Folkestone Regeneration: Can £22m Heal A Town Of Two Halves?
Folkestone’s regeneration scheme began with a painful truth: the town was being described as “a town of two halves”. Now KCC is leading the transport and public realm [...]
April 2026
Folkestone & Hythe HMO Licensing Gap: 312 Estimated Shared Houses, 63 Licences
Folkestone & Hythe says HMOs with five or more people in two or more households need a licence. Yet the latest MHCLG housing return points to an estimated 312 [...]
Epstein Files: Folkestone Reference Leads to Turner Painting, Not Local Scandal
The Jeffrey Epstein files are not entertainment. They’re part of the public record of a man accused and prosecuted by US prosecutors of sexually exploiting and abusing [...]
Folkestone’s Grace Hill Library Rescue: Who Pays the Bill?
Nearly three years after campaigners stood outside Grace Hill demanding that Folkestone Library be repaired, retained and reopened, the building has been saved from the [...]
The Long Read: Folkestone & Hythe School Places — Empty Desks, Deficits and Pressure Points
England’s school-place debate has changed. The national watchdog says falling primary rolls now “requires a coordinated response”. In Folkestone & Hythe, the local [...]
Rick Davies, Romney Marsh and the Making of Supertramp
We went looking for a local legend and found something better: a real Kent story. Not the inflated version, with Supertramp supposedly recording its first album on Romney [...]
Folkestone Invicta Promotion: Chairman Josh Healey on Club Growth and Next Season
Promotion has brought excitement back to Cheriton Road, but the bigger test starts now. In this interview, Folkestone Invicta’s chairman Josh Healey (pictured left) [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Has Kent’s Highest Band D Council Tax for the 23rd Year in a Row
The official Band D benchmark says Folkestone & Hythe has sat at the top of Kent’s council tax table since 2004-05. It did so under the Conservatives who ran the [...]
Kent County Council FOI Delays: ICO Finds KCC Breached Freedom of Information Law
Kent County Council missed the legal deadline on a request about Sir Roger De Haan’s Folkestone meeting with senior KCC councillors, and the Information Commissioner had to [...]
Trauma Does Not Exist? What Adler Really Meant About Freud, Determinism and Breaking Free
It’s one of those phrases that sounds less like psychology and more like a person picking a fight in a pub. But Adler was not denying suffering. He was challenging [...]
Folkestone Library Move: KCC Reopens in Sandgate Road as Grace Hill Faces Disposal
Kent County Council is reopening the library service in a privately owned Sandgate Road building while moving the old Grace Hill library towards disposal. Creative Folkestone [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Tops Kent Table for Serious Private Rented Housing Hazards
Kent housing officers said the local evidence base on poor housing conditions was “scarce”. Even so, MHCLG’s latest return shows Folkestone & Hythe with the highest [...]
Reform UK Hythe Leaflet Raises Missing Imprint Questions
A two-sided Reform UK leaflet delivered in Hythe is loud on Labour, loud on Kent, loud on potholes, loud on common sense and loud on “change”. What it doesn’t [...]
Renters’ Rights Act: Part 2 — What Folkestone & Hythe Tenants Need to Watch From 1 May 2026
The new law is bigger than section 21. The real tests will be whether loopholes open up, whether councils enforce, and whether the courts can cope once simple no-fault cases [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council Expenses: Officers Get Higher Meal Allowances Than Councillors
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” George Orwell wrote, and at Folkestone & Hythe District Council that principle appears to have [...]
Renters’ Rights Act: Part 1 — What Folkestone & Hythe Tenants Need to Know From 1 May 2026
From 1 May 2026, the Renters’ Rights Act starts changing how private renting works in England. For tenants in Folkestone & Hythe, the biggest shift is simple: a home [...]
The Long Read: Kent County Council’s PFI School Deals Still Cost Millions
The Government says PFI is over. Parliament has spent years tearing strips off it. The Treasury itself admitted the model became “tarnished by its waste, inflexibility and [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council Pay Gap Widens Between Top Officers and Lowest-Paid Staff
There is a neat trick in local authority pay stories. Look only at percentages and the whole thing can start to seem almost modest. Look at the pounds, though, and the [...]
Exclusive: How Otterpool Park’s Places for People Deal Ended in a Claim
David Monk’s Otterpool strategy was built on a simple commercial idea: service the land, parcel it up and sell it on. By 2023, Places for People had emerged in public as [...]
KCC Children’s Social Work Vacancy Rate Falls but Caseloads Stay Above Target
Kent County Council’s children’s social work workforce looks healthier on paper than it did two years ago. Vacancies are down. Turnover is down. Permanent staffing has [...]
Otterpool Park Minutes Reveal Places for People Claim
For years, Otterpool Park LLP’s public minutes were written in that familiar regeneration dialect: lots of “delivery”, “collaboration” and “transition”, not [...]
Kent Councils Gender Pay Gap League Table: Which Employers Favour Men, Women or Neither?
Kent’s council gender pay gap story is no longer a simple tale of men doing better everywhere. In some authorities the median gap still clearly favours men. In some it is [...]
Exclusive: Places for People Silent Over Otterpool Park Contract Dispute
Exclusive Places for People pulled out of plans to become an Otterpool Park joint venture partner in autumn 2024. Now, after being asked whether it is taking or preparing [...]
Planning Reform Plans Shift Most Planning Decisions From Councillors to Officers
If the government’s planning committee reforms go through, the biggest change will not simply be that fewer applications reach committee. It will be that a new two-person [...]
Kent Police Use of Force and Race Questions Persist Despite HMICFRS Praise
Kent Police has got better at call handling, improved outcomes for victims and won strong praise for how it supports its workforce. But the latest HMICFRS inspection says the [...]