Folkestone & Hythe Council’s Housing Shame: Five Years of Inaction and Budget Underspends

Updated @ 17:18

Let us begin, as all good auditors do, with the Three Es of public service delivery: Economy, Efficiency, and Effectiveness. Economy is all about cost—how little you can spend. Efficiency is about squeezing maximum output from minimum input. But Effectiveness—that’s the tricky one. It means actually achieving the outcomes you’re supposed to. In housing enforcement, that might mean making dangerous homes safe, or holding landlords in the private rented sector accountable.

And yet, Folkestone & Hythe District Council has discovered a radical interpretation: by doing almost nothing, you can be supremely economical, comfortably efficient (in terms of effort), and—if you never inspect—blissfully untroubled by evidence of ineffectiveness.

Welcome to Enforcement-Lite, Brought to You by FHDC

They say local government is where urgent public need meets decisive action. But in Folkestone & Hythe, the housing crisis knocks, the council looks through the peephole, quietly turns off the lights, and hides behind the curtain. Here, enforcement isn’t something you do—it’s something you pretend you once read about in training.

Folkestone & Hythe District Council (FHDC) has taken “light-touch regulation” and put it on a crash diet. They’ve elevated disengagement into an art form: passive housing regulation delivered with all the urgency of a tranquilised sloth on annual leave.

Before we even get to the numbers, let’s talk about context. According to the 2021 ‘Folkestone Place Plan urban appraisal‘ by We Made That:

“There are challenges of living in Folkestone related to poor housing and low educational attainment. Whilst out of town housing is set in the beautiful coastal landscape and often built to a high standard, the town centre struggles with the quality and availability of housing. The rates of statutory homelessness are above the national average and housing in the town centre is often poor quality. There is a high proportion of private rented housing in the town centre (52%) compared to district (20%) and county (15%) levels, with safety, quality and overcrowding issues.”

So let’s be clear: this isn’t enforcement in some leafy suburb where the worst thing a private landlord might forget is to prune the roses. This is a town where over half the central housing stock is private rental, often overcrowded, unsafe, and substandard. But it isn’t just in Folkestone Town Centre—this pattern extends across the entire district. And the council? They’re treating enforcement like a delicate hobby—knitting potholders while the roof caves in.

Let’s start with Improvement Notices, the humble workhorse of housing enforcement. These notices are issued under Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004 and are designed to force landlords to fix Category 1 or 2 hazards—things like mould, structural instability, broken boilers, or dangerously exposed wiring. They’re the ‘you have to do something’ nudge backed by legal authority.

FHDC issued just 56 of these in five years. That’s an average of 11.2 per year in a district with thousands of private rented properties. In 2024/25, they hit a record-breaking 33—but before we break out the streamers, let’s be honest: this wasn’t the result of a heroic blitz on substandard housing. It was a bulk action—one building, many leaseholders, one spreadsheet, click ‘send’. A flurry of copy-paste enforcement dressed up as progress. Less Dirty Harry, more Microsoft Excel.

Now onto Prohibition Orders. These are serious. They’re the big red button—served when a property is so dangerous it must not be occupied at all. Section 20 of the Housing Act 2004 gives councils this power when hazards pose an imminent risk to health.

FHDC used them four times in five years. That’s fewer than the number of council departments with broken photocopiers.

To put that in context: people are living in freezing sheds, flats with collapsing ceilings, or infested buildings—yet FHDC can’t seem to find a fifth case in half a decade that merits shutting down a property. Either we’re living in utopia, or the council’s threshold for “dangerous” starts somewhere around ‘volcanic lava’ and ‘exposed plutonium’.

Here’s what five years of enforcement activity looks like at FHDC—warning: readers expecting dynamic intervention may wish to sit down:

*2024/25’s spike in Improvement Notices wasn’t a dramatic leap in enforcement—just a bulk-serving of identical notices to every leaseholder in one block. Think less “intervention blitz” and more “mail-merge massacre.”

And it gets better. Improvement Notices from FHDC are issued at just 25% of the national average. While other councils inspect and act, FHDC seems to favour a watching brief from behind a frosted-glass window. It’s not so much enforcement as enforced introspection.

According to the Housing Act 2004:

“If the local housing authority are satisfied that a category 1 hazard exists… they shall take the appropriate enforcement action.” (Section 11(1))

And:

“It shall be the duty of every local authority to cause its area to be inspected from time to time to detect any statutory nuisances.” (EPA 1990, Section 79(1))

That word shall is not optional. It means you have to. But at FHDC, “shall” is interpreted with the same enthusiasm most of us reserve for flossing. Instead of inspecting for Category 1 hazards, they’ve opted for the “see nothing, say nothing” school of local governance.

