Folkestone Library: Grace Hill Sale Looms as KCC Set To Move Service to 14 Sandgate Road (Old Woolworths)

When Kent County Council finally shut the doors of Folkestone Library’s landmark Grace Hill building in December 2022, it did so on a stark claim: the building had become unsafe, with “water ingress and mould” serious enough to prevent staff and customers occupying it.

More than three years later, the argument has shifted from “temporary closure” to something closer to a permanent reset. At a Cabinet meeting yesterday, KCC’s Cabinet Member for Finance, Cllr Brian Collins, described the saga with characteristic understatement: “ Folkestone Library, which has been a bit contentious,” before adding: “Work has begun at 14 Sandgate Rd (the Old Woolworths)”.

That new town-centre site is not being sold as merely a stop-gap. KCC’s published plans describe a “new hub” at 14 Sandgate Road intended to bring services together under one roof, including a full library offer and adult learning provision. The political message is clear: move on, move in, and move forward — while the campaign to reopen Grace Hill watches the ground harden beneath it.

From civic landmark to “too costly to fix”

KCC’s own decision papers lay out the council’s central case: Grace Hill is not simply closed; it is closed because the price of reopening is judged unaffordable. The repairs needed to reopen the building are “now estimated to cost in the region of £2.9 million”, a figure KCC says was compiled by a council surveyor in April 2024.

Councils do not pull numbers like that out of thin air. Grade II Listed buildings are expensive to repair, and a building that has been deteriorating for years rarely gets cheaper with time. But campaigners are not wrong to question what, exactly, sits inside the headline figure. Is that £2.9 million the minimum to make the building safe and watertight — or does it include a broader programme of restoration? Does it assume full compliance upgrades in one go? How much is contingency for unknown defects?

Those details matter, because £2.9 million becomes a rhetorical wrecking ball if it is not set beside the full cost of the alternative. In the public debate, Grace Hill’s repair bill is presented as a single, vivid mountain — while the cost of moving, fitting out, leasing and operating the new site is often described more gently, as an administrative necessity.

The new hub: what KCC says residents will get

KCC’s September 2025 announcement set out the council’s vision for 14 Sandgate Road: a multi-service town-centre base that brings Folkestone Library back together with other public functions. Work, the council said, was starting on a “new hub for Folkestone library and registration services”, designed to return the “full library stock” and provide a town-centre base for a wider offer.

The same announcement made clear that adult learning would sit alongside the library. Adult Education courses were expected to operate from the building from Spring 2026. That fits with what residents have heard locally: this is intended to be both Folkestone Library and the Adult Education Centre, together.

In one sense, the co-location logic is obvious. Put services in a prominent, accessible place, and people are more likely to use them. It is also easier for a council to staff, manage and maintain one consolidated hub than to patch together multiple temporary rooms in different buildings.

But co-location brings trade-offs too — especially for a library. Libraries are not just “service counters”. They are quiet refuge, study space, a place for children’s activities, digital access, local history, and (increasingly) a front door to help for people who do not know where else to go. A busier, multi-use hub may expand footfall, but it can also reduce calm — and for some users, calm is not a luxury; it is the condition that makes the service usable at all.

The phrase that worries campaigners: “foreseeable future”

Councils have a habit of using soft phrases when they are making hard commitments. In this story, the phrase doing the work is “for the foreseeable future”.

To a lay reader, it sounds like a sensible holding position: not permanent, but not rushed. To campaigners, it can sound like a slow goodbye — because “foreseeable future” is how temporary arrangements quietly become the default.

The practical question is simple: how many years does KCC actually expect the library to remain at 14 Sandgate Road? If the answer is five, the design might reasonably prioritise speed and cost. If it is ten or more, then residents are entitled to expect a town-centre library built to last — with proper quiet zones, accessible layouts, and a service specification that matches what Folkestone had before the doors closed at Grace Hill.

Grace Hill’s status: an Asset of Community Value — but not a community guarantee

Grace Hill has another official label that shapes the argument: KCC says the building is listed as an “Asset of Community Value” (ACV) under the Localism Act 2011. However the the moratorium concluded on the 7th September 2025

To many residents, the ACV label sounds like protection — as if it blocks a sale. It doesn’t: an ACV can trigger a moratorium that pauses a sale and gives community groups time to prepare a bid, but it cannot force the owner to accept that bid or keep the building in public hands.

