs issue, I heard you mention that in your campaign launch speech.
02:49Yes.
02:50Isn't a natural extension of that though, that you've got people who are in chairs that aren't suitable for them,
02:54end up with bad backs, bad necks and go off sick, which costs them much more than it would to actually buy the chairs?
02:59I'm really sorry. I don't have another county council in Britain that spent half a million quid on chairs.
03:04Over four years?
03:05Yeah, it's still half a million quid.
03:07Isn't it easy though to pick out soundbites like that, that make things sound like it's profligacy,
03:12when in actual fact, you know, the day-to-day running of a local authority is dealing with huge special needs pressures,
03:18home-to-school transport and, you know, ballooning bills left, right and centre. That's the reality, isn't it?
03:24I don't dispute there are huge pressures on Lancashire County Council. I don't dispute that for a minute.
03:29By the way, I'm not saying this is easy, but we've done our homework.
03:33You know, we've put in hundreds of FOI requests. We're armed with the facts and figures.
03:37We noticed that a lot of people who work for the council, including the boss,
03:40I mean, the boss is paid £70,000 a year more than the Prime Minister.
03:44Now, if you've got all these people working for the organisation earning more than £100,000 a year,
03:49by the way, I don't mind paying people big money, provided they deliver results.
03:53It doesn't look to me like they've delivered the right results.
03:55On a few specifics in local government, huge local government reforms being proposed and actually pushed through by the Labour government.
04:04Do you oppose them in principle? And if you were in power, how would you stop them?
04:08Nobody has persuaded me that taking away, abolishing district councils, which in many cases people do feel quite identified with.
04:18No one's persuaded me that abolishing district councils and devolving power up, not down,
04:24this is taking power away from local councils and pushing it up to unitary authorities.
04:29No one's persuaded me that's a good idea. And in the case of some counties, they've broken counties up into three or four independent unitaries,
04:38therefore actually destroying any sense of county identity. And then they want to put a mayor over the top.
04:44I mean, I can be persuaded, but at the moment I'm opposed to these reforms because nobody has made a good argument to me.
04:50So you would keep the 15 councils that currently exist in Lancashire, keep the status quo?
04:54I would keep the status quo, but want to see it run better.
04:57And on a mayor, yay or nay for Lancashire, Angela Rayner wants one by next May.
05:00Do you know, why don't we ask people? Why don't we actually ask people? Do they want to have a mayor for the whole county?
05:07And if they're going to have a mayor for the whole county, what's the future structure of the county itself going to be?
05:12How many unitaries? Is it going to be one unitary that maintains Lancashire's identity? Will it be split up into several parts?
05:19There's a lot here we don't know. There's a desperate push from Angela Rayner to change everything,
05:24but change for the sake of change isn't necessarily good.
05:27Just finally, your contract with the voting public, as you call it, rather than a manifesto,
05:32it's split up into what you were doing the first hundred days in power and then thereafter.
05:36That's obviously at a national level. But let me turn your focus to Lancashire.
05:39What would you do in the first hundred days in power in Lancashire?
05:41Bring in the auditors. Bring in the auditors.
05:44There's no basis for saying that though, is there?
05:46You've got more potholes in Lancashire than any other county in the whole of England.
05:53I want to see who the contracts are signed up with. Are they five-year contracts?
05:57Are there ten-year contracts? Are there better things that could have been done?
06:00When you say bring in the auditors, so rather than auditing the books,
06:03you mean auditing the value of the services?
06:05Let's have a look at where the money's been spent. Let's have a look at the contracts that have been signed.
06:11Let's have a look whether what we've got here is the kind of complacency that happens with administrations
06:17that stay there for themselves year after year. Let's have a look. Let's find out the truth.
06:21You've brought me onto potholes. One very last question on that scene.
06:23It's the subject on so many people's lips at the moment. What would you do differently?
06:27Because Lancashire think they've set up on a plan using recycled tyres
06:31and that enabled them to double the speed of pothole filling early last year.
06:35After a very wet winter, it has to be said.
06:37Yeah, very wet winter, that's true. But there is new technology out there in potholes.
06:41Our recent launch of this was on a big JCB Pothole Pro.
06:46Have the council looked at Pothole Pro? Have they looked at these ideas?
06:51Or have they stuck with old ideas?
06:53Let's find out the truth, because what's for certain is right at the minute,
06:57local government, Lancashire included, is broken and reform intend to fix it.