Why? Because if you don’t inspect, you won’t detect. If you don’t detect, you don’t need to enforce. And if you don’t enforce, nobody can accuse you of spending money on tenants in the private rented sector. It’s elegant in its apathy.

A Hazard Awareness Notice is the lowest tier of enforcement. It’s the sticky note of housing policy. It’s a notice advising the person on whom it is served of the existence of a category 1 or Category 2 hazard on the residential premises concerned which arises as a result of a deficiency on the premises in respect of which the notice is served.…” (Section 28(2), Housing Act 2004)

It carries no obligation on the landlord to act. No deadlines. No penalties. Just the vague moral encouragement of being slightly embarrassed that someone noticed your roof has collapsed. FHDC served 11 of these over five years. That’s about 2.2 a year—barely enough to count as a habit.

In 2023/24, they served none at all. Zero. It was a year of hazard awareness blackout. A time when every creaky floorboard, exposed wire, and mould patch could rest easy, safe in the knowledge that the council wouldn’t be sending even a passive-aggressive letter.

The Housing and Planning Act 2016 gave councils a powerful tool: civil penalties of up to £30,000 for rogue landlords. FHDC used it just ten times across five years. Two a year. A performance so slight it might have been scrawled on a napkin in invisible ink.

Even that number flatters the truth. One of the people penalised was a sitting Sandgate Parish Councillor—suggesting either an admirable commitment to internal justice, or just that the notice got delivered to the wrong desk by mistake.

In 2020/21 and 2021/22, there were no penalties at all. Not one. Meanwhile, enforcement teams in Manchester, Bristol, and Camden were turning civil penalties into a landlord’s worst nightmare. FHDC’s version is more like a mild suggestion shouted into a hurricane.

One prosecution. One. In five years. That’s it.

If prosecutions were pandas, FHDC would have just about enough for a postcard.

And why so few? Let the Council explain:

“The council recognises that the decision to prosecute is significant and would be a last resort and could have far-reaching consequences on the offender.” (Section 6.10, FHDC Corporate Enforcement Policy 2025)

Far-reaching consequences… on the offender.

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a line from a soap opera villain’s defence lawyer. But no—it’s the council’s own official policy. Tenants living with Category 1 hazards, collapsing stairwells, or infestations? Their consequences are apparently not quite “far-reaching” enough to merit a visit.

The Policy: Bureaucratic Haiku, Lightly Sprinkled with Excuses

Of course, one might wonder: is all this non-enforcement the result of desperate austerity? A lack of funds? A shoestring operation held together with optimism and chewing gum?

Not quite. Here’s what the financials reveal:

2023/24 – Audited Outturn (General Fund Housing)

• Original budget: £2.503 million
• Final outturn: £2.304 million
• Variance: £199,000 underspend (around 7.95% below budget)

2024/25 – Provisional Outturn (General Fund Housing)

• Budget: £2.660 million
• Outturn: £2.484 million
• Variance: £176,000 underspend (6.6% below budget)

That’s right: even with more money allocated in 2024/25—a 6.3% increase—the council still didn’t spend it all. The underspend isn’t a one-off. It’s a recurring feature.

It’s like ordering an extra-large pizza for a team of five, then deciding no one’s hungry and storing it in the fridge for next year’s housing crisis.

In short: it’s not that they don’t have the money to act. It’s that they choose not to. Budget available, enforcement optional.

For five uninterrupted years, Folkestone & Hythe District Council has shown a devotion to underspending its General Fund housing budget that borders on becoming a permanent Triennial art piece for the district. Across everything from damp inspections to rogue landlord enforcement, the Council somehow managed to spend less than it budgeted — every single year — like a local government version of a minimalist magician, vanishing funding opportunities with the flair of someone allergic to expenditure” In total, the Council left a staggering £1,125,000 unspent between 2020 and 2025 — enough to fund dozens of enforcement officers, or one single thoroughly mediocre consultants’ report on why enforcement officers are “not viable at this time.”

This housing budget isn’t for building palaces — it covers vital front-line services like inspecting illegal HMOs, chasing absentee landlords, and preventing households from becoming CAT 1 and 2 hazards. And yet the pattern remains eerily consistent: a quiet, bureaucratic ballet of budgeted intent, followed by a graceful pirouette away from actual delivery. In 2021/22 alone, the Council underspent by £381,000, nearly 15% of its budget, which might explain why enforcement actions feel rarer than sightings of Bigfoot in Sandgate. It’s as if the council enforcement team has adopted a strict policy of working remotely — very remotely — from housing reality.

