ShepwayVox Dissent is not a Crime

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 [...]

Oaken Wood Quarry Expansion Moves Closer After KCC Backs Plan by Six Votes

July 30, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council hasn’t approved a quarry extension into Oaken Wood—but by keeping the site in its minerals plan, it has moved that prospect a considerable step [...]

Kent Local Government Reorganisation: The Unanswered Questions Facing Mid Kent Council

July 30, 2026 // 1 Comment

Folkestone & Hythe says it is preparing for its own abolition. Yet scrutiny revealed that the money, legal timetable, councillor workload, headquarters, assets and parish [...]

Kent NHS Trusts Paid £389m in Clinical Negligence Claims – Costliest Specialties by Trust

July 29, 2026 // 0 Comments

Looking only at gynaecology opens one window onto Kent’s clinical-negligence bill. The full ledger is a much bigger, stranger picture: four acute hospital trusts recorded [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Council Is Being Scrapped: The £130.9m Mid Kent Merger Explained

July 28, 2026 // 0 Comments

Folkestone & Hythe District Council is helping to build the authority that’ll replace it. The chosen scheme promises simpler government and savings, but its own papers [...]

Southern Water Annual Report Errors: Six Admissions, Undisclosed Controls and Unnamed Sewage Permit Failures

July 28, 2026 // 0 Comments

Southern Water has admitted that its 2025/26 reporting contained wrong financial, credit-rating and operational figures. Yet some of its answers create fresh questions about [...]

Kent County Council Audit Exposes Significant Financial Control Issues Under Reform UK

July 27, 2026 // 1 Comment

KCC’s audit papers don’t prove fraud. They reveal a circular control system in which weak training, payment workarounds and manual checks depend upon one another — [...]

Southern Water bosses’ pay: bonuses blocked as bills rise and pollution failures continue

July 26, 2026 // 0 Comments

The chief executive and finance director received no annual bonus for the second year running. But Southern Water’s accounts show why the word “bonus” tells only part [...]

Long Read: Kent Library Visits Rise as Physical Loans Fall and Costs Climb

July 26, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent’s libraries gained almost exactly as many visits as they lost physical loans. Between 2023/24 and 2024/25, recorded visits to Kent’s libraries and mobile services [...]

Ship Street Folkestone: FHDC Backs 85-Home Orbit Scheme as Hidden Land Value and ‘400 People’ Claim Raise Questions

July 24, 2026 // 1 Comment

FHDC has approved another £132,000 for Ship Street after being told 85 homes could remove nearly 400 people from the housing waiting list. The trouble is that the list [...]

Romney Marsh Solar Farms: FHDC Asked for a Cumulative Impact Rule That Already Existed

July 24, 2026 // 0 Comments

A non-lawyer councillor stopped Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s solar motion. Five minutes later, Chief Executive Dr Susan Priest read out the repair — but [...]

Cllr David Wimble on Nigel Farage: A Pint, a Phone and ‘We Make It Up as We Go Along’

July 24, 2026 // 1 Comment

Satire occasionally arrives fully assembled. On page 45 of the latest Looker, David Wimble mocks Britain’s instant experts: “Apparently all you need to become Britain’s [...]

	Andrew on Kent SEND Deficit More Than Do…
	Committed Folkestoni… on KCC Pension Fund Holds £38m in…
	Andrew on Illegal Children’s Homes: How…
	J on From Unsafe Homes to a Top-Rat…
	Dean on Kent Local Government Reorgani…