KCC Spending: The £75m Rise, The £158m Mystery, And The Adult Social Care Reality

Kent County Council’s published payments over £250 rose by £75m in a year. Adult social care climbed by £62m. Children’s services appeared to fall by £97m. And more than £158m of 2025/26 spending sat in orphan, blank, unknown, capital or “non-attributable” buckets. Welcome to the bit where political slogans meet the council cheque book.

Kent County Council’s latest invoices-over-£250 data tells what looks, at first, like a simple story. In 2024/25, the council published net invoice payments totalling £1.998bn. In 2025/26, that rose to £2.073bn. That’s an increase of £75.0m, or 3.75%.

Simple? Not quite. This is Kent County Council. Somewhere between the spreadsheet, the directorate codes and the politics, the story becomes less “spending went up” and more “hang on, where has some of that money been parked?”

The comparison matters because it straddles a political handover. The 2024/25 financial year was under Conservative control. April 2025 was still under the outgoing Conservative administration. Then came the county council election on 1 May 2025, when Reform UK won 57 of KCC’s 81 seats.

That doesn’t mean every payment after May 2025 was a Reform decision. Councils don’t work like a light switch. Contracts, care packages, school transport, highways schemes, legal commitments and invoices often carry over from one administration to the next.

But it does mean the 2025/26 year is the first published-payments year in which Reform UK moved from megaphone to management. And the cheque book is a brutal editor.

The headline: KCC’s published payments rose by £75m

Across directorates, KCC’s published net invoices over £250 rose from £1,997,530,523.40 in 2024/25 to £2,072,532,371.62 in 2025/26. That’s a rise of £75,001,848.22.

For ordinary readers, the important point is this: this isn’t the council’s full audited accounts. It’s the council’s published invoice data. KCC says the files cover invoices paid in the reporting month with a net value over £250, excluding VAT, plus credit notes over £250. It also says some information is excluded to protect personal or sensitive data, and that the reports are extracted by payment date and don’t reflect later corrections.

So this isn’t the whole financial universe. But it’s still a very large window into where public money is going. And what it shows is awkward for anyone hoping for an easy political slogan.

Adult social care: the giant that got bigger

The biggest single directorate by far was . In 2024/25, it accounted for £836.19m. In 2025/26, it rose to £898.36m. That’s an increase of £62.18m, or 7.44%.

Its share of KCC’s published payments also grew, from 41.86% to 43.35%. Put plainly, nearly 43p in every £1 in this payment dataset now sits in adult social care.

This is the uncomfortable bit for any administration, old or new. You can campaign in slogans, but adult social care doesn’t do slogans. It does home care, care homes, complex needs, hospital discharge, safeguarding, frailty, disability, dementia, carers and real human beings who cannot be wished out of a budget.

If KCC wants to cut, reform or “do efficiency”, this is where the hard truth lives. Adult social care is expensive because the need is expensive. The test isn’t whether someone can shout “waste” loudly enough. The test is whether they can reduce cost safely without harming people who rely on the service.

KCC’s good-news care story — and the £62m question

KCC’s own public line on adult social care is upbeat. In a news release published on 7 May 2026, the council said its Adult Social Care service had delivered a “positive set of performance results” in the latest Quarter 4 performance report.

The council highlighted more residents being placed in care homes rated Good or Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission, fewer older people entering long-term residential or nursing care, stronger early support, more help for carers and falling safeguarding concerns in Quarter 4.

None of that should be dismissed. In a service dealing daily with vulnerability, dignity and risk, better performance matters. If fewer people need long-term residential placements, if more carers are getting support, and if more people are being helped earlier, that’s good news.

But it isn’t the whole story. The payment data says Adult Social Care & Health rose by £62m in a single year. So the grown-up reading is this: KCC may be improving some care indicators, but it’s doing so inside a service that is getting more expensive, not less.

That’s not a victory parade. It’s a pressure report with a ribbon tied round it.

