FHDC Council Chairs and Allowances: Who Got Which Seat

The music stopped at Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s annual general meeting on Wednesday 6 May 2026. Cllr Paul Thomas got the big civic chair, most committee chairs stayed put, and some seats came with rather more stuffing than others.

At Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s annual general meeting yesterday, the chamber played that great local government classic: musical chairs with minutes.

There were nominations, seconders, polite speeches, no obvious stampede, and then the inevitable moment when the music stopped and everyone checked who’d landed where.

The big change was at the top. Cllr Anita Jones stood down after two years as Chair of the Council. Cllr Tony Cooper nominated Cllr Paul Thomas, Cllr Tim Prater seconded him, nobody else was nominated, and Cllr Thomas was duly elected.

So that’s the main headline. The civic chain moved from Cllr Jones to Cllr Thomas. Folkestone and Hythe has gone from a Hythe chair to a Romney Marsh chair, with the district’s top ceremonial seat now occupied by New Romney’s Cllr Thomas.

It is, of course, not just a chair. It’s a chair with a number attached.

Using FHDC’s 2026/27 budget assumption of a 3.8% CPI uplift, the Chair of the Council is worth an estimated £15,265.87 gross a year. That is made up of an estimated £6,349.45 basic councillor allowance and an estimated £8,916.42 special responsibility allowance for being Chair of the Council.

In children’s musical chairs, the prize is staying in the game. At FHDC, the prize is a civic chain, a diary full of events, the pleasure of keeping councillors in order, and roughly fifteen grand before tax. Nobody said democracy came with a flatpack stool.

Elsewhere, the game was less “scramble for the chair” and more “same person, same seat, carry on”.

Cllr Liz McShane remains Chair of the Audit and Governance Committee. This is the committee that deals with audit, accounts, risk, governance and standards — the council’s internal plumbing, in other words. Not glamorous, but very important, especially when residents want to know whether the pipes are leaking behind the wallpaper.

That chair attracts a Tier 1 committee chair allowance. For 2026/27, on the same 3.8% uplift assumption, the total comes to an estimated £13,184.68 gross a year: the basic allowance plus an estimated £6,835.23 special responsibility allowance.

Cllr Jackie Meade remains Chair of the Planning and Licensing Committee. That’s one of the council’s most visible and powerful chairs, because planning and licensing decisions affect streets, homes, businesses, neighbours, noise, traffic and occasionally everyone’s blood pressure.

That chair also attracts the Tier 1 committee chair allowance, so the estimated 2026/27 total is again £13,184.68 gross a year.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly remains Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Scrutiny is meant to be the council’s awkward-question machine: the place where decisions, performance, budgets and executive actions get prodded before residents have to do the prodding themselves.

That chair also attracts the Tier 1 allowance, giving the same estimated 2026/27 total of £13,184.68 gross a year.

Cllr Akuffo-Kelly is also shown as Chair of the Finance and Performance Scrutiny Sub-Committee. But this is where the council’s allowance rule matters. FHDC’s published scheme says that if more than one position attracting a special responsibility allowance is held, only one is paid. So there’s no evidence of a second paid cushion being placed underneath the same councillor.

Cllr Connor McConville remains Chair of the Personnel Committee. That committee deals with staffing matters, senior officer appointments, disciplinary issues and pay. It’s not the flashiest chair in the room, but it’s one with real consequences.

However, the published allowance list does not show a separate special responsibility allowance for the Personnel Committee chair. So, as a chair role, it appears to come with the basic councillor allowance only — estimated at £6,349.45 for 2026/27. Cllr McConville may receive a separate allowance for any other qualifying role he holds, but that is not a Personnel chair allowance.

Cllr Jim Martin remains Chairman of Cabinet, because the Leader of the Council chairs Cabinet. This is the executive chair: the political driving seat rather than the ceremonial one. If the Chair of the Council has the chain, the Cabinet chair has the steering wheel.

That is the best-padded chair in the FHDC room. Using the same uplift assumption, the Leader/Chairman of Cabinet role is worth an estimated £32,498.75 gross a year: the basic allowance plus an estimated £26,149.30 Leader’s special responsibility allowance.

Cllr Martin is also shown as Chair of the Corporate Plan Working Group. But there’s no separate published special responsibility allowance for that chair. So it may sound strategic, and it may involve plenty of paper, but it doesn’t appear to come with a separate bag of coins.

So the cleaned-up chair list is this:

The simple version is this: one major civic chair changed hands. The main committee chairs largely stayed put. Some chairs are paid as special responsibility roles. Some aren’t. And where a councillor holds more than one qualifying paid role, FHDC’s own rule says only one special responsibility allowance is paid.

So this wasn’t a revolution. It was more of a civic shuffle. Cllr Paul Thomas got the big chair. Cllr Jim Martin kept the executive chair. Liz McShane, Jackie Meade, Abena Akuffo-Kelly and Connor McConville kept their committee chairs.

The music stopped. The seats were taken. The allowances followed the rules.

And residents now know which chairs are just chairs — and which ones come with extra upholstery.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime