ShepwayVox Dissent is not a Crime

110 Homes, Flood Zone 3 and a Field the Local Plan Never Allocated: Inside New Romney’s Cockreed Lane Application

September 25, 2026 // 0 Comments

There’s nothing particularly dramatic about the field north of Cockreed Lane (pictured Orange below). It’s 4.71 hectares of agricultural land on the edge of New Romney: [...]

Only 4.1% of Folkestone & Hythe May Be Developable — Yet 2,267 Approved Homes Hadn’t Started and FHDC Is Looking for More Land

September 25, 2026 // 0 Comments

Folkestone & Hythe is looking for more land. It may have remarkably little left. Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s own Housing Delivery Action Plan applies a [...]

Storm Goretti Was Lydd’s Warning — Nine Months Later, Its Community Resilience Plan Still Doesn’t Exist

September 24, 2026 // 0 Comments

As autumn closes in and another winter approaches, Lydd, like the rest of us towns and villages, is heading back into the season of strong winds, heavy rain, high seas and [...]

Grand Burstin Fire: How Hundreds Got Out Alive — and Why Folkestone’s Crisis Isn’t Over

September 24, 2026 // 2 Comments

Four days after flames and thick smoke poured from beneath Folkestone’s Grand Burstin Hotel, firefighters were back. At 8.36am on Wednesday, Kent Fire and Rescue Service [...]

Lower Leas Coastal Park Playground: How a £750,000 Budget Grew to More Than £1.38 Million

September 23, 2026 // 1 Comment

It was supposed to be a £750,000 playground. That was the budget Folkestone & Hythe District Council approved in May 2025 for the long-awaited replacement of the ageing [...]

Poor Beaches, Damaged Businesses, No Report: FHDC’s ‘Urgent’ Water Quality Work Goes Nowhere

September 23, 2026 // 0 Comments

On 1 April 2026, Folkestone & Hythe District Council agreed that investigating water quality across Romney Marsh and the East Stour should happen “as a matter of [...]

FHDC Housing Allocations Policy: ‘Fully in Line’ With the Law?

September 22, 2026 // 0 Comments

Tonight, Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee will be asked to examine a new 78-page Housing Allocations Policy — the rulebook [...]

From Folkestone to South Korea: Five Schoolgirls, a Wildfire-Fighting Robot and Team GB’s Global Challenge

September 21, 2026 // 0 Comments

Sometimes the most extraordinary stories are buried in the dullest-looking council documents. Halfway down a table of Green Grant awards approved by Folkestone & Hythe [...]

Sunningdale House Collapse: The Folkestone Land Is Sold, but £13m in Subsidiary Debts Remains

September 21, 2026 // 0 Comments

£378,000 bought the land at Tram Road. It did not buy an end to the Sunningdale story. Buried in the sixth administrators’ progress report for Sunningdale House [...]

Four Fingers, One Passport and a Prayer: Welcome to Dover’s Biometric Border

September 20, 2026 // 1 Comment

The British understand queues. We may have lost an empire,many Eurovision Song Contests and any realistic expectation of buying a railway sandwich without first discussing [...]

The F-Word Took Over the English Language: We Have Hundreds of Thousands of Words — So Why Keep Using the Same F*ing One?**

September 20, 2026 // 1 Comment

There is a bus. You know the one. Every town has one. At roughly the same time every weekday afternoon, its doors wheeze open and several dozen teenagers pile aboard carrying [...]

Kent Police, Race and Power: When Does Disparity Become Institutional Racism? — Part Three

September 18, 2026 // 1 Comment

Racist misconduct has been proved against Kent Police officers. Black people are arrested at more than twice the White population rate and are substantially overrepresented [...]

£9m Later, the Wait Is Still a Mystery: Folkestone & Hythe’s Disabled Facilities Grants

September 17, 2026 // 0 Comments

In 2018/19, Folkestone & Hythe District Council said there was “currently no waiting list” for its Disabled Facilities Grant scheme. Today, the council tells [...]

The First Rung Is Missing: Kent’s Stark Divide in Jobs for Young People

September 16, 2026 // 0 Comments

The postcode a young person calls home can make a huge difference to the number of realistic entry-level jobs around them. In Kent and Medway, the gap is enormous. New data [...]

Something Changed at Kent Police: Black Arrests Soared 79% in One Year — Part Two

September 16, 2026 // 0 Comments

In Part One, we examined what happened on the streets of Dover, where hundreds of anti-migration protesters descended on the town, dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, [...]

Folca 2 Planning Application: Two GP Surgeries Drawn In, Commercial Space To Let — But NHS Sign-Off Is Still Pending

September 15, 2026 // 0 Comments

Walk past Folca 2 on Sandgate Road today and there’s a fairly blunt message hanging from the scaffolding: “SUBSTANTIAL COMMERCIAL PREMISES – TO LET.” Behind that [...]

East Kent Health Divide: Four Coastal Constituencies Top Kent for Depression, COPD, Heart Disease and Stroke

September 15, 2026 // 0 Comments

Follow Kent’s coastline from Herne Bay through Thanet and Sandwich, down through Deal and Dover and on towards Folkestone and Hythe. The scenery changes. In the latest [...]

If Intent Is a ‘Fuzzy Line’, How Can FHDC Call It Fraud? Cllr Tim Prater and the £1.266m Question

September 14, 2026 // 1 Comment

When our public face asked Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance and Governance how much of £1.266 million was actually fraud, Cllr Tim [...]

Hundreds of White Protesters, Many Masked, Zero Arrests: Kent Police at Dover — Part One

September 14, 2026 // 0 Comments

Part One of a ShepwayVox investigation into race, arrest rates and policing in Kent There’s a question hanging over what happened in Dover on Saturday 5 September 2026 [...]

Autumn in Rural Kent: Operation Mousetrap Begins Again

September 13, 2026 // 2 Comments

Autumn is creeping towards us again. For those of us who live out in the sticks, you can tell it’s coming long before somebody on the television starts standing beneath a [...]

Kent County Council Paid £27m to Place Children in Unregistered Homes Over Two Years.

September 11, 2026 // 0 Comments

Last month, The Shepway Vox Team revealed how Kent County Council paid Catalyst Care Limited £2,419,480.59 between 2021 and July 2025. Catalyst’s two controlling directors [...]

Otterpool Park: Westenhanger Fails Both New NPPF ‘Well-Connected Station’ Tests

September 10, 2026 // 2 Comments

The Government has just made building homes around well-connected railway stations substantially easier. There’s just one problem: Hillhurst Farm sits right next door to [...]

Otterpool Park Infrastructure Costs: £374m Inflation-Adjusted Benchmark for 8,500 Homes

September 10, 2026 // 0 Comments

There’s a number buried in another major Kent housing battle which deserves much more attention in Folkestone & Hythe. £36,500 per home. That’s what a viability [...]

Kent Police and the Dover Blockade: Too Busy Policing Facebook?

September 9, 2026 // 0 Comments

There are mornings when everything comes at once. The washing machine packs up. Somebody leaves the milk out. Hundreds of men dressed almost identically in black, many [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Local Plan 2045: Can 15,600 New Homes Be Supported by Water, GPs and Infrastructure?

September 9, 2026 // 1 Comment

Folkestone & Hythe may need to plan for around 15,600 new homes by 2045, but the challenge isn’t simply finding enough land. The district must also prove it can deliver [...]

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	Simon on Grand Burstin Fire: How Hundre…
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	Kay on Four Fingers, One Passport and…
	Andrew on The F-Word Took Over the Engli…