KCC’s own Quarter 4 performance paper quietly says as much. Adult social care saw increased demand for the Connect service, with contacts across 2025/26 up by nearly 20% compared with the previous year.

More than 8,500 people contacted Adult Social Care Connect in Quarter 4, the highest quarterly level for two years. More than 3,700 Care Needs Assessment requests were made, and just over 2,300 assessments were still awaiting completion at the end of the quarter.

The report also says more than 17,100 people had an active care and support plan at quarter-end, while more than 28,000 had a plan during the year. In Quarter 4 alone, more than 1,800 new packages of care were arranged, at an average weekly cost of £883.

That is the reality behind the press release.

The quality-of-care figure also needs reading carefully. KCC’s news release highlighted that 75% of residents supported by KCC were placed in care homes rated Good or Outstanding by the CQC. That sounds strong. But the performance report says the measure was still Amber, not Green, because it remained below the 80% target, although it had improved from Red.

Again, that isn’t failure. It’s progress with a warning label.

The same pattern appears in safeguarding. KCC said safeguarding concerns and open enquiries both dropped for the second quarter in a row. True. But the performance report also says safeguarding concerns across 2025/26 were 9% greater than in the previous financial year. Quarter 4 was better; the year as a whole was still heavier.

This is why the adult social care story mustn’t be flattened into either “everything is wonderful” or “everything is broken”. Both would be lazy. The sharper truth is that KCC’s service appears to be improving in some areas while carrying rising demand, high legal safeguarding pressure and a much bigger published payments total.

That is the £62m question. Are higher payments buying better care? Are they simply keeping pace with demand? Are provider costs rising? Are more people needing support? Is the council avoiding long-term residential placements but paying more elsewhere in the system?

Those are the questions residents deserve answered in plain English.

Children’s services: the £97m fall that needs explaining

The largest named fall was in Children, Young People & Education. In 2024/25, this directorate accounted for £693.67m. In 2025/26, it was £596.68m. That’s a fall of £97.0m, or 13.98%.

On the face of it, that’s a major reduction. The directorate’s share of total published payments fell from 34.73% to 28.79%. The number of invoice rows also dropped, from 129,867 to 111,499.

But this is where the reader needs to keep one eyebrow firmly raised. A fall of nearly £100m in children’s and education payments might be real. It might reflect changed spending patterns, different timing, fewer high-value payments, changed contracts, transfers between budgets, or reclassification.

Because the 2025/26 file also contains large sums under non-standard headings, it can’t safely be presented as “KCC spent £97m less on children” without more digging.

Children’s services includes some of the most sensitive and expensive parts of local government: SEND transport, children in care, placements, education support and safeguarding. So if a major fall appears in the directorate totals, the proper question isn’t “hooray, a saving”. The proper question is: where did the spending go, what changed, and did any of it move into another bucket?

Highways, environment and transport: down £31m

Growth, Environment & Transport fell from £292.12m to £260.70m. That’s a reduction of £31.43m, or 10.76%.

Again, that may be real. But it needs treating carefully. This is the world of roads, transport, infrastructure, waste, environment and capital-linked activity. In 2025/26, there was also £33.33m sitting under Capital Cost Centres.

That doesn’t prove a direct shift from Growth, Environment & Transport into capital coding. But it does mean the headline fall shouldn’t be read in isolation.

Residents will put this more simply: “If highways spending is down, why are the roads still full of holes? If capital spending has moved elsewhere, show us where.” That’s fair. Councils should be able to explain their own codes in plain English.

The Chief Executive’s Department jumped by 151%

The Chief Executive’s Department rose from £18.23m to £45.86m. That’s an increase of £27.63m, or 151.56%.

In cash terms, this is smaller than adult social care. In percentage terms, it jumps off the page wearing a flashing hat.