But perhaps the most impressive feat is the consistency. Across five years, the average annual underspend clocked in at a tidy £225,000 — money that could have chased the worst landlords out of town, but instead stayed warm and dry inside the civic coffers. In an age of housing crises, this is austerity by autopilot, a kind of fiscal ghosting where the council sets up a date with enforcement… and never shows up. Still, it’s good to know that while tenants suffer through black mould and collapsing ceilings, the council’s reputation for underspending remains rock solid. Priorities, after all, must be maintained.

FHDC’s Corporate Enforcement Policy reads like a collection of koans from the Zen School of Regulatory Invisibility. Consider the following gems:

“Where possible, the first step in enforcement will always be prevention…” (Section 1.4)

Translation: If we pretend it might not happen, maybe it won’t.

“Informal action will be considered where the consequences of failure are acceptable.” (Section 6.4)

So long as tenants don’t die immediately, we’ll probably send an email.

“Formal action is expected to achieve the desired outcome without incurring expense or inconvenience…” (Section 6.5)

You read that correctly. Enforcement should avoid expense and inconvenience. It’s regulation by aromatherapy—scented, soothing, and completely non-invasive, while tenants must breathe in the mould spores.

Remember Heineken’s slogan?

FHDC offers a spiritual inverse: “Ignores the parts other councils reluctantly inspect.”

This isn’t enforcement. It’s metaphysical absence. If a landlord harasses tenants or fails to fix exposed wiring, the best you might get from FHDC is a raised eyebrow and a shrug that smells faintly of inaction.

At the Kent Housing Group, November 2024 meeting of which FHDC is a member, things got awkward:

“They hadn’t found good evidence on the number of homes with a Category 1 hazard…”

“They also hadn’t found evidence on the most common hazards…”

“Some LAs did not have any, so it wasn’t a complete data set.”

That’s not a data shortfall. That’s a policy black hole. A carefully curated void where evidence goes to die—or, more accurately, never gets recorded in the first place.

You can’t regulate what you can’t see. And FHDC has gone full ninja: silent, invisible, and entirely disinterested.

Sir Humphrey Would Be Proud

But of course, none of this strategic inertia floats gently down from the heavens. There’s a chain of command guiding this softly-spoken standstill:

• Cllr Rebecca Shoob, Cabinet Member for Housing (£17,550 in allowances, 2024/25): The political lead at the top of the housing tree. Oversees the strategic vision where minimal enforcement is repackaged as ‘localism’ and the policy of ‘let them mend it themselves’.

• Andy Blaszkowicz, Corporate Director for Housing (£113,352 – £125,798): Commander-in-chief of the ‘Do Nothing Decisively’ doctrine. If the Titanic had been captained this way, it would have missed the iceberg by never leaving port.
• Gill Butler, Chief Officer for Housing (£73,066 – £89,070): Overseer of operations so low-impact they could be mistaken for a screensaver.

• Nicola Wilson, Environmental Health: Where statutory nuisances go to be gently pondered. Think of her as the department’s metaphysical detective—solving the mystery of how to enforce housing law without actually touching it.

If doing nothing were a West End show, this trio would get top billing. Applause optional, action unlikely.

Sir Humphrey: “Minister, if we don’t inspect for statutory nuisances, we won’t have to act on them. It’s not failure—it’s proactive inertia.”

Bernard: “But Sir Humphrey, what about the tenants?”

Sir Humphrey: “They’re not stakeholders, Bernard. They’re statistics waiting to be excluded.”

So, returning to those hallowed Three Es—FHDC has nailed two of them. They’ve kept costs low (Economy) and workload light (Efficiency). As for Effectiveness? Well, if you define success as not knowing how many unsafe homes exist and taking pride in not finding out—then yes, perhaps they’ve redefined effectiveness altogether.

FHDC has perfected enforcement without enforcement. Governance without impact. Responsibility without delivery.

Tenants may freeze, cough, and trip over exposed wires. But rest assured: no council officer was inconvenienced in the making of this enforcement regime.

Folkestone & Hythe District Council: Doing nothing—effectively.

If you have encountered Folkestone and  Hythe DC Environmental Health Team, please do contact us in confidence at: The ShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me

This article is a satirical and critical commentary based on publicly available facts, FOI data, and official records. All commentary is made in the public interest with no intention to harass or defame any individual.

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism for the People NOT the Powerful