Byline Times says it’s “not politically partisan” and promises to follow stories “wherever” they go, “without fear or favour”. Yet its investigation into councillors’ business interests at Kent County Council looked only at Reform UK. We’re certainly no Reform cheerleaders — if its councillors get their declarations wrong, they should answer for it. But apply exactly the same public-record test elsewhere at County Hall and the questions don’t stop when the rosette changes colour.
There’s a wonderfully definite word scattered through Kent County Council’s registers of interests.
“None.”
It appears under Part G, covering securities such as shares. On 27 August, Byline Times published Raft of Senior Reform Councillors Fail to Declare Interests, saying it had identified potential errors and missing company ownership information involving at least nine Reform UK councillors at KCC. Four amended their transparency filings following Byline’s enquiries. That was legitimate journalism and some of the discrepancies plainly deserved investigating.
But there’s another part of this story.
Byline describes itself as “not politically partisan”. Its own mission statement says: “We will follow the story wherever it goes, without fear or favour.” It says no PR company, advertiser or press baron can influence which stories it chooses and that accurate information is “the lifeblood of a democracy”.
Fine words.
So what happens when the trail from KCC’s registers leads somewhere other than Reform UK?
One per cent, not 25 or 50
KCC’s securities test is hardly obscure. A beneficial interest may fall within Part G where, to the councillor’s knowledge, the body has a place of business or land within Kent or Medway and either the nominal value exceeds £25,000 or the interest exceeds one hundredth — 1% — of the issued share capital. KCC’s documentation expressly defines securities as including shares.
Councillors must also notify the Monitoring Officer of a new disclosable pecuniary interest, or a change to an existing one, within 28 days of becoming aware of it. KCC’s own Code makes that responsibility personal to the councillor.
That’s the yardstick.
Now apply it without looking at the party column.
Richard Streatfeild: Liberal Democrat, more than 25%
Richard Streatfeild MBE (pictured) represents Sevenoaks Town for the Liberal Democrats and chairs KCC’s Scrutiny Committee. He was re-elected in May 2025 with 2,510 votes, comfortably defeating Conservative and Reform challengers.
His KCC register declares his involvement with Hoath House Weddings Ltd.
But Companies House records Richard Giles Streatfeild as an active person with significant control of that company, with more than 25% but not more than 50% of its shares, the same proportion of voting rights and the right to appoint or remove directors. His correspondence address is Hoath House, Chiddingstone, Edenbridge, Kent. His wife, Rachel Anne Streatfeild, is separately recorded in the same ownership band.
Yet the KCC securities entry we examined records “None.”
That doesn’t prove a criminal offence. Companies House itself warns that it doesn’t verify the accuracy of information filed with it, and all the statutory conditions have to be considered before anybody starts throwing around allegations of illegality.
But come on.
If a Companies House shareholding of more than 25% sitting alongside “None” in Part G deserves journalistic scrutiny when the councillor is Reform, why wouldn’t precisely the same apparent contradiction deserve scrutiny when the councillor is Liberal Democrat?
The percentage hasn’t changed.
Only the party has.
That’s where Byline’s framing becomes uncomfortable
To be fair to Byline, its investigation was openly part of #ReformUncovered. The newspaper says that project is specifically committed to tracking Nigel Farage’s party when it’s in power. Reform controls KCC, so there’s an obvious public-interest reason for subjecting the governing group to particularly close examination.
But that explanation only gets you so far.
Byline’s article didn’t uncover some peculiarly Reform-only accounting system. Its method was effectively to compare KCC registers with Companies House and other public records. Having demonstrated that the council’s declarations may contain errors, the natural next question is whether the problem extends across KCC.
Our checks say that question is worth asking.
That doesn’t prove Byline deliberately ignored councillors from other parties. We don’t know what searches its reporter conducted beyond those published, and we’re not pretending to read minds.
It does mean that an investigation presented by a newspaper which expressly says it isn’t politically partisan risks looking politically selective if exactly the same discrepancy is discoverable outside the party being targeted.
That’s a fair question, not a conspiracy theory.
John Baker: ‘Owner’ in one box, ‘None’ in another
There are still Reform cases which deserve scrutiny.
John Baker, Reform councillor for Folkestone West (pictured), published a KCC declaration on 15 July 2025 which records him as a partner at County Hardware and “Owner of Britflicks (film company)”. Scroll down to Part G and his securities declaration says “None”.
Companies House-related records for Britflicks Ltd at 384 Cheriton Road, Folkestone. Available corporate data identifies John Walter Baker as the shareholder, while the company is currently recorded as active but dormant.
Again there’s a wrinkle. A Kent registered office alone doesn’t necessarily establish that the company satisfies KCC’s “place of business or land” condition, particularly where the company is dormant.
So Baker deserves a question.
Not a hanging.
Peter (Pothole) Osborne: declared while active, but not under securities
The case of Reform cabinet member Peter Osborne shows why dates and the exact wording of a register matter.
Byline reported that Osborne held 50 of the 100 shares in Associated Vehicle Solutions Ltd, which traded as Brenzett Car Sales, and said the company “does not appear to have been declared on his register”. It also correctly reported that the company was dissolved on 7 April 2026, around eleven months after Osborne’s election.
But Osborne’s register, published on 15 July 2025, while Associated Vehicle Solutions Ltd was still active, expressly lists “Associated vehicle solutions ltd” under Part A: Employment. So the company itself wasn’t absent from his declaration.
