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Kent County Council FOI Delays: ICO Finds KCC Breached Freedom of Information Law

April 23, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council missed the legal deadline on a request about Sir Roger De Haan’s Folkestone meeting with senior KCC councillors, and the Information Commissioner had to [...]

Trauma Does Not Exist? What Adler Really Meant About Freud, Determinism and Breaking Free

April 23, 2026 // 2 Comments

It’s one of those phrases that sounds less like psychology and more like a person picking a fight in a pub. But Adler was not denying suffering. He was challenging [...]

Folkestone Library Move: KCC Reopens in Sandgate Road as Grace Hill Faces Disposal

April 22, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council is reopening the library service in a privately owned Sandgate Road building while moving the old Grace Hill library towards disposal. Creative Folkestone [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Tops Kent Table for Serious Private Rented Housing Hazards

April 22, 2026 // 1 Comment

Kent housing officers said the local evidence base on poor housing conditions was “scarce”. Even so, MHCLG’s latest return shows Folkestone & Hythe with the highest [...]

Reform UK Hythe Leaflet Raises Missing Imprint Questions

April 21, 2026 // 0 Comments

A two-sided Reform UK leaflet delivered in Hythe is loud on Labour, loud on Kent, loud on potholes, loud on common sense and loud on “change”. What it doesn’t [...]

Renters’ Rights Act: Part 2 — What Folkestone & Hythe Tenants Need to Watch From 1 May 2026

April 21, 2026 // 1 Comment

The new law is bigger than section 21. The real tests will be whether loopholes open up, whether councils enforce, and whether the courts can cope once simple no-fault cases [...]

Folkestone & Hythe District Council Expenses: Officers Get Higher Meal Allowances Than Councillors

April 20, 2026 // 0 Comments

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” George Orwell wrote, and at Folkestone & Hythe District Council that principle appears to have [...]

Renters’ Rights Act: Part 1 — What Folkestone & Hythe Tenants Need to Know From 1 May 2026

April 20, 2026 // 0 Comments

From 1 May 2026, the Renters’ Rights Act starts changing how private renting works in England. For tenants in Folkestone & Hythe, the biggest shift is simple: a home [...]

The Long Read: Kent County Council’s PFI School Deals Still Cost Millions

April 19, 2026 // 0 Comments

The Government says PFI is over. Parliament has spent years tearing strips off it. The Treasury itself admitted the model became “tarnished by its waste, inflexibility and [...]

Folkestone & Hythe District Council Pay Gap Widens Between Top Officers and Lowest-Paid Staff

April 17, 2026 // 0 Comments

There is a neat trick in local authority pay stories. Look only at percentages and the whole thing can start to seem almost modest. Look at the pounds, though, and the [...]

Exclusive: How Otterpool Park’s Places for People Deal Ended in a Claim

April 16, 2026 // 0 Comments

David Monk’s Otterpool strategy was built on a simple commercial idea: service the land, parcel it up and sell it on. By 2023, Places for People had emerged in public as [...]

KCC Children’s Social Work Vacancy Rate Falls but Caseloads Stay Above Target

April 16, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council’s children’s social work workforce looks healthier on paper than it did two years ago. Vacancies are down. Turnover is down. Permanent staffing has [...]

Otterpool Park Minutes Reveal Places for People Claim

April 15, 2026 // 1 Comment

For years, Otterpool Park LLP’s public minutes were written in that familiar regeneration dialect: lots of “delivery”, “collaboration” and “transition”, not [...]

Kent Councils Gender Pay Gap League Table: Which Employers Favour Men, Women or Neither?

April 15, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent’s council gender pay gap story is no longer a simple tale of men doing better everywhere. In some authorities the median gap still clearly favours men. In some it is [...]

Exclusive: Places for People Silent Over Otterpool Park Contract Dispute

April 14, 2026 // 1 Comment

Exclusive Places for People pulled out of plans to become an Otterpool Park joint venture partner in autumn 2024. Now, after being asked whether it is taking or preparing [...]

Planning Reform Plans Shift Most Planning Decisions From Councillors to Officers

April 14, 2026 // 1 Comment

If the government’s planning committee reforms go through, the biggest change will not simply be that fewer applications reach committee. It will be that a new two-person [...]

Kent Police Use of Force and Race Questions Persist Despite HMICFRS Praise

April 14, 2026 // 2 Comments

Kent Police has got better at call handling, improved outcomes for victims and won strong praise for how it supports its workforce. But the latest HMICFRS inspection says the [...]

East Kent Ambulance Delays Ease but NHS Targets Are Still Missed

April 14, 2026 // 0 Comments

For years, ambulance performance in East Kent was one of those local scandals that seemed to need no introduction: queues outside hospitals, handover delays, and response [...]

Folkestone Invicta Promotion Stats: Goals, Points and the Players Behind the Title

April 13, 2026 // 0 Comments

Folkestone Invicta are up, and the lazy version of the story would stop there: champions, promotion, party, end of article. But the numbers underneath this season are better [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Rents Rise as Home Ownership Moves Further Out of Reach

April 13, 2026 // 2 Comments

Private rents in Folkestone & Hythe remain lower than the South East average in cash terms. But they are rising faster locally, and the gap between earnings and house [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Has Weekly Food Waste Collections. The Real Problem Is Getting Residents to Use Them

April 12, 2026 // 0 Comments

The service is here. The caddies are here. The council says the food waste is turned into renewable energy. The real local question is whether enough people are actually [...]

Otterpool Park Update: Homes England’s Westenhanger Land Move and the Pack Field Silence

April 10, 2026 // 2 Comments

Updated: 06:50 11/04/26 At Lympne Parish Council Annual Meeting on 8 April, FHDC leader Jim Martin said Homes England is in the process of acquiring land within walking [...]

Exclusive: David Wimble’s Two Unsatisfied CCJs and the Question Reform UK Cannot Dodge.

April 10, 2026 // 7 Comments

Exclusive The Reform UK politician who sits at the top table in Kent politics now has two unsatisfied County Court judgments showing at his Littlestone address. One might be [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Ward Budgets: Where the Money Went

April 10, 2026 // 0 Comments

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s ward budget scheme ought to be one of the easiest things in local government to follow. Thirty councillors. Up to £3,000 each. Up [...]

Folkestone Triennial: The Hard Questions Behind Creative Folkestone’s Impact Report

April 9, 2026 // 0 Comments

Back in 2007, as Folkestone’s culture-led reinvention was being set out, Sir Roger De Haan gave a revealing account of himself. In video footage from that period, he [...]

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