Oaken Wood Quarry Expansion Moves Closer After KCC Backs Plan by Six Votes
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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’
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 [...]
Kent County Council Reform UK Led Audit Committee ‘Not Effective’ as Camilla Black May Resign
Kent County Council’s only independent audit committee member says the body isn’t working, serious questions aren’t being answered and the people responsible for [...]
Why KCC’s Folkestone Library Footfall Comparison Is Nonsense: Grace Hill v Sandgate Road
Brian Collins arrived at KCC’s Cabinet meeting brandishing two figures as though he’d just cracked the Enigma code. Grace Hill library received 4,613 visits in June 2022; [...]
South Brooks Solar Farm: FHDC Signals ‘Holding Objection’ Over Romney Marsh Risks
“It just feels a bit fait accompli.” With those words, Cllr Adrian Lockwood (Lab – pictured) put his finger on the unease running through Folkestone & Hythe [...]
High Court Rules Environment Agency Can Prosecute Former Southern Water Chief Matthew Wright for Conspiracy to Defraud
A former Southern Water chief executive has failed in a High Court attempt to establish that the Environment Agency had no legal power to prosecute him for conspiracy to [...]
Why It’s So Hard to Get a GP Appointment in Folkestone & Hythe
At the crack of eight, the scramble begins. Patients ring, refresh a webpage, fill in a form or wait for somebody to decide whether their problem merits an appointment. By [...]
Folkestone and Hythe Council’s Unfulfilled Promise to Investigate Sewage Pollution
On 1 April, Folkestone & Hythe District Council agreed that possible human faecal contamination across Romney Marsh and the East Stour needed investigating “as a matter [...]
Folkestone and Hythe District Council: Officers Must Declare Freemasonry, Councillors Don’t
When Folkestone & Hythe District Council meets tomorrow, 22 July, councillors will consider a constitutional overhaul containing two codes of conduct. Tucked inside is a [...]
Ship Street Folkestone: Enabling Costs Could Reach £1.43m as Land Value Remains Hidden
Open Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s latest Ship Street report and one detail does all the talking: a blank where the developer’s calculated land value should [...]
Martello Lakes Pool Promise Replaced as Hythe Pool Refurbishment Could Cost £10.7m
When Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Cabinet meets on 22 July, members will be asked to set two leisure projects moving. One involves spending £353,000 [...]
Southern Water 2025/26: Leakage, Pollution and £7bn Debt — Long Read
Southern Water cut leakage sharply during 2025/26, but still lost almost 90 million litres of treated water every day — enough over the year to fill Bewl Water reservoir [...]
Kent Local Government Reorganisation: Four Unitary Councils, Debt and Costs — Long Read
Kent knows where the new boundaries will run. It still doesn’t know who’ll inherit the mortgage. Steve Reed MP Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local [...]
Kent Coastal Housing Market Cools as Folkestone and Hythe Rents Soar
Kent’s coastal housing boom has cooled. That much is no longer seriously in doubt. The frantic bidding, sealed offers and London money that swept through Folkestone, Hythe, [...]
Kent Local Government Reorganisation: Four Unitary Councils and One Almighty Hangover
What follows isn’t a leaked meeting or a quotation from any named council officer. It’s an imagined pub conversation translating Kent’s local government shake-up into [...]
Folkestone A Brighter Future: £22m Project Delayed by at Least 17 Months
Folkestone & Hythe District Council says Folkestone – A Brighter Future is now “80% complete”. It’s a neat little figure, polished until it shines: the sort of [...]