ShepwayVox Dissent is not a Crime

Kent Fire Response Times Worsen: One in Seven Dwelling Fires Takes 15 Minutes or More

August 20, 2026 // 0 Comments

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

August 19, 2026 // 1 Comment

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

August 18, 2026 // 6 Comments

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

August 18, 2026 // 1 Comment

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

August 17, 2026 // 1 Comment

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

August 17, 2026 // 3 Comments

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

August 16, 2026 // 1 Comment

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

August 16, 2026 // 0 Comments

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?

August 14, 2026 // 0 Comments

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

August 14, 2026 // 0 Comments

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

August 13, 2026 // 1 Comment

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

August 12, 2026 // 0 Comments

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

August 11, 2026 // 1 Comment

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

August 10, 2026 // 0 Comments

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

August 9, 2026 // 0 Comments

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 [...]

All Kent Rivers Polluted With Toxic Chemicals, Environment Agency Data Shows

August 7, 2026 // 0 Comments

The Environment Agency’s latest assessment has delivered a grim result for Kent: not one classified river stretch passes the chemical-status test. Yet the figures don’t [...]

Folkestone Town Mayor Jackie Meade on Community, Charity and Civic Pride

August 6, 2026 // 0 Comments

Folkestone’s Town Mayor for 2026/27 talks to The Shepway Vox Team about unfinished business after Covid, residents priced out of the town’s success, unheard unpaid [...]

Illegal Children’s Homes: How KCC and Medway Paid Catalyst Care £2.5m

August 6, 2026 // 1 Comment

Kent County Council and Medway Council’s published records identify £2,493,697.74 paid to Catalyst Care Limited: £2,419,480.59 from KCC and £74,217.15 from Medway for [...]

University of Kent Financial Crisis: Cuts, Consultants and Merger with Greenwich

August 5, 2026 // 0 Comments

For six years the University of Kent cut jobs, closed subjects, sold financial breathing space and promised recovery. It spent £29.4 million restructuring itself and awarded [...]

East Kent Hospitals: Six Chief Executives, Nine Chairs and 15 Years of Failed Leadership

August 4, 2026 // 0 Comments

East Kent Hospitals has spent 15 years changing the cast while leaving much of the script intact. A new review says staff can still regard speaking up as pointless or [...]

KCC Pension Fund Holds £38m in Oil, Gas, Coal and Arms Firms, Including Companies Linked to Gaza

August 3, 2026 // 1 Comment

Kent’s pension fund has spent years edging away from some of the world’s dirtiest and deadliest industries. Yet the latest company-level records show the job isn’t [...]

Child Pedestrian Casualties Heavily Concentrated in Kent’s Poorest Areas

August 3, 2026 // 0 Comments

Official figures expose widening gap in road deaths and injuries between poor and wealthy postcodes across Kent & Medway. Children living in some of Kent’s poorest [...]

From Unsafe Homes to a Top-Rated Council Landlord: How the East Kent Housing Scandal Forced Folkestone & Hythe to Rebuild

August 2, 2026 // 1 Comment

Folkestone & Hythe District Council has earned the regulator’s highest consumer grade. It deserves proper credit. But C1 didn’t fall from a clear blue sky. It grew [...]

The £4.925 Million Murder: Who Killed the Meaning of “Recovered” in Kent Police’s Crime Assets Claim?

July 31, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent Police says nearly £5 million was taken from criminals in 2025/26. In this paper-trail murder mystery, a fictional Detective Inspector Ledger follows real evidence [...]

‘We Don’t Record It’: Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Procurement Waiver Claim Unravels

July 31, 2026 // 0 Comments

Folkestone & Hythe District Council told councillors that requests to bypass its normal procurement rules had fallen. Minutes later, officers admitted rejected requests [...]

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