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Reform and its predecessor party spent over £645,000 on polling and canvassing work from an anonymous sole trader going by the name ‘COR Research’.
COR Research, which worked for the Brexit Party in 2019 and for Reform UK in 2024, has no Companies House entry, no social media presence, and ten key invoices are missing on the Electoral Commission website – something Reform UK has been criticised for by the elections watchdog.
The Commission’s own spending database records the supplier as an individual. The sole trader’s only public presence is a single-page website carrying a logo, the line “The best vision is insight”, and a contact form.
It gives no address, no named individual, and no description of what the business does. The domain was registered on 28 January 2019, three months before the first invoice. The payments were between May 2019 and July 2024.
Most of the spending – £529,160 of the £645,560 – was paid by the Brexit Party across the 2019 European and general elections, while £116,400 was paid in 2024, after the same party was renamed Reform UK.
Invoices filed with the Electoral Commission in 2024 list only a serviced office address near the Bank of England. Earlier invoices redact the address altogether.
The earliest invoices charge no VAT and state in print that none is payable. Analysis by this outlet of the Commission’s published spending records places the VAT registration window for the mysterious supplier roughly between 15 July and 25 August 2019. Every COR Research invoice in that period is blank on the Commission’s website.
The record for a £15,360 payment of 25 August 2019 — the invoice that would settle the question — is an empty document.
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Two polling industry figures this outlet spoke to had no information about the firm. COR Research is not registered with the British Polling Council, the Market Research Society or ESOMAR. The last invoice in July 2024 – just before the General Election – was for “Final Four Seat Target Polling.” Polling on that scale would normally require a substantial fieldwork team, according to polling experts this outlet spoke to.
Lord (Mark) Pack, a Lib Dem peer who runs The Week in Polls Substack, told this outlet: “Reform are doing themselves no favours with the lack of transparency over the campaign spending. Transparency rules are a fundamental part of how we protect our democracy from malign influences such as foreign states and billionaires such as Elon Musk. They could, and should, do better.”
On the Commission’s published figures, COR Research’s total billing crossed £85,000 – the threshold at which VAT registration becomes compulsory – in late August 2019, at almost exactly the point the recorded amounts begin to be consistent with VAT being charged. On that analysis, registration appears to have been made when it fell due rather than late.
However, despite that £36,000 invoice charging £6,000 of VAT, it states at the bottom: “By virtue of paragraph 15 of Schedule 1 and paragraph 9 of Schedule 3 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994, no VAT is payable. Business name registration is voluntary in the United Kingdom. No business name has been registered.” Accountants this outlet spoke to say it makes little sense, though it may be boilerplate text which was never removed after registration.
Dr Sam Power, a leading expert in political financing, electoral regulation and corruption at the University of Bristol, told Byline Times the situation “does seem odd.”
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