How much do you love our district?

Rates (read Council Tax) and rats, health and housing, parks and public toilets are all controlled by Folkestone & Hythe District Council.

In addition to these areas the 30 elected member council is concerned with hundreds of aspects of daily life which affect Folkestone & Hythe’s 116,000 population.

All of this run out of the civic centre in Castle Hill Avenue Folkestone. Here the Council officers run the day to day business of the district which covers more than 137 square miles. Included in these 137 square miles are 25.25 miles of coast line – one of the largest of any district council in the country.

To run the district in 2018/19 the Council tax requirement was £12,182,000. Now for those of you are unaware to run everything across our district you are charged the highest council tax in Kent. This has been the case for the last sixteen years, as the chart below proves.  The Tories have been in power for the last 20. So if you love our district vote for change on May 2nd 2019, vote for Bryan Rylands – Folkestone Central Ward.

Ask yourself, how can every other council in Kent provide the same facilities and do it cheaper than the incumbent Tory led administration in Folkestone & Hythe District?

It doesn’t need to be like this. You can vote for change, you can vote for me – Bryan Rylands (pictured) who is standing in the Folkestone Central ward on May 2nd 2019. If elected, I would work towards freezing council tax for the next two years, unless there is a global financial catastrophe or something similar which takes matters out of the council’s hands.

Across our beautiful district houses and homes are being built in areas which some of the population do not want. This naturally increases the population and by doing so has a knock on affect to our local GP surgeries, no more so than in New Romney at present, according to the latest NHS Digital data.

Church lane surgery New Romney has seen a growth of 1,363 patients in the last year and part of this is down to development.

In 2017 the Council commissioned an independent report called a Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) which shows they have a requirement to deliver 633 new homes each year, for the next 19 years – 14,600 new dwellings –  up from 350 homes per year in the 2013 Core Strategy.

Lets add into that the fact the Jaws of Death – where England could be just 25 years away from not having enough water to meet demand. Throw in the data that is coming out of Little Bucket Farm regarding groundwater level data, and one can really see that development at such a scale across the district, be it Otterpool Park, Princes Parade, Folkestone Seafront Development, Cockreed Development – New Romney and others, put us all at risk.  It takes water to build a house and water to sustain the residents inside. If we do not learn how to use it more wisely,  we and our district will suffer.

Throw in the fact we cannot get enough GP’s to come to this area, the re-allocation of healthcare facilities potentially away from the William Harvey Hospital and we have a potential disaster movie on our hands.

We need need more than wildflowers for bees, or swift boxes, we need to ban the use of roundup weedkiller which I will advocate, go carbon neutral as soon as possible by utilising green energy and using smarter technologies such as modular homes to reduce our impact on the wonderful environment we live in.

East Kent removes more pollution from the air via vegetation than any other region in the UK. I want to keep it that way.  East Kent removes 77 Kilograms of deadly pollution per hectare. The more development we allow will bring more cars. More cars means more traffic. More traffic means more pollution – and for what, profit?

You can kickstart the change which is necessary by  voting for me – Bryan Rylands on May 2nd. I will start that change and give a voice to you the people to make our district a better place to live. We need clean air, we need houses built using smarter technology, affordable to nurses, teachers and care workers, we need to love our environment which is our home.

We are privileged guests on this wonderful planet. We are responsible for handing it on to the next generation, and I cannot say it better than Greta Thunberg’s emotional speech to EU leaders recently – it is time to wake up and smell the coffee and use that Council tax money differently, because if we don’t the next generation will be receiving very little indeed.

Vote Bryan Rylands – May 2nd 2019

Folkestone Central Ward

I accept postal votes too

Published by Bryan Rylands, Flat D Avenay Court 217 Sandgate Rd Folkestone CT20 2LN