FHDC Temporary Accommodation Contracts Show £570k Spending Gap

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s temporary accommodation trail shows two contract periods where the published payments appear to exceed the published values by a combined £570,302.60, even after allowing for VAT. The 2024/25 emergency accommodation contract shows an apparent £317,023.40 gap, and the 2025 contract shows a further £253,279.20 gap. The newer January 2026 framework had only just begun, so it isn’t the overspend story. The real question is whether FHDC can publish the waivers, variations, authorisations or invoice evidence that explains the earlier spending.

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s temporary accommodation figures now look less like a clean public ledger and more like a recipe book after someone’s dropped it in the gravy. The service itself is serious: homeless households need somewhere safe to sleep, and councils have legal duties. The problem is not that FHDC spent money on emergency accommodation. The problem is that the contract trail, purchase-order trail and payment trail still don’t explain each other clearly enough. FHDC says its supplier-payment lists cover payments of £250 and over, including VAT, while its purchase-order lists cover orders of £5,000 and over, excluding VAT.

The first correction matters. The new January 2026 temporary accommodation framework is not the contract that appears to have gone over the published figure. It has only recently begun. Find a Tender records the 2026 framework, reference DN781707, as worth £3.2m excluding VAT and £3.84m including VAT, running from 19 January 2026 to 18 January 2027, with possible extensions to 2030. By 31 March 2026, only the first 72 days had elapsed, so it would be absurd to accuse that contract of overspending already.

The older contract trail is where the heat starts to rise. FHDC’s 2024/25 emergency accommodation contract, reference DN726178, ran from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 and carried a published value of £475,000. The important new detail is how that contract appears to have been procured: the public record describes the process as a “Direct Award (Internal waiver)”. That phrase matters. It doesn’t automatically mean anything improper happened. Waivers can be lawful, and homelessness pressures can force councils to move quickly. But once the public record says an internal waiver was used, residents are entitled to ask for the control trail: who approved it, what rule allowed it, why normal competition was bypassed, what value was authorised, and how spending was monitored afterwards. Without that, “waiver” risks becoming less a safeguard and more a magic apron waved over the bill after the cooking is done. Source: uploaded FHDC contract register; uploaded FHDC payments workbook.

The 2024/25 period raises a much bigger question than VAT can explain away. Using the two exact payment descriptions used throughout our analysis — “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation” and “Self Contained Nightly Lets” — FHDC’s payment data shows £887,023.40 during the 2024/25 contract period. The published contract value was £475,000. Even if that contract value were treated as excluding VAT and uplifted by 20%, the VAT-inclusive comparator would be £570,000. That still leaves £317,023.40 more in published payments than the VAT-adjusted contract figure. In other words, this is not a VAT wrinkle. It is a substantial reconciliation gap. There may still be legitimate explanations — delayed invoices, service-date differences, additional authorisations, parallel arrangements, or a waiver-approved expansion — but those explanations need to be shown, not assumed.

Then comes the first break. The 2024/25 contract ended on 31 March 2025. The next emergency accommodation contract began on 8 April 2025. In the seven-day gap, the same payment filter shows one payment: £378 to Westward Ho Hotel Limited on 3 April 2025. That is not the scandal of the century, but it matters because it proves the timeline is not seamless. Even small gaps deserve an explanation when they sit in a service where contract cover, waivers and emergency authorisations matter. Source: uploaded FHDC payments workbook.

The key contract is DN771276, “Provision of Emergency Accommodation 2025”. Contracts Finder records it as a £400,000 contract, starting on 8 April 2025 and ending on 31 October 2025. Find a Tender records the same procurement as a light-touch regime service, with 10 suppliers, and gives the value as £400,000 excluding VAT and £480,000 including VAT. So the public-facing number, once VAT is allowed for, is £480,000.

Against that same 8 April to 31 October 2025 contract window, FHDC’s published payment data shows £733,279.20 under the two exact headings. That is £253,279.20 above the £480,000 VAT-inclusive contract value. It is £333,279.20 above the £400,000 excluding-VAT value. That is not a penny-rounding problem. That is the bill looking at the menu and asking why the pudding costs more than the banquet.

This still should be put carefully. We are not saying this proves unlawful spending. It may be explained by a variation, waiver, emergency authorisation, continuation arrangement, delayed invoicing, service-date differences, or the council treating the published value as an estimate rather than a hard ceiling. But if that is the answer, FHDC should publish the answer. “There may be an explanation somewhere” is not transparency. It is a filing cabinet with stage fright.

