Don Whitaker - Councillor for Whittlefield with Ightenhill | Reform Watch

Don Whitaker is a Burnley Borough councillor for Whittlefield with Ightenhill, first elected as a Conservative in 2021 and re-elected in 2024. He resigned from the Conservatives in May 2026, having already worked on policy for a Restore Britain think tank, and became the party's first elected member in Lancashire. In July 2026 Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors tried to remove him as chair of the Audit and Standards Committee, arguing he had been appointed as an unaligned independent when he was already affiliated; he called the move "gutter politics".