Folkestone & Hythe Planning Committee Faces Whitehall Power Grab
If you want to understand where power is drifting in local planning, do not just watch the next controversial application land on Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s [...]
Stodmarsh Sewage Crisis: Southern Water, Otterpool Park and East Kent
At Canterbury’s scrutiny committee on 4 March (from1hr 46m 44s onwards), Stodmarsh kept popping up like the blinking red light on a dashboard that everyone hopes belongs to [...]
Councils Cry Poverty — While Quietly Lending Each Other £Millions
We’ve just been handed a neat little window into how modern local government really works. On Tuesday 10 March, Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Finance and [...]
Hamstreet Sewage Scandal: Why FHDC Failed to Act While Ashford Investigated
Residents raised a serious complaint about suspected foul contamination moving from Hamstreet towards Hythe and the sea. One council replied with site visits, [...]
Southern Water in Kent: Bailiffs, Sewage and Beaches Closed for Swimming.
Fresh parliamentary papers have put an ugly new number on an old public grievance. On 6 March, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published debt-collection [...]
Reform UK KCC Cabinet Member David Wimble’s Looker Accused of Misleading Readers on Kent County Council Debt
The Shepway Vox Team went back to the documents. What we found was not a careful picture of Kent County Council’s current debt costs, but an old snapshot repackaged as a [...]
Kent Wood-Burner Pollution: 78,380 Estimated Stoves and the Clean Air Powers Councils Aren’t Using
A set of EPC-based estimates, circulated via a British Medical Jornal (BMJ) rapid response and now re-summed and charted, suggests there are roughly 78,380 domestic [...]
Hythe Wood-Burner Pollution: Folkestone & Hythe District Council Challenged Over UCL Data
At Tuesday 3 March’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee, a revealing exchange played out over domestic wood burners and air quality in Hythe. Councillor Paul Thomas recalled [...]
Leas Pavilion Folkestone: Off-Plan Flat Buyers Left Exposed as Receivers Sell the Freehold
Folkestone’s stalled Leas Pavilion scheme has spent long enough as a visual punchline: hoardings, silence, and two concrete cores that look less like “luxury living” [...]
East Kent Sewage Pollution: Southern Water, Five Councils and the Statutory Nuisance Law
We’re The Shepway Vox Team, and over the past few weeks we’ve watched the same pattern play out again and again. Residents complain that sewage-contaminated discharges [...]
Rough Sleeping in Kent: Snapshot Trends and District Hotspots
On one night each autumn, Kent’s 12 district councils go out and record how many people are sleeping rough. Not in hostels. Not in night shelters. Not sofa-surfing. Just [...]
Water UK’s Storm Overflows Plan: A 25-Year Delay in England’s Sewage Scandal
Water UK’s National Storm Overflows Plan for England was launched with the kind of self-congratulation you usually hear just before someone asks you to be patient. It was [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Customer Access Strategy: Digital by Choice or Digital Exclusion?
Folkestone & Hythe District Council has approved a new Customer Access Strategy 2026 -29, built around a simple promise: residents should be able to access council [...]
Kent Fly-Tipping: Incidents Rise While Enforcement Varies Widely Between Councils
Kent is the Garden of England. It is also, judging by the latest Defra flytipping data for 24/25, a place where far too many people treat hedgerows, lay-bys and quiet [...]
FHDC Homelessness Spending: Temporary Accommodation Costs Soar as Prevention Fund and Private Sector Offer Payments Rise
If you want to understand the housing pressure in Folkestone & Hythe, start with the bit that hurts: the emergency bill. Between April 2025 and January 2026, Folkestone [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Council Budget: Council Tax Rise, Reserves Drawdown and Debt Repayment Shake-Up
Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s budget debate yesterday evening didn’t hinge on a big, obvious “cuts list”. It hinged on something far less [...]
Folkestone & Hythe’s Risborough Barracks Deal: Taylor Wimpey Payments Revealed as Temporary Accommodation Costs Soar
Folkestone & Hythe District Council has so far paid Taylor Wimpey £2,390,013.56 towards the Risborough Barracks affordable homes scheme, based on supplier payment data [...]
Mandatory DBS Checks for District and Parish Councillors: The Russell Tillson Case
In the long shadow of the “Epstein files” debate — where public trust has again been tested by questions about powerful men, elite networks and who knew what — the [...]
Folkestone & Hythe’s Emissions and Biodiversity Record Was Built Under Conservative Leadership
A new Folkestone & Hythe District Council scrutiny report gives a detailed picture of carbon emissions and biodiversity policy. It also raises an important point of [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council: Councillors Challenge Youth Football Fees, Hythe Pool Spend, Princes Parade Delay and Southern Water
Folkestone & Hythe District Council meets in Full Council on Wednesday 25 February at 7pm, and councillors have published a set of questions that range from the price of [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council: Cash Withdrawals on Purchase Cards, Weak Evidence, No Questions Asked
A routine internal audit update to Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Audit and Governance Committee has surfaced an awkward line that deserves far more daylight [...]
Southern Water Legal Action: Folkestone & Hythe District Council Escalate Sewage Pollution Fight
Folkestone & Hythe District Council, Southern Water and the Environment Agency faced residents and campaigners in the same room on Thursday 19 February, to discuss sewage [...]
Dymchurch Dippers Poem Calls Out Southern Water Sewage in the Bay
The Ballad Of The Beautiful Bay Spoiled by Dirty Water. The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day,I want to swim across the bay,What’s that I spy in the water [...]
Madeira Walk Landslide: Folkestone Leas Playground Cliff Stabilisation Cost Rises to £400,000
Madeira Walk was shut on 29 February 2024 because the ground above Folkestone’s Lower Leas playground looked as if it might go. Two days later, on 2 March, it did: the [...]
Southern Water Sewage: The Hidden Cost to Kent’s Sea Swimmers and Seaside Businesses
Updated: 20/02/26 @ 14:50 This is a long read, because the devil is in the detail — and, in this case, the detail is the difference between “a reassuring icon on a map” [...]