Reform UK’s election efforts are being hampered by a lack of money and resources and the party has so far largely relied on £1.4m of loans from its leader, Richard Tice.

The party is ultimately owned by Nigel Farage, but electoral and corporate filings show it has been mainly bankrolled by Tice, who has contributed about 80% of its declared funding in loans and donations since he took over in 2021.

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Reform insists that traditional former Tory donors are now beginning to open their chequebooks for the party as the election approaches, even without Farage.

However, Tice told an audience this month that it would not be easy to run an effective ground campaign at the next election on the money coming into the party. He said it was spending “less than £1.5m a year” compared with the £35m allowed for each party nationally and likely to be spent by the Conservatives and Labour in the year before an election. In contrast, the Brexit party brought in £17m in donations in 2019.

Tice’s personal company, Tisun Investments, has been loaning the party money in increments of £10,000-£50,000 since before he took over as leader. As of the end of 2023, outstanding loans of about £1.4m were due to Tisun, according to the Electoral Commission. Tice has also contributed £150,000 through another company, Britain Means Business.

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Reform sources said the party was heavily reliant on volunteers and had been short-staffed on the ground at recent byelections. It has about 15 staff, with admin based in Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire and the rest of its employees largely working from home. It is headquartered in Victoria in central London, but this was described by one Reform source as “more of a room” than an office.

Tice has said he wants to run candidates in all constituencies at the general election, having picked about 450 hopefuls so far, but it managed to contest only 323 seats at the most recent council elections. The only two Reform candidates who won council seats have been investigated by the party over social media posts that praised the far-right leader Tommy Robinson.

General election candidates have been given their seats after applying through the website, and will largely have to run their own campaign operations.

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The party’s biggest donor last year was Terence Mordaunt, a previous Tory donor, businessman and former chair of the climate change sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, whose companies have given £200,000 to Reform.

Other major donors have dropped off since the Brexit party rebranded itself as Reform. Jeremy Hosking, who gave £2.2m to the Brexit party in 2019 and £15,000 to Reform last year, told the Guardian he had now ended his donations to Reform UK, having once hoped they would cooperate with the Reclaim party led by Laurence Fox.

Hosking is now supporting Reclaim, which he said was “ever more engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the culture war/free speech areas, and established political parties like Reform are not really comfortable around that”.

Another major donor to the Brexit party in 2019-20 was Christopher Harborne, who gave in the region of £10m. He has since given £1m to the office of Boris Johnson and has not donated so far to Reform.