{"id":955955,"date":"2026-05-13T00:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T00:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/955955\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T00:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T00:54:12","slug":"reform-uk-leader-selected-to-head-sandwell-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/955955\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform UK leader selected to head Sandwell Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"A8Lwr BVYCX\">Ray Nock has been selected as Reform UK leader on <a class=\"qNUzV q7LZa\" data-testid=\"next-link-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.itv.com\/news\/central\/topic\/sandwell-council\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sandwell Council<\/a>.The party has a majority meaning Nock will be elected leader of the council at the next full council meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"A8Lwr BVYCX\">Labour had controlled the authority since 1979. <a class=\"qNUzV q7LZa\" data-testid=\"next-link-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.itv.com\/news\/topic\/reform-uk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reform UK<\/a> took 41 seats out of a possible 72. <\/p>\n<p class=\"A8Lwr BVYCX\">Speaking after Reform&#8217;s victory in <a class=\"qNUzV q7LZa\" data-testid=\"next-link-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.itv.com\/news\/central\/topic\/sandwell\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sandwell<\/a>, Nock said &#8220;I want to turn the ship. It&#8217;s been going into a storm now for 20, 30 years. <\/p>\n<p class=\"A8Lwr BVYCX\">&#8220;We&#8217;ve got social deprivation issues that are shocking. We&#8217;ve got health issues that are shocking. Education and housing issues that are shocking, and we&#8217;ve got to make a change.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"A8Lwr BVYCX\">Outgoing Labour council leader Kerry Carmichael said: &#8220;It worries me what&#8217;s going to happen, I know the people of Blackheath can be quite demanding as well. <\/p>\n<p class=\"A8Lwr BVYCX\">&#8220;Hopefully these guys will step up and do the right thing for these people, including myself because they&#8217;re my councillors now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"A8Lwr BVYCX\"><strong class=\"_1ATDh\">Reporting History sees journalists join <\/strong><a class=\"qNUzV q7LZa\" data-testid=\"next-link-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.itv.com\/news\/meet-the-team\/tom-bradby\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong class=\"_1ATDh\">News At Ten anchor Tom Bradby<\/strong><\/a><strong class=\"_1ATDh\"> to revisit their remarkable on-the-day reports of the defining events of the modern age. Listen to the episodes below&#8230;<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ray Nock has been selected as Reform UK leader on Sandwell Council.The party has a majority meaning Nock&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":955956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-955955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116564542413495647","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}