Reform UK-run council withdraws funding for Durham Pride
People take part in the annual Durham Pride parade through the city on 25 May, 2025. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
People take part in the annual Durham Pride parade through the city on 25 May, 2025. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
A Reform UK-run council has withdrawn funding for County Durham’s Pride event.
As reported by the Northern Echo, Durham County Council’s deputy leader, Darren Grimes, slammed the planned Pride event, stating that the funding will instead be diverted to services that aren’t “contested causes”.
Durham Pride was founded in 2014. In 2023, the event welcome 20,000 people to its county-wide celebrations. This year thousands also attended the event, which was held on 24 to 25 May.
The council invested up to £10,000 in this year’s event, but the Reform administration said it will withdraw its support ahead of 2026.
‘Durham County Council isn’t an ATM for contested causes’
Councillor Grimes said, as reported by Northern Echo: “Durham Pride won’t be getting a single penny from this council next year.
Grimes added of the event’s agenda: “Pride stopped being a celebration of gay rights a long time ago. It’s morphed into a travelling billboard for gender ideology and political activism that many in the gay community — myself included — want no part of. Taxpayers shouldn’t be bankrolling it.
“The event can and will go ahead safely, but Durham County Council isn’t an ATM for contested causes. Our residents deserve bins emptied, roads fixed, and services funded — not more council-sponsored politics in fancy dress.”
Grimes concluded that Reform will spend its budgets on “the services everyone relies on, not on flying the latest alphabet flag for the professional offence industry.”
The move follows a Pride flag being removed at Durham County Hall in May, shortly after Reform took control of the local authority.
In response, Durham Pride has partnered with the Durham Miners’ Association and the Trades Union Congress to fundraise for future events.
The first fundraising event will be held at Redhill’s, Durham Miners’ Hall, on 5 September.
A July Instagram post by Durham Pride states that volunteers are “planning Durham Pride’s largest event yet for 2026”.
Nigel Farage‘s right-wing populist political party Reform was founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party and has since rebranded and made a name for itself because of its controversial anti-immigration and eurosceptic policies.
Reform does not have the best record when it comes to the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Within its party’s pledge, and as part of a introductory paragraph attacking immigration, multiculturalism and “divisive, ‘woke’ ideology”, Reform states “transgender indoctrination is causing irreversible harm to children”.
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