The more precise question is whether Osborne’s reported 50% shareholding should also have appeared under Part G: Securities during the period when the company existed and he held that interest. It should have. Byline’s own account places the business in Romney Marsh and says Osborne owned half the shares, so that’s the potentially significant issue — not whether the company was declared at all.
Once Associated Vehicle Solutions Ltd was dissolved on 7 April 2026, the position changed again. Dissolution doesn’t wipe away the historical question of whether Osborne’s reported 50% shareholding should have appeared under Part G while the company was active. But it does create a separate, more current issue.
Osborne’s published register still lists Associated Vehicle Solutions Ltd as an employment interest, despite the company having ceased to exist more than four months earlier. KCC’s rules require councillors to notify the Monitoring Officer of changes to disclosable pecuniary interests within 28 days.
So there are really two different questions here. Byline was wrong to suggest the company hadn’t been declared at all: it was plainly listed under Part A. But Osborne’s register now appears out of date because the dissolved company remains on it, while the historical question over whether his shareholding should also have appeared under Part G remains unresolved.
That’s precisely why accuracy matters. The problem isn’t simply whether a company name appears somewhere on a form. It’s whether the right interest is declared in the right place — and whether the register is kept up to date when circumstances change.
Fothergill shows why party labels are slippery
Then consider Maxine Fothergill (pictured).
She entered KCC following the May 2025 election under Reform UK but now sits with Restore Britain. KCC currently lists her as Restore Britain councillor for Sevenoaks Rural North East.
Companies House records Maxine Patricia Fothergill, born December 1962, with a lengthy corporate history including an active directorship of Amax Estates & Property Services Ltd, dating from June 2002.
Her case demonstrates something rather important about conducting these checks politically rather than institutionally: party membership moves.
Companies House records don’t.
If the objective is to establish whether KCC’s register is accurate, the sensible unit of investigation is surely the councillor, not whichever political grouping happens to make the better headline that week. And Fothergill’s declaration raises another issue: although the companies themselves appear under Part G, the size of her shareholdings isn’t stated. That matters because Part G isn’t simply a box for naming companies; it exists to disclose qualifying securities interests. Listing the company without properly identifying the shareholding leaves the public record incomplete.
Alex Ricketts: the companies are named, but the shareholdings aren’t
Alex Ricketts (pictured), Liberal Democrat councillor for Canterbury North, is a useful example of why merely naming a company doesn’t necessarily settle the disclosure question.
His register isn’t blank. Part A identifies Alex Ricketts Ltd— Owner, while Part G lists Alex Ricketts Ltd and Wave Catchers Ltd. His partner’s side also identifies The Psychological Edge Ltd.
But the declaration doesn’t state the size of Ricketts’ shareholdings in those companies.
That matters because Part G concerns securities interests. Simply naming a company tells the public that an interest exists, but not how substantial that interest is. If the purpose of the register is transparency, there’s an obvious difference between holding 2% of a company and controlling 75% of it.
So Ricketts shouldn’t be presented as someone whose declaration necessarily “clears” the wider issue. His form is fuller than those which simply say “None”, but it still leaves unanswered questions about the scale of the interests being declared.
That’s precisely why the same test needs to be applied consistently across KCC. The issue isn’t whether a company name appears somewhere on the form. It’s whether the declaration gives the public a sufficiently clear and accurate picture of the councillor’s financial interest in it.
We’re not Reform lovers — that’s precisely the point
The ShepwayVox Team has no interest in providing political cover for Reform UK.
Where Reform councillors have omitted interests, misdescribed them or failed to update their registers on time, that should be exposed. They run Kent County Council and deserve intense scrutiny.
But holding Reform to account doesn’t require pretending everybody else is automatically beyond scrutiny.
If anything, the credibility of that scrutiny depends on exactly the opposite.
Byline itself says facts can’t be debated and that it will pursue stories without fear or favour. Its KCC investigation uncovered enough discrepancies for four Reform councillors to amend their filings. That ought to have triggered the obvious follow-up: does the same problem exist elsewhere at County Hall?
Richard Streatfeild’s Companies House record gives a pretty compelling reason to ask.
Peter Osborne’s form demonstrates that Byline itself could get the detail wrong.
Fothergill shows political affiliation can change.
Ricketts demonstrates something subtler: even where a councillor names the relevant companies, the declaration can still leave important questions unanswered about the scale of the financial interest involved.
And Baker shows there are still Reform questions worth pursuing.
That isn’t partisan journalism.
It’s the opposite.
Check all 81
Byline reported KCC saying that individual councillors are responsible for keeping their declarations accurate and that the authority participates in the National Fraud Initiative, which includes matching elected-member payroll information against Companies House and KCC creditor data. Yet journalists were still able to identify multiple apparent discrepancies using public records.
So why stop with Reform?
KCC has 81 councillors. The obvious response isn’t another political bunfight over whether Reform is worse than Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Greens or anybody else.
Run the same Companies House comparison across the lot.
Publish the results.
Correct whatever needs correcting.
Because until that happens, nobody can honestly say Kent has simply got a Reform UK register problem.
The evidence increasingly suggests the question KCC should now be answering is whether it has a Kent County Council-wide register problem — and, if so, what Monitoring Officer Petra Der Man is doing about it, if anything.
The Shepway Vox Team
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