Kent County Council No Use Empty (NUE) loans: £195,600 paid out before approval, FOI reveals

Kent County Council’s No Use Empty (NUE) loan programme is facing accuracy questions after an audit of the council’s FOI spreadsheet found two entries where the first drawdown of funds is recorded before the official approval date—one in Thanet (THA) and one in Dover (DOV). In a third case, a company’s approval and drawdown fell on the same day.

All this public money  – £195,600  – was released while Reform UK was in power at County Hall. No doubt the residents of Kent will just have to “suck it up”.

NUE is widely credited with bringing thousands of long-term empty homes back into use across Kent, using short-term, secured loans of typically £25,000 per unit (up to £175,000 per applicant). KCC says the scheme has returned 8,607 homes to use and levered substantial investment into the county. But the FOI dataset’s date inconsistencies now raise basic governance questions about approvals and payment sequencing.

What Our Line By Line Check Found

We reviewed every row on the NUE worksheet in the FOI spreadsheet supplied by KCC. Out of 48 records:

• 45 showed the correct sequence (approval before first drawdown).

• 1 showed approval and drawdown on the same day (MDC Real Estate Ltd, Dover, £270,000).

• 2 showed drawdown before approval (problem cases):

(1) Private Ownership — Thanet (THA) — £25,000

• Approval: 17/12/2025

• First drawdown: 01/02/2025

• Difference: –319 days (drawdown before approval)

• Type: Private owner (no company/charity number)

(2) Private Ownership — Dover (DOV) — £170,600

• Approval: 07/07/2025

• First drawdown: 01/07/2025

• Difference: –6 days (drawdown before approval)

• Type: Private owner (no company/charity number)

These are not trivial clerical hiccups. Under KCC’s own scheme literature, formal approval is required and loans are secured by a registered legal charge, with drawdowns following those formalities—not preceding them. A recorded drawdown before approval runs against that order of operations.

What The Rules & Guidance Say

• Loan parameters. NUE loans for long-term empty properties (typically empty 6+ months) are offered interest-free for residential renovation, £25,000 per unit up to £175,000 per applicant, with repayment up to three years for letting or 24 months for sale. District councils—including Thanet—signpost residents to these terms. 

• Security comes first. NUE documents and committee papers describe short-term secured loans with a first or second charge registered (Land Registry/Companies House) before funds flow. NUE booklets also refer to application/registration fees associated with placing that charge. In plain English: approval and security precede drawdown. 

• Scale and public interest. KCC’s own releases credit NUE with thousands of homes back in use and tens of millions of pounds recycled—context for why transparent, accurate records of approvals and payments matter. 

Why The Date Anomalies Matter

An approval recorded after a drawdown implies either a process failure (money going out before sign-off/charge registration) or a data error (wrong day/month/year or a field overwritten by a later variation date).
Either way, the dataset—as released—cannot reconcile with KCC’s described controls for a secured loan fund.

For the Thanet line, the approval date is even shown as 17 December 2025—a future date as of today (29 October 2025). For the Dover line, drawdown appears six days before approval. These contradictions block meaningful external scrutiny of whether the fund is operating in the right sequence.

What KCC Should Clarify

1. Confirm the correct dates for the two “drawdown before approval” lines and the “same-day” company case, and republish the FOI spreadsheet with an audit note.

2. Explain the sequencing controls: when is the approval deemed final, and at what point is the legal charge registered relative to the first drawdown? (NUE papers suggest approval/charge must come first.) 

3. Check for wider issues: run an internal data validation to catch any other approval/drawdown inversions, transposed years (e.g., 2024 vs 2025), or fields overwritten by later variations.

4. Improve release quality: continue redacting genuine personal data where required, but ensure non-sensitive administrative fields (like award IDs and dates) are complete and accurate so the public can verify sequencing.

The Bigger Picture

None of this diminishes the value of NUE. Independent reporting and KCC’s own updates show the scheme has delivered thousands of homes and significant investment, often with districts like Thanet pointing residents to interest-free loans as a practical route to bring derelict properties back to life. But trust in a revolving loan fund rests on the basics: dates, approvals and charges recorded in the right order. KCC now needs to correct the record—and show its processes match its policies.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent