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 published count in Kent and Medway of private rented homes where a Category 1 hazard was found after inspection in 2024/25.

There are league tables you boast about, league tables you explain away, and league tables you’d really rather nobody noticed. This falls firmly into the third category.

Back in December 2024, The Shepway Vox Team reported that housing officers across Kent and Medway did not know “how many category one hazards, or what the most common hazards are” in the county’s private rented homes. That was bad enough on its own. What the latest Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government figures now show is that even within that patchy and incomplete picture, Folkestone & Hythe still manages to stand out for all the wrong reasons.

In 2024/25, Folkestone & Hythe recorded 197 private rented dwellings where a Category 1 hazard was found after inspection. That is the highest published figure in Kent and Medway. Thanet was next on 92. Medway was on 56. Tunbridge Wells was on 30. Dover was on 19. This is not one council edging first place on a tie-break. Folkestone & Hythe is well clear of the field.

That does not mean the district has exactly 197 dangerous private rented homes and no more. It would be careless to claim that, and wrong. The official measure is narrower. It counts dwellings in the private rented sector where, following an inspection during the year, officers found at least one Category 1 hazard. Homes that may be problematic but have not yet been inspected don’t appear in the figure. So this is not a full map of every serious hazard in the district. It’s a count of serious hazards actually found after inspection.

That caveat matters. But it does not make the story smaller. It makes it sharper. Because even on that narrower test, Folkestone & Hythe still comes out looking grim.

This is where the attached Kent Housing Group note matters. In the draft Private Sector Housing Subgroup minutes from 6 November 2024, the group said the “evidence base on local housing conditions was scarce”. It went on to say officers “hadn’t found good evidence on the number of homes with a Category 1 hazard, or even the number of homes found with a Category 1 hazard. They also hadn’t found evidence on the most common hazards found in K&M.” It then added that LAHS data had shown “some LAs did not have any so it wasn’t a complete data set.” That is a pretty striking thing for the sector itself to be saying. It’s one thing for campaigners or journalists to complain that the data is thin. It’s another for Kent’s own housing network to say so in black and white.

And yet, even inside that incomplete picture, Folkestone & Hythe is still top.

That is what gives the story its sting. If this were a complete district-by-district census of serious hazards, the result would already be uncomfortable. But it’s not. It’s a partial, inspection-based dataset that professionals themselves regarded as limited. Even so, Folkestone & Hythe still emerges with the highest published count in Kent and Medway. That ought to make councillors, landlords and residents ask whether the private rented sector in this district has a deeper problem than officialdom has wanted to say plainly.

It’s not a one-year wobble either. The same series shows Folkestone & Hythe on 205 in 2021/22, 271 in 2022/23, 292 in 2023/24 and 197 in 2024/25. Yes, the latest number is down on the previous year. No, that does not amount to a clean bill of health. The pattern is still one of a district repeatedly recording a high number of serious hazards found after inspection in private rented homes.

Nor are we talking about trivial defects. Under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, Category 1 hazards are the serious end of the scale. Folkestone & Hythe’s own guidance says hazards are assessed and weighted to determine whether a property has category 1 “serious”hazards or category 2 “other” hazards. The list can include damp and mould growth, excess cold, overcrowding, fire risk, electrical hazards, sanitation failures and structural dangers. This is not about a landlord being a bit slapdash with the emulsion. It’s about conditions serious enough to cross a health and safety threshold.

To be fair, there is one possible reading of the figures that is less damning than it first appears. A council with a higher number may, in part, be a council that is actually finding problems rather than missing them. Folkestone & Hythe’s housing performance report says 317 private sector homes were improved through council intervention in 2024/25, above target. That is not the same measure as Category 1 hazards found after inspection, so nobody should lazily merge the two. But it does suggest the council is dealing with a substantial caseload rather than pretending everything is fine.

Even so, “we found them” is not exactly the sort of slogan you stencil on the town hall wall and call a triumph. If serious hazards are being found and tackled in large numbers, that is plainly better than leaving them undiscovered. But it still points to a private rented sector carrying a heavy burden of poor conditions.

The Kent Housing Group note hints at another problem too: capacity. In the section on training and regulation, the group said, “We may need a bigger workforce” for forthcoming private rented sector and supported housing pressures. Later, the note records the line: “MHCLG are aware of the shortage of PRS staff.” In other words, even before these figures landed, the people working in this field were already talking about stretched enforcement capacity.

That matters, because it complicates the table in exactly the right way. High numbers can reflect bad housing conditions. They can also reflect councils that are looking hard enough to find what is there. Low numbers can reflect better housing. They can also reflect fewer inspections, weaker intelligence or thinner staffing. A neat league table is never the whole truth. But it’s often a very good clue. On this measure, the clue points squarely at Folkestone & Hythe.

The December 2024 Shepway Vox piece described it as “quite ‘unbelievable’” that, in 2024, local authorities across Kent and Medway still did not have a clear handle on the scale and type of Category 1 hazards in private rented homes. The new figures don’t solve that wider problem. They do, however, tell us something solid and local. In Folkestone & Hythe, serious hazards found after inspection in private rented homes are not a fringe issue. They are a front-rank one.

And that leaves some obvious questions hanging in the air. What hazards are turning up most often in the district: damp and mould, excess cold, fire risk, electrical defects, overcrowding, or something else? Which wards are worst affected? How many of these cases end with informal action, how many with formal notices, and how many with penalties or prosecution? How quickly are hazards being fixed? Until the council answers those questions in public, it will remain in the awkward position of topping a troubling table without fully explaining why.

For now, the headline is simple enough. Kent’s own housing officers said the evidence base was “scarce”. Even so, the official return still places Folkestone & Hythe at the top of Kent and Medway’s published table for serious hazards found in inspected private rented homes. That is not a badge of honour. It’s a warning.

The Shepway Vox Team

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