The supplier breakdown makes the question sharper. During the 2025 contract window, Paramount Independent Property Services LLP received £653,020 under the two temporary accommodation headings. Bluebells received £35,191.20, Westward Ho £20,328, Southcliff £15,200, and Gran Canaria £9,540. Paramount alone therefore received more than the whole VAT-inclusive value of the 10-supplier arrangement. Even if every placement was necessary, the public record still needs to show how the payment total was authorised.

The purchase-order data adds another uncomfortable ingredient. FHDC’s PO file shows purchase order CH02050, dated 9 June 2025, issued to Paramount Independent Property Services LLP for £400,000, with the description “Homelessness(Exc P.S.Leasing)”. That matches the headline contract value. Yet the payment data shows £653,020 paid to Paramount inside the contract window. A purchase order should be a control, not a commemorative tea towel from the day everyone still thought the bill would stop at £400,000.

Then there is the second and larger gap. The 2025 emergency accommodation contract ended on 31 October 2025. The new 2026 temporary accommodation framework did not start until 19 January 2026. Between 1 November 2025 and 18 January 2026, FHDC’s payment data shows £332,662.48 under the same two headings. Paramount received £206,987 of that. Again, this may be delayed invoicing, a waiver, a continuation arrangement, or another emergency route. But the public should not have to guess.

The termination notice makes the fog thicker. Find a Tender says the 2025 emergency accommodation contract ended by natural expiry on 31 October 2025. But it also gives the final contract value as £400,000 excluding VAT and £480,000 including VAT. Set against the earlier £400,000/£480,000 value and the £733,279.20 in matched payments during the contract window, that figure needs urgent explanation. It may be a typo. It may be a procurement reporting error. It may have a technical meaning. As published, it looks like the council’s spreadsheet has gone out wearing one shoe and nobody inside or outside the building has noticed except us..

The January 2026 framework does not rescue the earlier trail. It is larger, clearer and newer. It names 11 suppliers, uses a tiered system based on the lowest submitted room rates, and says there is no guarantee of volume or exclusivity. By 31 March 2026, payments under the two headings totalled £414,614.82 in the first 72 days of the framework. That is significant public money, but it is nowhere near the £3.84m VAT-inclusive framework value. The new contract couldn’t have overspent yet. It had barely got its coat off.

So the corrected story is this. FHDC had a £475,000 2024/25 emergency accommodation contract, apparently using an internal waiver route; then a short April 2025 gap; then a £400,000/£480,000 emergency accommodation contract where matched payments reached £733,279.20; then a 1 November 2025 to 18 January 2026 gap with £332,662.48 in payments; then a new £3.2m/£3.84m framework which, on the data to March 2026, does not appear overspent.

That distinction matters because otherwise the council can point to the big January 2026 framework and say there is plenty of headroom. But that would answer the wrong question. The question is not whether the new contract can absorb future spend. The question is whether the old emergency accommodation contracts, the gaps between them, the purchase orders, the termination notice and the payment data can be reconciled properly in public. Source: uploaded FHDC payments workbook; uploaded FHDC contract register.

FHDC should now publish one plain-English reconciliation. It should show the 2024/25 waiver, any 2025 waiver, any 2025 variation, any emergency authority covering the November-to-January gap, the relevant purchase orders, the service dates behind the invoices, and the explanation for the £400,000/£480,000 final-value figure in the termination notice. If the spending was necessary, say so. If the contract values were estimates, say so. If demand blew the estimates apart, say so. If waivers were used, publish them.

The conclusion is not that FHDC should stop housing people in crisis. It shouldn’t. The conclusion is that crisis spending still needs a clean public trail. On the most cautious comparison, the published payments show two substantial apparent excesses. In 2024/25, FHDC’s £475,000 emergency accommodation contract sits beside £887,023.40 in payments under the two accommodation headings; even allowing a full 20% VAT uplift to £570,000, that is still an apparent £317,023.40 above the VAT-adjusted contract figure. In 2025, the £400,000 / £480,000 emergency accommodation contract sits beside £733,279.20 in matched payments, an apparent £253,279.20 above the VAT-inclusive value. Together, that gives a cautious apparent excess of £570,302.60 across the two contract periods. That may be explained by waivers, variations, emergency authorisations, delayed invoices, service-date differences or parallel arrangements — but those explanations need to be published, not guessed. Until FHDC builds that bridge, residents are left with a public-money kitchen where the recipes change, the bill grows, the waiver may be somewhere in the cupboard, and the answer still hasn’t been served.

The Shepway Vox Team

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