Reform council leader denies election malpractice – kind of

Adi Malviya, Reform UK’s leader of Rochford District Council has denied standing in a ward he wasn’t entitled to represent in May’s local election. Except he also said he had “no comment to make” and refused to say where he had voted. The accusations are a further blow to Reform in Rochford. The party previously had to expel newly-minted councillor Stuart Prior after Prior celebrated the rape of two Sikh women.

Malviya’s home address is in Castle Point ward, which is not within the Rochford council area at all. He stood in Rayleigh – and described his Castle Point address as in Rayleigh on his election papers. English electoral law requires council candidates to be registered to vote in the council area where they want to be a councillor, or to have lived or worked within it for at least the last twelve months.

Malviya apparently didn’t qualify on either – his registered voting address is in Billericay, which isn’t in Castle Point or wider Rochford. He refused to answer when asked whether he had voted in Castle Point.

Reform farce after farce

Reform, which is the largest party on Rochford council but does not have a majority, claimed Malviya had worked in Hawkwell, which is in Rochford. However, the BBC noted that records for 31 December Consulting – the firm of which Malviya is a director – show its address changed from Billericay “to the one listed as his home address in the Rochford election nomination papers” only three days before nominations closed. Reform said that Malviya’s eligibility came from 2.5 days’ consultancy provided to a firm in Hawkwell. Rochford District Council said it had “no legal authority” to do anything about the issue or even to investigate the alleged electoral crime.

The accusations against Malviya are the latest in a series of Reform farces and scandals around and since the May 2026 local elections – but at least he personally exists. In the 2024 general election, Reform fielded ‘ghost candidates’ in a number of elections who didn’t exist at all, dividing the right-wing vote in key areas. Reform came second in 98 seats, of which Keir Starmer’s Labour won 89. Labour’s majority at the election, on a lower vote share than Corbyn won in 2019, was 86.

Featured image via the Canary