In this case, KCC says the moratorium period concluded on 7 September 2025, meaning the legal pause has ended and the building can now be sold. The fact it has been taken off the Sibley Pares website may simply mean the marketing has paused, moved elsewhere, or is being handled off-market — but it does not, on its own, indicate that the disposal has been abandoned.

KCC’s direction of travel is explicit: it has already acknowledged that options involving the council retaining responsibility for maintenance and repair are being discounted, and that this “will very likely require” disposal of the building to a third party. Once that happens, any future library presence at Grace Hill becomes dependent on the plans — and the economics — of whoever owns it.

That is why campaigners argue the stakes are bigger than an address change. Sell Grace Hill, and you sell away future leverage.

The Reform argument: fix the roof, or move decisively

Into this fraught landscape comes a distinctly blunt political intervention. Reform candidates, in their election manifesto, put the choice in plain terms:

“The Council should either engage assertively with local building contractors and find a way to make the roof of the original Grace Hill building waterproof. If the cost of this is proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be unjustifiable then an alternative location should be located without delay. It is not as if there is a shortage of empty viable premises – Debenhams, Wilko, Store Twenty One and the old Job Centre amongst others.”

On its face, that reads like common sense. Stop arguing. Stop drifting. Either make the building watertight or move.

The problem — and the opportunity — is in the words “proven beyond any reasonable doubt”. That is a high bar in public finance. Councils work with estimates, risk, professional judgement and constrained budgets. But the manifesto does land on a legitimate demand: if the council is going to shut down a civic landmark for good, residents deserve to see the reasoning in a way that is transparent and comparable.

A repair estimate is not proof. Proof is a clear, published comparison: repair costs, time to reopen, and the cost of the alternative — including lease and fit-out — set side by side, using the same time horizon.

What residents still don’t have: a simple “apples to apples” comparison

KCC’s papers clearly set out why it believes Grace Hill is financially and practically difficult to reopen. They also clearly describe the council’s intention to re-establish a full town centre library provision and move it into a new hub.

What remains missing for many residents is the one-page comparison that would settle half the argument.

How much will 14 Sandgate Road cost, year by year? What are the fit-out costs? What are the ongoing property costs? What are the future liabilities at the end of the lease — the costs of returning the building, repairing it, or refitting again? And how does that compare to repairing Grace Hill in stages, or repairing it to reopen and then improving it over time?

If a council wants the public to accept a controversial conclusion, it must make the arithmetic visible. Otherwise, opponents will always suspect that the numbers have been arranged to land where the council wanted to land.

The human question: accessibility, dignity and what a library is for

There is also a human question that cannot be answered by property spreadsheets alone.

Grace Hill is not just a building; it is a familiar landmark, tied to a sense of town-centre identity. But the council’s starting point — unsafe conditions including water ingress and mould — is not a trivial matter either. If a building is unsafe, it cannot be used simply because it is loved.

So the debate becomes: what replaces it, and for whom?

A modern library must work for older residents, disabled residents, parents with children, people who need public computers, people who need quiet to study, and people who need help navigating services. Co-locating with adult education may be a strength — but only if the resulting space still behaves like a library, not like a busy waiting room with books.

That is why the next phase matters so much. “Work has begun” is the easy part. The hard part is whether the finished hub feels like a genuine public library — a place that welcomes people in and allows them to stay.

A contentious library, a decisive year

Cllr Collins was right to call Folkestone Library “a bit contentious”. The closure, the years of temporary provision, the high repair estimate, and the move to a new hub have combined into a question about what councils owe to towns: not just services, but continuity, openness and respect for public assets.

KCC is moving ahead with 14 Sandgate Road. It has framed Grace Hill as unsafe and costly to repair, estimated repairs at £2.9 million, and signalled that retaining responsibility for the building is not the chosen path. The campaign to reopen Grace Hill may not have achieved its central goal — but it has achieved something else: it has forced the council to justify itself in public.

Now the public deserves the final piece: full transparency about costs, timescales and service standards — so that, whatever side residents take, they are arguing over evidence, not over suspicion.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime