Kent and Medway NHS Waiting Lists Still Above 2023 Despite Fall
Across Kent and Medway’s four acute hospital trusts, the hospital waiting list is lower than its March 2024 peak — but still higher than it was three years ago. Kent’s [...]
Otterpool Park’s £18m Hillhurst Land Deal Question
William Hurley did not dress the matter up in planning language. In conversation with the public face of The Shepway Vox Team, he made clear the Hillhurst land sale was about [...]
Kent and Medway NHS Corridor Care Revealed
Official NHS England figures show all four Kent and Medway acute hospital trusts recorded emergency-department corridor care in May 2026, with Medway reporting the highest [...]
Hythe Foxwood Homes Plan Approved With No Affordable Housing
Folkestone & Hythe councillors have approved Ureco’s Foxwood scheme for up to 150 homes on the former school site above Seabrook Road, Hythe. The number of affordable [...]
FHDC’s Renters’ Rights Policy Trips Over the Law
Folkestone & Hythe District Council is being asked to approve its new private-sector housing civil penalties policy on 24 June — 54 days after key Renters’ Rights Act [...]
Update: Otterpool Park Next Steps: Hillhurst Farm Land Questions Loom Over Public Exhibition
The next Otterpool Park exhibition isn’t just another afternoon of glossy boards, polite smiles and “your views matter” stationery. It’s the point where the proposed [...]
West Wood’s Lost Oasis: The Holiday Village That Won Permission and Still Failed
A private leisure village in a public Kent forest won the planning argument, survived the High Court and still never got built. The reason West Wood survived wasn’t simple. [...]
Child Poverty Falls in Folkestone & Hythe, But Housing Costs Keep Thousands Poor
Child poverty has fallen in Folkestone & Hythe in the latest figures. That is the good news. The harder truth is that the district remains one of Kent’s highest [...]
Update: Otterpool Park Water Plan Faces Climate and Supply Questions
Otterpool Park is not just a housing scheme. It is an 8,500-home test of whether a seriously water-stressed part of Kent can absorb a new town, a business district, schools, [...]
The Long Read: South Kent Energy Park’s 2,100-Acre Solar Gamble on Romney Marsh
Low Carbon says its South Kent Energy Park could power the equivalent of 140,000 homes. Its own scoping report also shows a much bigger scheme, on arable Marsh land, much of [...]
The Long Read: KCC Banks Solar Farm Cash as Reform Says No to Romney Marsh Panels
Reform-led Kent County Council says it wants to protect Kent farmland from excessive solar development. Fair enough. But the council also owns solar farms, including a [...]
Cllr David Wimble’s New Romney Housing U-Turn Exposes Local Plan Hypocrisy
Cllr David Wimble (pictured) now says he’ll fight proposals for up to 110 homes on farmland north of Cockreed Lane, New Romney. Fair enough. Residents are entitled to ask [...]
New Romney Homes Plan Tests Kent’s Water-Stressed Future
A proposed 110-home scheme on farmland at New Romney has landed in the middle of Kent’s bigger water argument: how can we keep building in one of the most water-stressed [...]
Kent Travel Saver: Reform’s “People of Kent” Promise Fails the £35 Bus Test
Kent County Council’s £35 Kent Travel Saver rise survived scrutiny on Thursday. But the meeting left one hard question idling at the stop: when Reform says it will put [...]
FHDC Procurement Card Receipts: Dinner, Drinks and the Missing Audit Trail
The council’s FOI response has answered some questions about procurement-card restaurant spending. It has also given us a gastro-pub filed as transport, a missing lunch [...]
Folkestone Tennis Courts: Historic Davis Cup Town Faces Public Access Gap
As Queen’s gets under way and Wimbledon looms, Folkestone doesn’t lack tennis history. It doesn’t even lack tennis courts. What it lacks is the simple thing that [...]
BBC Cash and the Iliffe Money Trail Behind Kent Council Reporting
Kent needs reporters in council chambers. It also needs to know how BBC licence-fee money, paid to private media companies to keep that reporting alive, moves through the [...]
Reform UK’s Flag-and-Fury Playbook Is Already Running Kent
How a politics of flags, enemies, press bans and “common sense” is being tested from Westminster to County Hall in Kent There’s a moment when politics stops being [...]
Exclusive: Homes England Secures Hillhurst Farm Land for Otterpool Homes
The next Otterpool Park housing move appears to sit in a very specific triangle of land at Hillhurst Farm, just south of the railway, east of Westenhanger station and around [...]
Foxwood’s £86.7m Homes Plan Leaves Hythe With No Affordable Homes
A former public school site in Hythe is heading back to Folkestone & Hythe’s Planning Committee. The homes remain. The affordable housing doesn’t. And behind the [...]
Kent Travel Saver Rise: Poorest Families Hit Hardest
Kent County Council says a £35 rise is needed to keep its student bus pass scheme sustainable. But its own figures show the increase lands more than four times harder, [...]
KCC’s £133m Family Silver Sell-Off
Kent County Council says it has already raised more than £84m from surplus-property disposals since 2021/22. Now the Reform UK-run authority is lining up a further £49m, [...]
The Long Read: Kent Voted for the Border — Now the M20 Is Paying the Price
Operation Brock is meant to keep Kent moving when Dover and Eurotunnel come under pressure. But the deeper evidence shows something more uncomfortable: a national border [...]
Kent’s PWLB Debt Mountain Grows £503m as Medway Surges Past KCC
Government lending data shows Kent and Medway principal councils’ unpaid Public Works Loan Board principal rose from £1.14bn to £1.64bn in five years. The biggest shift [...]
Kent Adds More Homes but Delivers Fewer Affordable Homes
New MHCLG data show Kent’s 12 district councils recorded 7,724 net additional homes in 2024/25, up almost 12% in a year when England’s total fell. But the county’s [...]