The number of invoice rows also rose from 6,143 to 13,838. For lay readers, this doesn’t automatically mean “chief executive spending has gone mad”. Directorate coding can change. Functions can move. Corporate costs can be reallocated. But it does mean this area is worth a supplier-level look.

If a central department more than doubles in the published payment data, the public is entitled to ask what changed. Was it restructuring? New contracts? ICT? Consultancy? Legal work? Elections? Transformation? Communications? Something else?

That isn’t gotcha journalism. That’s basic democratic housekeeping.

The real mystery: £158m in odd buckets

The most important part of the 2025/26 dataset is not just what went up or down. It’s what appears outside the usual named directorates.

In 2025/26, the data includes £48.69m under Total Orphan Cost Centre Values, £33.33m under Capital Cost Centres, £30.29m with a blank directorate, £8.62m under Unknown, and £37.29m under Non Attributable Costs. Together, that is about £158.2m.

That is the spreadsheet equivalent of finding a locked cupboard in the finance office labelled: “miscellaneous, probably fine”.

It may all be perfectly explainable. It may reflect technical cost-centre mapping, capital coding, system changes, transitional reporting, or directorate restructures. But for a council the size of KCC, £158m is not loose change. It’s not a rounding error. It’s a public-interest question.

And it matters politically. Reform UK arrived at County Hall promising a new broom. But the public shouldn’t just be told the broom exists. They should be shown what it has swept up.

If £48.69m is sitting under “Total Orphan Cost Centre Values”, residents deserve to know why those costs were orphaned. If £30.29m has no directorate recorded, residents deserve to know what service area it belongs to. If £37.29m is “Non Attributable”, residents deserve to know why it can’t be attributed.

County Hall may have a perfectly sensible answer. Good. Publish it.

From protest to responsibility

This is where the story becomes bigger than the spreadsheet. For years, the Conservatives owned KCC’s budget decisions. The 2024/25 figures belong to that era. April 2025 still sat under that inherited Conservative machine.

Then Reform UK won control. Not a symbolic seat. Not a protest corner. Control.

That changes the test. It’s no longer enough to say “the old lot wasted money”. It’s no longer enough to point at Westminster, migrants, diversity officers, flags, slogans, consultants, or whatever happens to be the political piñata of the week.

Once you run the council, the invoices are yours to explain.

That doesn’t mean Reform created every pressure in 2025/26. They plainly didn’t. Much of the spending was inherited. The budget, contracts and service demand were already in motion before the new administration took full hold.

But it does mean Reform now has to do the grown-up bit: take the same messy, expensive, human, legally bound council machine it criticised and show, line by line, how it’ll make it better. Not louder. Better.

What the numbers really say

The data says KCC’s published payments rose by £75m in a year.

It says adult social care rose sharply and now dominates the payment landscape.

It says children’s and education payments fell heavily, but not in a way that should be treated as a simple cut or saving without checking whether spending has been reclassified.

It says highways, environment and transport fell, but the existence of capital and orphan buckets means that movement also needs careful reconciliation.

It says the Chief Executive’s Department rose sharply enough to deserve a closer look.

Most of all, it says 2025/26 contains a very large sum of money in categories that are not helpful to the ordinary reader.

And that is the democratic point. Transparency is not just publishing a spreadsheet. Transparency is publishing information in a way that lets the public understand it.

At the moment, KCC’s data opens the door but leaves the lights off in parts of the room.

So here is the question for County Hall. Can Kent County Council explain, in plain English, why £158m of 2025/26 published payments appears under orphan, blank, unknown, capital or non-attributable headings?

Because until it does, residents should be cautious about anyone claiming a neat political victory from these numbers.

The Conservatives left behind the machine. Reform now sits at the controls. Adult social care is getting dearer. Big directorate movements need reconciling. And £158m sits in places where the public needs a torch.

The spreadsheet, bless it, has no party loyalty. It just sits there, quietly asking the most dangerous question in local government: Where did the money go?

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime