Kemi Badenoch has braced the Tories to lose scores of council seats in the May local elections.
The Conservative leader stressed that the town hall polls would be “extremely difficult” for her party.
The Tories facing losing a string of seats to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in many parts of the country.
Reform could gain hundreds of seats, including some from Labour, if it can match its ratings in the national polls where it is level-pegging with Sir Keir Starmer’s party and the Conservatives.
Ms Badenoch highlighted the scale of the task facing her party after its disastrous result in the July 2024 general election under Rishi Sunak.
“There is a long road ahead of us as we rebuild trust with the public,” she wrote on the Conservativehome webite.
“The May local elections will be extremely difficult.”
Outlining how she is planning to reform the Tory headquarters, she added: “We are faced with more challenges than Conservatives in office have ever faced – but we will deal with them.
“To make that happen, we will rebuild and renew CCHQ from the ground up and turn it back into an election-winning machine.”
Leading Tory polling expert Lord Hayward said Reform UK should secure as many seats in the local elections as Labour and the Tories based on polling figures, but he stressed that recent council election results suggest Mr Farage’s party may fall short of expectations.
He believes all three parties should have a realistic target of about 450 councillors after the local elections on May 1, which would each represent about a quarter of the 1,641 council seats available.
The Conservatives currently have 973 seats, Labour 301 and Reform UK just nine of the these seats.
Lord Hayward said the Conservatives are going to face a “massive problem” as the party secured a huge 66% of council seats in 2021, when many of this batch were last fought, a year he labelled “peak Boris” due to the popularity of then Conservative leader Boris Johnson.
On Labour, he said council by-election voters initially turned their back on the party following the general election last July, but there are now signs of recovery.
Analysis of council by-election results since the general election suggests Reform’s standing with voters could be out of sync with some recent national polls which have shown the party ahead, Lord Hayward added.
Since last summer, he found the Conservatives have gained 23 council seats while Labour has lost 35.
The Liberal Democrats have gained two seats over the period and Reform has gained 12, about half as many as the Tories.
But since the start of 2025, Lord Hayward identified that Reform fought 27 council seat by-elections, gaining only four seats in total, two each from the Conservatives and Labour.
He said: “Reform could quite easily reasonably argue that they have only got themselves organised in the last few months, but there is no question that that argument only holds water up to a certain point.”
Referring to two recent by-elections in rural Essex which Reform did not win, Lord Hayward said: “There are examples where you might have expected them to have done well or better.”
Mr Farage’s party is also facing a test in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, triggered by “punching” ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury standing down, where Reform UK came second at the general election and would be expected to do well if it can match its poll results.
