Someone allocated a three-bedroom council owned home in Folkestone and Hythe during the past year had waited 667 weeks.
That’s nearly 13 years.
They were the extreme case, but the average wasn’t exactly brisk either. For the 29 three-bedroom properties let during the 12 months to 2 August 2026, households had waited an average of 170 weeks — more than three years. The shortest wait was ten weeks.
Those figures reveal the sharper edge of Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s newly updated housing statistics. Behind them sits a waiting list that’s also grown.
FHDC’s 2025/26 year-end Corporate Performance Report, presented to councillors in June, recorded 1,313 households on the housing waiting list. The council’s website now records 1,332 active households as of 2 August 2026 — 19 more, an increase of about 1.45%. The year-end report covered performance to 31 March 2026, so the two figures aren’t snapshots taken on consecutive dates.
The headline total, though, only tells part of the story.
Almost half the list is looking for the smallest homes. There are 661 households needing one bedroom, 318 needing two, 266 needing three, 64 needing four and 23 needing five bedrooms or more. Those numbers add up exactly to the council’s published total of 1,332.
And smaller doesn’t necessarily mean speedy.
FHDC says 125 one-bedroom properties were let during the latest 12-month period. The average wait was 76 weeks, but somebody waited 592 weeks — more than 11 years. For the 108 two-bedroom lets, the average was 83 weeks and the longest wait 303 weeks. The council notes that its one and two-bedroom figures include a large number of sheltered properties for people aged 50 and over.
There’s an important qualification to that 1,332 figure.
Some 580 households — 43.5% of the entire active list — are in Band E. FHDC says this category includes people who are adequately housed, have no local connection, or exceed its financial thresholds. It would therefore be wrong to suggest that every household among the 1,332 faces the same urgency or housing circumstances.
But the lettings figures expose the underlying problem rather better than the headline increase does.
During an entire year, just 29 three-bedroom homes were allocated and only one four-bedroom home. There were no five-bedroom lets at all. Meanwhile, 266 households currently need three bedrooms, 64 need four and 23 need five or more.
So the real story isn’t simply that Folkestone and Hythe’s waiting list has risen by 19 households.
It’s that behind a fairly modest change in the headline number lies a much tougher reality: for some local households, finding a suitably sized council owned home isn’t a wait measured in months.
It’s measured in years.
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As The Shepway Vox Team has repeatedly pointed out, FHDC can’t simply buy its way out of this problem. The homes at Risborough Barracks, the properties bought from Pentland in Lyminge and those at Shepway Close have cost the council substantial sums, yet the underlying pressures haven’t gone away. B&B and self-contained nightly-let costs continue to rise, while the housing waiting list has grown rather than shrunk.
Taken together, those figures raise a fairly obvious question: where’s the evidence that FHDC’s housing strategy is actually working? On the evidence available, it plainly isn’t delivering what residents were entitled to expect.
Political responsibility for that sits, in part, with Cabinet Member for Housing Rebecca Shoob. Buying property may increase the council’s stock, but it hasn’t stemmed rising temporary-accommodation costs or reduced the number of households waiting for a home. At some point, accountability has to mean more than another strategy, another purchase and another promise. Given the worsening position, I believe Cllr Shoob should consider her position and step down.
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As The Shepway Vox Team has repeatedly pointed out, FHDC can’t simply buy its way out of this problem. The homes at Risborough Barracks, the properties bought from Pentland in Lyminge and those at Shepway Close have cost the council substantial sums, yet the underlying pressures haven’t gone away. B&B and self-contained nightly-let costs continue to rise, while the housing waiting list has grown rather than shrunk.
Taken together, those figures raise a fairly obvious question: where’s the evidence that FHDC’s housing strategy is actually working? On the evidence available, it plainly isn’t delivering what residents were entitled to expect.
Political responsibility for that sits, in part, with Cabinet Member for Housing Rebecca Shoob. Buying property may increase the council’s stock, but it hasn’t stemmed rising temporary-accommodation costs or reduced the number of households waiting for a home. At some point, accountability has to mean more than another strategy, another purchase and another promise. Given the worsening position, I believe Cllr Shoob should consider her position and step down.