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 did put forward an alternative. Folkestone Town Council tried to keep the old building in community hands. KCC chose a different route.

The cleanest way to understand this story is to strip away the warm language about reopening and look at the hard public record. Grace Hill closed in December 2022 because it had become unsafe for staff and visitors. KCC then spent the next two years examining repair costs, alternative sites and the future of the old building. By early 2026, its formal decision was to confirm 14 Sandgate Road as the location of the Folkestone town-centre library and registration service “for the foreseeable future” and to progress with open market disposal of the Grace Hill building.

KCC has now fixed the reopening date. The council says the new Folkestone Library and Community Learning Centre will open on 26 May 2026 at 14 Sandgate Road – the former Woolworths building – bringing together library services, registration services and adult education in one town-centre hub. That means the service is returning, but not to its old home. The library is coming back. Grace Hill isn’t.

The new home isn’t publicly owned. The title register shows that 14–16 Sandgate Road is owned by STAR PROPERTY CAPITAL INVESTMENTS LIMITED, which bought the freehold for £1,435,000 on 22 March 2022. The same title records a registered charge in favour of Shawbrook Bank Limited and a lease dated 2 April 2025 over part of 16 Sandgate Road, running for four years from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2029. The title summary doesn’t name the tenant. Separately, KCC’s own decision report on 13 January 2026, says a 15-year interest in the Sandgate Road building had already been secured and that works were under way to convert it for use by co-locating services. So the public can see that the new library is being delivered through a lease-based arrangement in a privately owned building, even if the full legal picture isn’t obvious from the summary title alone.

Grace Hill, by contrast, has been treated as a building to exit. KCC’s decision report said reopening the old library would require repairs estimated at about £2.9 million (disputed) and that holding the vacant building was projected to cost more than £100,000 a year. It also said no sufficiently certain option had emerged from the Asset of Community Value and marketing processes to justify keeping Grace Hill as the library’s long-term base. In official terms, that was the case for moving on. In plain English, KCC looked at the bill, looked at the risk, and decided it had had enough.

But Grace Hill didn’t go quietly, and it didn’t go without an alternative. Creative Folkestone published a proposal to restore the building as a community and cultural hub, with space for a public library operated by KCC alongside education, creative industries and community events. KCC’s own options paper formally recognised that proposal as Option 2A: accept Creative Folkestone’s grant-funded vision for Grace Hill and keep the temporary library at 14 Sandgate Road in the meantime. This was not a vague campaign slogan. It was a real, published scheme and a real option in KCC’s own paperwork.

The political awkwardness for County Hall is that the public mood was not behind abandoning Grace Hill. KCC’s consultation material says 600 people responded, with 38% agreeing with the proposal to leave Grace Hill permanently and 55% disagreeing. Folkestone & Hythe District Council publicly backed the Creative Folkestone proposal in October 2025, saying it hoped KCC would accept the bid to restore the building as a multi-use space combining library use with education, creative industries and community activity. So there was a live alternative, and it had visible local backing.

KCC nevertheless stuck with Sandgate Road and disposal. Its formal decision notes the outcome of its evaluation of Creative Folkestone’s proposal alongside other options, but the conclusion was to keep the service at 14 Sandgate Road, remain open to reviewing the position in late 2028, and move ahead with disposal. KCC’s public library webpage is explicit that it’s now implementing that decision. Whatever campaigners hoped for, the county council’s chosen future is a library in Sandgate Road and a Grace Hill building no longer central to service delivery.

The old building is now firmly in property territory. LoopNet is carrying the former library, via Sibley Pares, as a property currently available for sale, with a date on market of 6 August 2025 and a floor area of about 14,229 sq ft. At the same time, Folkestone Town Council has tried to stop the building disappearing into an unknown private future. Its January 2026 minutes say the council remained strongly supportive of the Creative Folkestone bid, warned that an auction sale to a third party could destroy the chance of community use, and resolved to offer a peppercorn sum for the freehold because of the condition, liability and risk attached to owning the Grade II listed building.

The latest official step shows how far this has moved. KCC’s public notice of 20 March 2026 says it intends to dispose of 2 Grace Hill to Folkestone Town Council, with comments invited until 9 April 2026. So the story, as matters stand, isn’t that Grace Hill has already vanished under the auctioneer’s hammer. It’s that KCC has chosen to move the library service into a privately owned building on Sandgate Road, has treated Grace Hill as surplus to service needs, and is now trying to dispose of it while the town council and local campaigners make one last attempt to keep it in community hands. That is the real shape of this affair. Not a triumphant homecoming, but a civic retreat dressed up as a reopening.

The Shepway Vox Team

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