Folkestone & Hythe Complaints Surge 88% as 60 Residents Demand a Second Answer
Folkestone & Hythe District Council makes residents a pretty clear promise on its website: “We aim to resolve any complaint at stage one.” Yet in 2025/26, 60 [...]
Hythe Imperial Planning Objection Guide: What Residents Need to Know About GSE’s £120m, 291-Home Plan
This is a Guest Post After reading The Shepway Vox Team’s examination of planning application 26/1290/FH, I spent a fair bit of time going through the application papers [...]
Nepal Disaster: Folkestone & Hythe Sends Messages of Hope and Comfort to Those Affected
The terrible events unfolding in Nepal and the wider Himalayan region will feel a very long way from Kent. But for many families across Folkestone & Hythe and the county, [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s £1.26m Fraud Report Doesn’t Say How Much Was Fraud — or Error
There’s a rather important word hiding inside Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s latest £1.26 million fraud figure. “Or.” FHDC says its investigations team [...]
GSE’s £120m Hythe Imperial Plan: 291 Homes, a 25m Pool — and a Planning File That Doesn’t Quite Add Up
GSE’s Imperial Gardens scheme promises 291 homes, around 73 “affordable homes”, a new 25m swimming pool and substantial private investment on Hythe seafront. [...]
KCC’s £100m AI Surveillance Framework: The GDPR Guide That Thinks It’s About Electric Cars
Kent County Council’s national surveillance framework can help public bodies buy facial-recognition cameras, artificial-intelligence surveillance, biometrics, ANPR, thermal [...]
Kent Council Debt: Borrowing Reaches £2.45bn as Medway Overtakes KCC Ahead of Local Government Reorganisation
New Government figures show nine of Kent’s 14 councils borrowing more than two years ago. With four new unitary councils due in 2028, those liabilities aren’t simply [...]
Kent’s AI Border Towers: £21m Spent as 153,000 People Arrived by Small Boat — Now the Home Office Plans to Spend £120m More
Walk west along the shingle at Hythe and, above the beach, an unusual structure looks out over the Channel. Roughly 18ft high, it carries radar and electro-optical and [...]
Everist Court Lyminge: The Battle Over FHDC’s Five Social Homes and Former Age UK Community Centre
Folkestone & Hythe District Council owns Everist Court, has already committed more than £630,000 to turning it into housing, and must now determine its own planning [...]
Kent’s Education Divide: GCSE Results, Deprivation and Grammar Schools
Start in Tonbridge & Malling. Among GCSE results awarded to 16-year-olds at examination centres in the district this summer, 35.2% were grade 7 or above. Tunbridge Wells [...]
Kent Fire Response Times Worsen: One in Seven Dwelling Fires Takes 15 Minutes or More
If your home catches fire in Kent, the latest government figures raise a pretty fundamental question: how quickly will the first fire engine actually arrive? Our analysis of [...]
I Run a Care Home in Kent: Overseas Care Workers Are Essential to Social Care
This is a Guest Post I run a care home in Kent. That means when politicians talk about “foreign labour”, I don’t see a statistic or a convenient line for social media. [...]
I’m a Romney Marsh Farmer — Solar Farms Could Help Keep Farms Like Mine Alive
This is a Guest Post There’s a romantic version of farming being peddled in the solar debate on Romney Marsh, and as someone who farms here, I barely recognise it. In that [...]
KCC Scraps £14.5m Junction 11 Waste Transfer Station for Folkestone & Hythe After £722,000 Spend
Kent County Council is preparing to abandon its planned waste transfer station (marked in orange below) beside Junction 11 of the M20, writing off around £722,000 already [...]
Exclusive: Kent and Medway Councils Agreed £11.9m LGR Fund Before Government Chose Option 4B
On 16 July 2026, ministers finally settled the future shape of local government in Kent and Medway. Option 4B had won. Four new unitary councils would replace the existing [...]
16 People Report E. coli Issues After Sea Swimming at Hythe, Dymchurch and Littlestone
Something deeply worrying has been landing in The Shepway Vox Team inbox. Between 1 July and 12 August 2026, 16 people contacted us after swimming in the sea at Hythe, [...]
Kent County Council’s £4m NHS Invoice: Zena Cooke, Ivor Duffy and the Missing Evidence
Zena Cooke (pictured below left) has moved on. So has Ivor Duffy (pictured below right). Cooke is now Lambeth Council’s Corporate Director of Resources and its statutory [...]
Kent’s Education Divide: A-Level Results, Deprivation and Grammar Schools
Start in Tonbridge & Malling. According to the 2026 council-area results, 46.4% of A-level entries there were awarded an A* or A. It was one of the strongest results [...]
John Logie Baird in Folkestone: Was It the Birthplace of Television?
A small wooden plaque inside 26 Guildhall Street is about to put Folkestone into an argument with history. On 3 September, local filmmaker Ben Barton will screen Is [...]
Kent County Council Exit Payments: £1.66m Gap Between Official Figures
Kent County Council says its efficiency drive is about making “every penny count”. Yet its 2025/26 accounts record £1.112m of exit packages while the Government’s [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Social Housing Waiting List Reaches 1,332 as Three-Bedroom Waits Average 170 Weeks
Someone allocated a three-bedroom council owned home in Folkestone and Hythe during the past year had waited 667 weeks. That’s nearly 13 years. They were the extreme case, [...]
Howletts and Port Lympne: What the Accounts Reveal About Debt, Reserves and Redundancies
Staff at Howletts and Port Lympne are facing proposed redundancies. That would be worrying enough at any major Kent employer. What makes this story rather stranger is what [...]
Kent SEND Deficit More Than Doubles to Nearly £300m as KCC Forecasts Another £110m
Kent County Council made a decision on 5 August to accept £12.155 million of new Government money for SEND reform. But several pages into the accompanying report sits the [...]
Kent Right to Buy: Eligible Sales Jump 143% After Discount Cuts
MHCLG’s newest figures record 192 eligible sales classed as Right to Buy across Kent’s seven council landlords in 2025/26, against 79 a year earlier. Four east Kent [...]
Kent Housing Conditions: Government Data Models One in Five Homes as Non-Decent in Four Council Areas
Less than two years after Kent’s own housing officers said the evidence base on local housing conditions was “scarce”, a new government model has put numbers against [...]