Kent County Council Sits on £126m Developer Contributions as Schools and Roads Wait

Kent County Council’s latest available data shows more than £126m in developer contributions received or invoiced but not yet spent. Reform didn’t create the pile. But it now owns the choice of whether that money becomes schools, roads and public benefit — or another County Hall sermon about jam tomorrow.

“We will simply put the people of Kent at the heart of everything we do.” That was Reform UK leader Linden Kemkaran’s big County Hall promise after her party took control of Kent County Council in May 2025. Fine words. But the test of power isn’t a polished quote. It’s whether money meant for Kent communities is turned into school places, road schemes, adult social care, waste infrastructure and community facilities.

KCC’s latest available Infrastructure Funding Statement covers 2024/25 and was published in December 2025. The 2025/26 statement isn’t yet due, because infrastructure funding statements cover the previous financial year and must be published by 31 December. So this is the latest full-year public dataset. It shows that, at 31 March 2025, KCC had £126,204,464 in developer contributions received or invoiced but not yet spent. KCC warns that “invoiced money has not necessarily been received”, so the figure needs care. But even with that caveat, £126m is not small change in the County Hall biscuit tin.

Section 106, usually shortened to S106, is planning money tied to a specific development. When new housing creates extra pressure, developers can be required to contribute towards the infrastructure needed to make that development acceptable. KCC says it seeks contributions for primary and secondary education, highways and transportation, adult social care, sustainable urban drainage, strategic waste disposal, libraries, adult education and integrated children’s services. This is not bonus money. It’s mitigation money. It exists because development has consequences.

There’s also Community Infrastructure Levy, or CIL, a wider charge on development collected by district councils where a CIL regime exists. KCC doesn’t usually collect CIL directly, but it can receive CIL money for county-level infrastructure. In Folkestone and Hythe’s case, KCC’s latest statement shows £547,873 received for waste CIL in 2024/25, £1,503,788 retained at year end, and £0 spent in the year. That doesn’t prove wrongdoing. It does ask a simple question: when does retained waste money become waste infrastructure?

Nationally, the Home Builders Federation says local authorities in England and Wales are sitting on more than £9bn of developer contributions, including £6.6bn from S106 and more than £2.2bn from CIL. It says around £3bn has been held for more than five years and quotes its chief executive saying: “This money should be funding schools, healthcare, affordable housing and other essential local infrastructure.” Quite. In Kent, KCC’s direct responsibility is mainly schools, roads, social care, waste and county services — and that is more than enough to be getting on with.

The biggest KCC pot is education: £75,854,472, around 60% of the total. Highways comes next, with £36,396,941, around 29%. Together, education and highways account for roughly £112.25m, almost 89% of the money KCC reported as received or invoiced but not yet spent. A wider 2026 comparison also identifies KCC as holding £75.9m in unspent school and education contributions and £36.4m in unspent highways and roads contributions.

This is not about migrants. Migrants are not sitting in Sessions House blocking a school expansion with a clipboard and a flask of tea. Migrants are not hiding the timetable for a junction improvement in a filing cabinet marked “too difficult”. Migrants are not stopping KCC from explaining why millions for education and highways remain received or invoiced but not yet spent. Migrants are not standing over the potholes of Kent whispering: “No, don’t fill that one.” And migrants are certainly not preventing County Hall from publishing a simple, public, project-by-project ledger showing what money is held, what it’s for, when it was received, what the legal spend deadline is, and why delivery hasn’t happened. That is not a border-control issue. It’s a County Hall delivery issue.

Nor can Reform wave a Union Jack over every crater in the road and pretend the problem is elsewhere. Yes, S106 highways money is legally tied to particular schemes; it is not a magic pothole purse. But that is precisely why KCC should tell residents, in plain English, which road schemes are funded, which junctions are waiting, which highways contributions remain unspent, and why the public is still bouncing through Kent’s roads like a loose toolbox in the back of a van. KCC’s own 2025/26 quarter-three report says 5,144 potholes were due for repair and 4,725 were completed on time; residents can see potholes, but they can’t see a transparent highways-contribution delivery ledger.

During 2024/25, KCC secured £31,713,314 in new S106 contributions, received £23,452,786, and spent £17,179,137. KCC says its unspent position rose from £119,382,942 to £126,204,464, “a net increase of £6,821,522 (5.4%) i.e., KCC has received more contributions during 2024/25 than it has spent.” There it is in the council’s own words: the pot got bigger.

Reform inherited that balance, because the financial year ended on 31 March 2025 and Reform formally took control after the May election. But politics doesn’t stop at inheritance. It begins there. The previous Conservative administration can be blamed for the pile arriving on Reform’s desk. Reform can now be judged on whether the pile becomes visible delivery or stays warm while everyone talks about “efficiency”.

And this is where the ridicule writes itself. Reform created a Cabinet post for Local Government Efficiency, promising to look at “every single thing we do as a council”. Splendid. Then look at this. Look at every unspent S106 line. Look at every retained CIL sum. Look at every school project awaiting delivery, every highways contribution still in the ledger, every waste infrastructure pot awaiting movement. Don’t just hunt for paperclips and performative outrage. Follow the £126m.

KCC’s own future project list includes £6.8m for Sturry Link Road, £6.5m for Chilmington Green Secondary, £4.4m for Hermitage Lane Primary, £4.3m for junction improvements at Paddock Wood, £4.1m for New Westwood Cross Primary, £3.8m for Cornwallis Academy, £3.6m for Maidstone Integrated Transport, £3.4m for Dartford Bridge Primary, and £3.3m for New Shorncliffe Garrison Primary. These are not abstract numbers. They are the public works supposed to make growth bearable.

Some projects are complicated. KCC says delivery can depend on finance, land availability and central government policy. Fair enough. But complexity is not a permission slip for obscurity. KCC’s own strategic wording says the failure to deliver “infrastructure first” has harmed quality of life by placing pressure on “GPs, school and roads”. It then says: “We must break this cycle of insufficient infrastructure being delivered only after the pressure has become acute.” Quite. So break it.

The latest 2025/26 performance report does not give the final unspent balance. But it does show KCC still securing developer money close to target: in Quarter 3, 15 S106 legal agreements secured £6.03m, with a 97.7% success ratio against the amounts originally requested. So the issue is not simply whether KCC asks developers for money. It does. The issue is whether the public can see that money becoming the infrastructure used to justify development in the first place.

So let’s retire the pantomime. Migrants are not stopping KCC building school places. Migrants are not stopping KCC delivering road schemes. Migrants are not stopping KCC explaining why pothole-ridden residents are told to be patient while highways money waits in the ledger. Migrants are not stopping KCC telling the public exactly what each unspent pot is for, when it arrived, when it must be spent, and when Kent residents will actually see the benefit.

Lewis Carroll gave us the rule in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There: “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.” Kent has had quite enough jam tomorrow. If Reform really means what it says, then the latest available £126m developer-contribution balance must stop being a County Hall monument to promises deferred. The people of Kent can’t drive over a slogan, send their children to a press release, or fill a pothole with another speech.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent