Kent County Council Staff Suspensions: Seven Cases Lasted a Year or More as Average Hit 166 Days

Kent County Council says disciplinary issues should be dealt with through a “swift and effective process”. Yet its latest figures show staff suspensions averaging 166 days, with seven cases lasting at least a year during 2025/26.

Suspension doesn’t mean somebody has been found guilty of anything. KCC’s own April 2026 employment terms make that plain: “Suspension is not a disciplinary sanction in itself; its purpose is to remove you from the workplace whilst the investigation is undertaken.”

That makes what has happened to the length — and number — of suspensions rather important.

There were 74 suspension cases active during 2025/26, against 69 the previous year, so the latest year-on-year rise was a fairly modest 7.2%. But pull the lens back and the picture changes. KCC recorded 42 cases in 2021/22, 32 in 2022/23, 44 in 2023/24, then 69 and 74. So this hasn’t been a smooth four-year climb: cases actually fell sharply at first, before rising 37.5% in 2023/24, surging another 56.8% in 2024/25 and increasing again last year.

The end result is still striking. The 74 cases recorded in 2025/26 are 76.2% above the 42 recorded four financial years earlier.

But it is what has happened to the length of suspension that really catches the eye.

The average was 88 days in 2021/22. It then moved to 142 days, 108, 139 and finally 166 days in 2025/26. In the latest year alone, the average rose by 27 days — 19.4%. Compared with 2021/22 it has increased by 78 days, or 88.6%.

The median tells us not to oversimplify that story. That stood at 131 days in 2024/25 but fell to 112 days last year. Put simply, the middle suspension actually became shorter while the arithmetic average became longer. That is consistent with a group of particularly lengthy cases dragging the average upwards, although KCC’s aggregate figures don’t let us measure the effect of individual cases.

And there are some very long cases in the mix.

In 2021/22, 17 suspension cases lasted 30 days or less and none had reached 366 days. Last year only seven were in that shortest bracket. Nineteen had reached 91–180 days, another 19 had lasted 181–365 days and seven stood at 366 days or more. Of the 74 cases active during 2025/26, 45 — 60.8% — were in duration bands of at least 91 days.

KCC has previously been quite specific about what should happen while somebody is suspended.

Its publicly available 2013 Disciplinary Procedure says alternatives should be considered with HR before suspension, and that suspension should only be used where alternative working arrangements aren’t practicable. It goes further: suspension “must be for a fixed period of time, with regular formal review”, with support and communication provided to the employee.

The same procedure said ordinary investigations should be conducted “as quickly as possible, ideally within 28 days”. More complex cases involving serious or gross misconduct should aim to be completed within eight weeks. Those weren’t absolute deadlines — the document acknowledges investigations can take longer — but where 28 days couldn’t be achieved, the employee was to be informed and the investigation resolved as soon as reasonably possible.

That document is old, but it can’t simply be dismissed as an archaeological curiosity. KCC Internal Audit reported in September 2025 that the council’s Disciplinary Policy and Procedure was “last formally ratified by the Personnel Committee in 2013”, with subsequent changes described as “minor updates”.

So where is the increase happening?

Mostly in the two big people-facing directorates.

KCC’s FOI uses shorthand. CY refers to the directorate KCC elsewhere calls Children, Young People and Education, normally abbreviated CYPE; AH is Adult Social Care and Health, normally ASCH. GET is Growth, Environment and Transport; CED is Chief Executive Department; and DCED is Deputy Chief Executive Department. Those full directorate names appear in KCC’s own Internal Audit planning papers.

The biggest long-term rise is in Children, Young People and Education. Its suspension cases moved from 20 in 2021/22 to 17, then 28, before hitting 46 in 2024/25. They remained at 46 last year. So compared with 2021/22, CY is up 130% — but it didn’t contribute any increase at all in the latest year.

The recent movement instead comes most clearly from Adult Social Care and Health.

AH went from 13 cases in 2024/25 to 21 in 2025/26, a rise of eight, or 61.5%, in a single year. Across the five-year period it has risen from 11 to 21. Meanwhile GET fell from eight cases to six last year and is down from 11 in 2021/22. CED fell from fewer than five cases to none, while DCED moved from none to fewer than five.

We can’t neatly account for every movement because KCC has suppressed exact figures below five. It says releasing those small numbers could potentially identify individuals when combined with other information. What the disclosed figures do establish is that Adult Social Care and Health contains the clear identifiable rise in the latest year, while Children, Young People and Education stayed flat.

There is another question worth asking: has KCC simply been dealing with vastly more disciplinary cases?

Its own published figures suggest not.

KCC recorded 130 disciplinary cases in 2021/22 and 144 in 2024/25, an increase of 10.8%. Over the same years, suspension cases active during the year went from 42 to 69, an increase of 64.3%.

Those numbers need handling carefully. They aren’t a numerator and denominator from which a meaningful “suspension rate” can be calculated. A suspension can straddle financial years, while KCC’s Employee Relations figures count disciplinary casework. But the comparison does show something useful: the growth in active suspensions has been far greater than the growth in disciplinary cases generally.

KCC’s Internal Audit in Sept 2025 examined disciplinary handling and gave it a “SUBSTANTIAL” assurance opinion, with prospects for improvement rated “VERY GOOD”. The audit looked at ten misconduct allegations and concluded that the ACAS code and KCC procedure were generally being followed. It nevertheless found that 15% of officers able to conduct investigations hadn’t completed the relevant training.

That still leaves the most interesting part unanswered.

KCC has told us how many suspension cases it had and how long they had been running. It hasn’t told us how often the long cases were formally reviewed, what those reviews concluded, whether alternatives to suspension were reconsidered, or why seven cases reached a year or more.

For a disciplinary system KCC itself says should be “swift and effective”, an average of 166 days leaves quite a lot still to explain.

The Shepway Vox Team

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