Kent County Council to Cut £75m Under Reform UK: Potholes, Transport, and Migrant Services Face Review

Kent County Council (KCC) has a gross annual budget exceeding £2.5 billion but is burdened by hundreds of millions in debt, its newly elected leader Linden Kemkaran (pictured) has confirmed. With the council required to find around £75 million in savings during the 2025/26 financial year — read: cuts to services — her approach is expected to be radical, possibly ruthless.

A total of £72 million in spending cuts had already been identified in the former Conservative administration’s budget, passed in mid-February 2025 — leaving Kemkaran and her team with little room to manoeuvre. When proposing those cuts, outgoing council leader Roger Gough starkly reminded Kent residents: “There is no cavalry coming over the hill – there is only the hill.” These cuts have risen to £75 million, the minimum KCC must meet just to balance its books. It does NOT include any additional “savings” Kemkaran hopes to deliver through her newly created Department of Local Government Efficiency (DOLGE), a flagship Reform UK initiative. DOLGE is being tasked with a forensic review of council operations to identify duplication, trim bureaucracy, and, in Kemkaran’s words, uncover “whether there are too many people all doing the same job.”

In a candid interview, Kemkaran — the first Reform UK politician to lead to lead the largest county council — revealed that KCC’s debt stood at £780 million. However, the most recently published financial figures, covering the end of Quarter 3 in the 2024/25 financial year, placed the debt at £744 million. Of that total, £430 million is owed to the Public Works Loans Board, the government body that lends to local authorities. £276 million to long term loans from Banks in the UK, and £38m to other bodies.

At the same time, KCC also held £460 million in investments — a reminder of the council’s complex financial structure, which combines long-term borrowing with significant asset holdings.

“There are councils with a lot more debt than KCC,” Kemkaran remarked, seeking to place the council’s financial position in a broader national context. Yet critics may note that rising debt and limited fiscal room could jeopardise local services.

School Transport Confusion

One such area is school transport. Kemkaran said the cost of transporting both mainstream and Special Educational Needs (SEN) children across the county totalled £98 million. But this figure is significantly higher than the £75,975,265 million cited in a Freedom of Information (FoI) response from KCC on 29 April 2025. The £22 million discrepancy — 22.5% of the declared cost — raises questions about transparency and accuracy in council spending.

No explanation has yet been provided by KCC officials or Kemkaran to reconcile the mismatch. It is unclear whether the higher figure includes hidden or reclassified costs not reported under FoI.

English Lessons for Migrants Could Face Axe

The council’s spending on community integration and education services may also face cuts. Kemkaran said KCC currently pays for classes teaching English as a second language via contracted out services — a service that has helped many Kent residents, including Gurkha families and refugees, integrate and contribute to local life.

While stating that Reform UK believes migrants should learn English, Kemkaran was blunt about the financial realities: “If it’s costing KCC a lot of money… if it’s not value for money, it’s going.”

This signals that the continuation of subsidised English language lessons may hinge on cost-benefit analysis rather than broader social outcomes — a position likely to spark criticism from education professionals, voluntary sector organisations, and community leaders alike.

Procurement and Potholes Under Review

One of the first departments under scrutiny by Kemkaran’s DOLGE team is highways. “Highways is one of our biggest and most complex departments at KCC,” she said. Potholes, in particular, are a persistent and expensive headache. “It’s an expensive problem to fix,” she acknowledged, noting that she has asked DOLGE to examine how the council procures the contractors responsible for road repairs.

Kent County Council has been in a Highways Term Maintenance Contract (HTMC) with Amey since September 2011. Originally intended as a ten-year contract, it has been extended multiple times due to a combination of market uncertainty and logistical delays. Most recently, in August 2023, KCC awarded Amey a further 32-month extension, keeping the company in place as the council’s highways contractor until 30 April 2026.

The annual spend on the Amey contract varies between £50 million and £60 million depending on the available budget. However, Amey is not solely responsible for fixing potholes. KCC retains the capacity to repair smaller potholes in-house, with council crews routinely deployed across the county.

In a move toward modernisation, KCC and Amey have also trialled an innovative pothole detection system, using sensors and cameras fitted to council vehicles — including Arriva buses — to automatically identify road surface defects and optimise maintenance workflows. This proactive system enables earlier detection, more efficient planning, and cost-effective repairs before potholes worsen and become more expensive to fix.

According to official data, in 2024 KCC repaired 31,137 potholes permanently and made 9,070 temporary repairs. That same year, the public reported 28,739 potholes across Kent. In addition to unit-based repairs, KCC teams also conduct patching works to address clusters of smaller potholes or larger carriageway issues. These patching operations are recorded by area (in square metres) rather than by individual pothole count, making it impossible to say precisely how many defects were treated through this method. In total, during 2024, the council (not Amey) undertook 25,480 recorded pothole repairs and completed 74,402m² of patching — an area equivalent to approximately ten football pitches.

The cost and consequences of potholes go beyond repair. In 2024, there were 1,371 claims submitted to the council for pothole-related vehicle damage. Of those, 107 resulted in successful payouts to drivers, while 20 claims remain under assessment — underscoring the financial and reputational risks poor road maintenance poses to the authority.

Whether future repairs will be more cost-effective — or face scaling back under budgetary pressure — may depend on what DOLGe uncovers in its procurement review.

Reform’s Audit of Kent

Kemkaran’s leadership signals a seismic break from business as usual at County Hall. “Our once great country is sliding extremely rapidly into decline — not just economic decline, but social and cultural decline,” she warned, delivering a message that echoes the core ideology of Reform UK. That worldview will now shape every decision made under her watch.

Determined to dismantle what she sees as layers of waste and bureaucratic inertia, Kemkaran has pledged to run a “fine-tooth comb through every single area of policy here at KCC” — rooting out duplication, trimming overheads, and asking the blunt question: “Are too many people doing the same job?”

The council must already deliver £75 million in cuts to balance the books in 2025/26 — savings earmarked under the previous Conservative administration. But Kemkaran’s ambitions don’t stop there. With her newly formed Department of Local Government Efficiency (DOLGE) now embedded inside the council, deeper savings are expected. The question is no longer whether services will be cut — but how much further Reform is willing to go.

As KemKaran and her DOLGE team sharpen their blades and begin dissecting departments, the fate of Kent’s public services — from roads to refugee support — is uncertain. How much more can be cut without breaking the system? That is the gamble. One thing is clear: Reform is not here to tinker. It’s here to tear up the rulebook. And in Kemkaran’s Kent, nothing is off-limits.

The Shepway Vox Team

The Velvet Voices of Voxatiousness